1 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


Students  Edition — Two  Volumes  in  One 


THE  LITERARY  HISTORY 

OF  THE 

AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 
1763-1783 


BY 

MOSES   COIT  TYLER 

Professor  of  American  History  and  Literature  in  Cornell  University 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
NHW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

Ube  "fcnicfeerbocfeer  press 


COPYRIGHT,  1897 

BY 

MOSES  COIT  TYLER 
Entered  at  Stationer's  Hall,  Londor> 


•Cbe  fmtcfcerbocfeer  prcae,  Wew 


V.I-3- 


TO 

JEANNETTE    GILBERT    TYLER 

THIS   BOOK 

IS 
LOVINGLY    DEDICATED 

BY 
HER    HUSBAND 


PREFACE. 


G)      THERE  would,  perhaps,  be  no  injustice  in  describing  this 

^)  book  as  the  product  of  a  new  method,  at  least  of  a  method 

'  never  before  so  fully  applied,  in  the  critical  treatment  of 

^ 

<^  the  American   Revolution.     The  outward  history  of  that 

famous  procedure  has  been  many  times  written,  and  is  now, 

by  a  new  breed  of  American  scholars,  being  freshly  rewrit- 

i    ten  in  the  light  of  larger  evidence,  and  under  the  direction  of 

•^  a  more  disinterested  and  a  more  judicial  spirit.    In  the  pres- 

Ti  ent  work,  for  the  first  time  in  a  systematic  and  a  fairly 
£0 

complete  way,  is  set  forth  the  inward  history  of  our  Rev- 
olution— the  history  of  its  ideas,    its  spiritual   moods,   its 

^i 

^  motives,  its  passions,  even  of  its  sportive  caprices  and  its 
^  whims,  as  these  uttered  themselves  at  the  time,  whether 
•^consciously  or  not,  in  the  various  writings  of  the  two  par- 
ties  of  Americans  who   promoted   or  resisted   that   great 
movement. 

The  plan  of  the  author  has  been  to  let  both  parties  in  the 
controversy — the  Whigs  and  the  Tories,  the  Revolutionists 
and  the  Loyalists — tell  their  own  story  freely  in  their  own 
way,  and  without  either  of  them  being  liable,  at  our  hands, 
to  posthumous  outrage  in  the  shape  of  partisan  imputations 


VI  PREFACE. 

\_ 
on  their  sincerity,  their  magnanimity,  their  patriotism,  or 

their  courage.  Moreover,  for  the  purpose  of  historic  inter- 
pretation, the  author  has  recognized  the  value  of  the  lighter, 
as  well  as  of  the  graver,  forms  of  literature,  and  conse- 
quently has  here  given  full  room  to  the  lyrical,  the  humor- 
ous, and  the  satirical  aspects  of  our  Revolutionary  record 
— its  songs,  ballads,  sarcasms,  its  literary  facetiae.  The 
entire  body  of  American  writings,  from  1763  to  1783, 
whether  serious  or  mirthful,  in  prose  or  in  verse,  is  here 
delineated  in  its  most  characteristic  examples,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  exhibiting  the  several  stages  of  thought  and  emotion 
through  which  the  American  people  passed  during  the  two 
decades  of  the  struggle  which  resulted  in  our  national  Inde- 
pendence. 

By  comparison,  then,  with  the  usual  way  of  dealing  with 
the  subject,  this  study  of  the  American  Revolution  brings 
about  a  somewhat  different  adjustment  of  its  causal  forces, 
of  its  instruments,  its  sequences,  its  acts,  and  its  actors. 
The  proceedings  of  legislative  bodies,  the  doings  of  cabinet 
ministers  and  of  colonial  politicians,  the  movements  of 
armies,  are  not  here  altogether  disregarded,  but  they  are 
here  subordinated  :  they  are  mentioned,  when  mentioned  at 
all,  as  inere  external  incidents  in  connection  with  the  ideas 
and  the  emotions  which  lay  back  of  them  or  in  front  of 
them,  which  caused  them  or  were  caused  by  them.  One 
result  of  this  method,  also,  is  an  entirely  new  distribution 
of  the  tokens  of  historic  prominence — of  what  is  called  fame 
— among  the  various  participants  in  that  very  considerable 


PREFACE. 

business.  Instead  of  fixing  our  eyes  almost  exclusively,  as 
is  commonly  done,  upon  statesmen  and  generals,  upon  party 
leaders,  upon  armies  and  navies,  upon  Congress,  upon  par- 
liament, upon  the  ministerial  agents  of  a  brain-sick  king,  or 
even  upon  that  brain-sick  king  himself,  and  instead  of  view- 
ing all  these  people  as  the  sole  or  the  principal  movers  and 
doers  of  the  things  that  made  the  American  Revolution,  we 
here  for  the  most  part  turn  our  eyes  away  toward  certain  per- 
sons hitherto  much  neglected,  in  many  cases  wholly  forgotten 
— toward  persons  who,  as  mere  writers,  and  whether  other- 
wise prominent  or  not,  nourished  the  springs  of  great  historic 
events  by  creating  and  shaping  and  directing  public  opinion 
during  all  that  robust  time;  who,  so  far  as  we  here  regard 
them,  wielded  only  spiritual  weapons;  who  still  illustrate, 
for  us  and  for  all  who  choose  to  see,  the  majestic  operation 
of  ideas,  the  creative  and  decisive  play  of  spiritual  forces,  in 
the  development  of  history,  in  the  rise  and  fall  of  nations, 
in  the  aggregation  and  the  division  of  races.  Accordingly, 
in  this  particular  history  of  the  American  Revolution,  our 
heroes  are  such,  not  because  they  were  mighty  ministers 
-of  state,  or  mighty  politicians  and  law-makers,  or  mighty 
generals;  our  heroes  are  such,  chiefly,  because  they  were 
mere  penmen — only  essayists,  pamphleteers,  sermon  writers, 
song  writers,  tale  tellers,  or  satirists,  the  study  of  whose 
work,  it  is  believed,  may  open  to  us  a  view  of  the  more 
delicate  and  elusive,  but  not  less  profound  or  less  real, 
forces  which  made  that  period  so  great,  and  still  so  worthy 
of  being  truly  understood  by  us.  Finally,  as  we  have  here 


Vlii  PREFACE. 

to  do,  not  so  much  with  the  old,  official,  and  conspicuous 
actors  in  the  Revolution  as,  in  many  cases,  with  its  unseen, 
its  unofficial,  and  its  almost  unremembered  ones, — as  we 
here  concern  ourselves  less  frequently  with  the  political 
and  military  chiefs  of  that  stormy  transaction,  and  more 
frequently  with  its  literary  chiefs, — so,  also,  are  we  here 
brought  into  a  rather  direct  and  familiar  acquaintance  with 
the  American  people  themselves,  on  both  sides  of  the  dis- 
pute, as,  sitting  at  their  firesides  or  walking  in  their  streets, 
they  were  actually  stirred  to  thought  and  passion  by  the 
arrival  of  the  daily  budget  of  news  touching  an  affair  of 
incomparable  moment  to  themselves.  Just  what  this  book 
aims  to  be,  then,  is  a  presentation  of  the  soul,  rather  than 
of  the  body,  of  the  American  Revolution ;  a  careful,  inde- 
pendent, and,  if  possible,  an  unbiased  register  of  the  very 
brain  and  heart  of  the  sorely  divided  people  of  the  land,  as 
these  wrought,  and  rejoiced,  and  suffered,  in  the  progress  of 
those  tremendous  political  and  military  events  which  con- 
stitute the  exterior  and  visible  framework  of  our  heroic 
age. 

Often,  while  engaged  in  the  studies  upon  which  this  book 
is  founded,  and  now,  still  more  deeply,  as  I  pass  in  final 
review  their  formulated  results,  have  I  been  impressed  by 
the  tragedy  and  the  pathos  of  the  period  between  1763  and 
1783,  as  the  birth  time  of  a  most  bitter  race  feud — a  race 
feud  implacable,  perhaps,  and  endless,  but  altogether  need- 
less ;  of  a  fatal  disagreement  between  the  two  great  branches 
of  a  race  which,  at  this  moment,  holds  an  historic  position 


PREFACE.  ix 

in  the  world  and  an  historic  opportunity,  not  only  the  most 
extensive  and  the  most  splendid,  but  the  most  benignant, 
that  was  ever  attained  by  any  similar  group  of  human  beings 
upon  this  planet.  To  show  that  this  race  feud  need  not,  after 
all,  be  an  endless  one,  that  already  its  fierceness  has  had 
expression  enough,  and  that  its  wrath  has  now  too  long 
outlasted  the  going  down  of  the  sun ;  in  short,  to  bring 
together  once  more  into  sincere  friendship,  into  a  rational 
and  a  sympathetic  moral  unity,  these  divided  members  of 
a  family  capable,  if  in  substantial  harmony,  of  leading  the 
whole  human  race  upward  to  all  the  higher  planes  of  culture 
and  happiness, — this  is  an  object  which,  in  our  time,  draws 
into  its  service  the  impassioned  desires,  the  hopes,  the 
prayers,  the  labors,  of  many  of  the  noblest  men  and  women 
in  Great  Britain  and  in  America.  I  must  confess  that,  in 
the  book  now  offered  to  the  public,  I  have  written  a  new 
history  of  the  origin  and  growth  and  culmination  of  this 
race  feud,  so  far  as  I  am  able  to  do  so,  in  the  simple  service 
of  historic  truth,  and  without  permitting  myself  to  be  turned 
this  way  or  that  by  any  consideration  touching  the  practical 
consequences  that  might  result  either  from  fidelity  or  from 
infidelity  to  my  duty  as  an  historian.  At  the  same  time,  I 
now  greatly  mistake  the  case,  if  one  practical  consequence 
of  this  history,  so  far  as  it  may  find  readers  at  all,  shall  not 
be  eirenic,  rather  than  polemic, — namely,  the  promotion  of 
a  better  understanding,  of  a  deeper  respect,  of  a  kindlier 
mood,  on  both  sides  of  the  ocean,  among  the  descendants 
of  those  determined  men  who  so  bitterly  differed  in  opinion, 


^C  PREFACE. 

so  fiercely  fought,   and,   in   their  anger,  so  widely  parted 
company,  a  century  and  a  quarter  ago. 

In  the  researches  which  the  present  work  has  required — 
researches  that  have  been  in  progress,  though  with  many 
interruptions,  for  more  than  twenty  years — I  have  been 
aided  directly  and  indirectly  by  many  persons,  whose  kind- 
ness, gratefully  recognized  at  the  time,  I  here  publicly 
commemorate  in  this  general  acknowledgment;  but,  for 
special  help,  particularly  in  the  discovery  or  in  the  use  of 
rare  literary  materials,  I  desire  to  express  my  deep  obliga- 
tions to  Mr.  F.  D.  Stone,  of  .the  library  of  the  Pennsylvania 
Historical  Society;  to  Mr.  Paul  Leicester  Ford,  of  Brook- 
lyn; to  Mr.  Franklin  Burdge,  of  New  York;  to  Mr.  Wil- 
berforce  Eames,  of  the  Lenox  Library;  to  Mr.  William 
Kelby,  of  the  library  of  the  New  York  Historical  Society; 
to  Professor  Franklin  B.  Dexter,  of  Yale  University;  to 
Mr.  John  Nicholas  Brown,  of  Providence;  to  Mr.  William 
E.  Foster,  of  the  Providence  Public  Library;  to  Mr. 
Edmund  M.  Barton,  of  the  library  of  the  American  Anti- 
quarian Society ;  to  Mr.  Charles  A.  Cutter,  formerly  libra- 
rian of  the  Boston  Athenaeum,  and  to  Mr.  William  C.  Lane, 
the  present  librarian  of  that  institution;  to  Dr.  Justin  Win- 
sor,  the  librarian  of  Harvard  University;  to  Mr.  F.  L.  Kier- 
nan,  superintendent  of  circulation  in  the  Harvard  library ; 
and  to  Dr.  Samuel  Abbot  Green,  of  the  library  of  the 
Massachusetts  Historical  Society.  Of  course,  during  many 
years,  I  have  had  innumerable  occasions,  in  the  prosecution 
of  my  work,  to  tax  the  unfailing  courtesy  and  helpfulness 


PREFACE.  xi 

of  Mr.  George  William  Harris,  the  librarian  of  the  University 
with  which  I  am  connected.  To  its  assistant  librarian,  also, 
Mr.  Willard  Austin,  I  am  greatly  indebted  for  his  patient 
and  expert  assistance  in  revising  the  proof-sheets  of  this 
book. 

M.  C.  T. 

CORNELL  UNIVERSITY, 
24  January,  1897. 


CONTENTS. 

THE  FIRST  VOLUME:    1763-1776. 


CHAPTER  I. 

LITERARY   ASPECTS   OF   THE   PERIOD    OF   THE   REVOLUTION. 

PAGE 

I. — Three  stages  of  Intellectual  development  during  the  Revolution,  with 

respect  to  the  issues  therein  involved 2 

II. — The  entire  period  characterized  with  reference  to  the  promise  of 

any  literary  outcome  from  it  .         .         .  .         .         .         4 

III. — The  note  of  American  literature  during  this  period  is  its  concern 
with  the  problems  of  American  society,  and  of  American  society  in  a 
state  of  extraordinary  alarm,  upheaval,  and  combat  ....  6 

IV. — The  surprising  amount  of  this  literature  considered  as  the  product  of 
a  disturbed  time — The  peculiar  quickening  of  the  intellectual  and 
emotional  energies  of  man  in  times  of  Revolutionary  excitement — 
The  American  Revolution  to  an  unusual  degree  the  result  of  ideal 
causes  operating  on  a  people  keenly  sensitive  to  such  causes  and  to 
their  possible  ultimate  effects 7 

V. — The  need  of  distinguishing  between  those  writings  which  were  the 
result  of  general  intellectual  tendencies  and  interests  apart  from  the 
Revolution,  and  those  writings  which  resulted  directly  from  it — The 
former  to  be  found  near  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  the  period — 
They  represent  the  spiritual  side  of  man's  nature,  his  delight  in  the 
visible  framework  of  the  New  World,  or  his  curiosity  respecting  its 
primitive  races  ;  also,  the  historic  interest  applied  to  the  origin  and 
development  of  English  civilization  in  America — For  literature  in  its 
higher  sense,  there  were  during  the  first  decade  of  the  Revolution  two 
new  centres  of  activity — The  New  England  centre  had  its  chief  repre- 
sentative in  John  Trumbull — That  of  the  Middle  Colonies,  in  Philip 
Freneau — All  these  several  forms  of  literature  to  be  dealt  with  as 
apart  from  the  characteristic  life  of  the  period,  which  is  expressed  in 
nine  principal  classes  of  writings 9 

VI. — The  first  class  consists  of  the  correspondence  of  the  time — Special 
reasons  for  its  development — Some  of  the  best  letter-writers  of  the 
period— This  class  of  writings  has  but  an  incidental  relation  to  the 
purpose  of  the  present  work       .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .12 

VOL..  i.  xiii 


xv 

PACK 

VII. — The  second  class  is  made  up  of  formal  and  official  statements  of 
political  thought  called  State  Papers — The  extraordinary  service  then 
rendered  by  these  writings — They  were  the  first  authoritative  and  con- 
spicuous presentation  to  the  Old  World  of  the  intellectual  condition  of 
the  New 14 

VIII. — The  third  class  consists  of  oral  addresses,  secular  and  sacred — 

Their  traits 16 

IX. — The  fourth  class  consists  of  political  essays,  either  in  the  form  of 
brief  letters  communicated  by  eminent  men  to  the  newspapers,  or  in 
the  form  of  pamphlets — The  subordinate  place  of  the  newspaper  in 
England  and  America  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries — 
Explanation  of  the  uncommon  merit  of  the  political  essays  then  con- 
tributed to  the  newspapers — The  English  pamphlet  as  the  immediate 
ancestor  of  the  newspaper — The  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries 
the  classic  period  of  the  pamphlet  in  England — Our  Revolution  was 
wrought  out  in  the  last  stage  of  this  period,  and  was  on  its  literary 
side  chiefly  a  pamphlet  war — The  power  of  the  political  essay  during 
the  period  of  our  Revolution  as  described  by  Sir  Erskine  May  and 
John  Richard  Green — The  predominance  of  the  political  essay  in 
French  literature  just  before  and  during  the  French  Revolution — The 
interpretative  value  of  such  writings  as  set  forth  by  Bishop  White 
Kennet — Sir  Edward  Creasy's  estimate  of  American  pamphlets  writ- 
ten in  opposition  to  the  Stamp  Act 17 

X. — The  fifth  class  consists  of  regular  political  satires  in  verse — The 
prominence  of  this  form  of  literature  during  the  Revolution  due  to 
conditions  which  no  longer  exist — Dryden  as  the  founder  of  political 
satire  in  verse  in  modern  English  literature — Pope's  relation  to  social 
and  literary  satire — Their  influence  on  American  writers  re-enforced 
during  the  Revolution  by  the  influence  of  Churchill — Churchill's  career 
— His  example  a  stimulus  to  American  satirists,  especially  Trumbull, 
Freneau,  and  Odell 22 

XI. — The  sixth  class  consists  of  the  popular  lyric  poetry  of  the  period — 
The  frankness  and  variety  of  these  folk-songs — The  seventh  class  con- 
sists of  the  minor  literary  facetise  of  the  controversy — The  eighth  class, 
of  its  dramatic  compositions — To  the  ninth  class  belong  the  prose  nar- 
ratives of  actual  experience  in  the  Revolution,  whether  individual  or 
collective 26 

XII. — The  dividing  lines  between  these  several  classes  of  writings — The 
historic  method  in  the  treatment  of  these  writings — Their  chief  im- 
portance as  genuine  and  direct  interpretations  of  the  American  Revo- 
lution, and  of  the  American  people  who  took  part  in  it — Literature  as 
the  expression  of  society,  and  as  the  best  witness  to  the  character  of  a 
people — The  humanistic  and  historic  interest  attaching  to  this  period 
of  American  literature  28 


CONTENTS.  xv 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE   PRELUDE  OF   POLITICAL   DEBATE:    1761-1764. 

PAGE 

I. — The  part  of  James  Otis  in   the  early  development  of  the  American 

Revolution 30 

II. — The  argument  on  the  petition  for  writs  of  assistance  in  the  Superior 
Court  of  Massachusetts,  1761 — The  character  and  effects  of  Otis's 
speech — Contemporary  testimony  of  John  Adams  .  .  .  .31 
'  III. — Otis's  early  career — His  interest  in  classical  studies — His  "Rudi- 
ments of  Latin  Prosody"— His  "Rudiments  of  Greek  Prosody"— 
His  sound  taste  in  modern  literature — His  traits  as  a  controversial 
writer 36 

IV. — Otis  takes  the  lead  of  political  opinion  in  New  England — In  the 
Massachusetts  house  of  representatives,  he  calls  to  account  the  royal 
governor 39 

V. — Otis  publishes  "  The  Vindication  of  the  House  of  Representatives," 
1762 — Its  importance  in  the  development  of  constitutional  ideas  in 
America— Its  leading  propositions— Its  relation  to  the  subsequent 
literature  of  Revolutionary  controversy  ......  41 

VI. — Otis  recognizes  the  new  and  stronger  spirit  of  British  colonial  policy, 
beginning  with  the  Peace  of  Paris,  in  1763 — The  act  of  Parliament 
for  raising  an  imperial  revenue  from  the  colonies,  April,  1764 — Official 
notification  of  the  Stamp  Act 44 

VII. — Otis  arraigns  this  new  policy  in  "  The  Rights  of  the  British  Colo- 
nies Asserted  and  Proved,"  July,  1764 — Outline  of  this  pamphlet — Its 
character  and  power 47 

VIII. — Otis's  object  was  to  find  a  constitutional  basis  for  the  permanent 

connection  of  the  colonies  with  the  British  empire     .         .         .         .51 

IX. — The  debate  carried  on  by  Oxenbridge  Thacher,  in  "  The  Sentiments 
of  a  British  American,"  September,  1764 — Thacher's  personal  history 
— The  rational  and  conciliatory  spirit  of  his  argument  for  the  recog- 
nition of  American  rights  within  the  empire 52 

X. — Two  other  pamphlets  for  the  same  object,  but  from  the  industrial 
and  commercial  point  of  view — "An  Essay  on  the  Trade  of  the 
Northern  Colonies,"  Philadelphia,  1764 — "  Some  Thoughts  on  the 
Method  of  Improving  and  Securing  the  Advantages  which  accrue  to 
Great  Britain  from  the  Northern  Colonies,"  New  York,  1764  .  .  56 

CHAPTER  III. 

UNDER  THE  MENACE  OF  THE  STAMP  ACT  :    NOVEMBER,  I774-APRIL,  1765. 

I.f-The  notification  of  a  Stamp  Act  at  first  obscured  in  America  by  the 
tax-legislation  just  before  enacted — The  public  anxiety  at  last  con- 
verges upon  the  proposed  measure — A  token  of  this  change,  in  the 
"  Dream  of  the  Branding  of  Horses  and  Asses  "  ....  60. 


XVI*  CONTENTS. 

PACE 

II.—"  The  Rights  of  Colonies,"  by  Stephen  Hopkins,  Governor  of  Rhode 
Island,  December,  1764 — His  character  and  career — Outline  of  his 
pamphlet — Its  moderation  of  tone — Its  great  influence  in  America  and 
England 63 

III. — The  American  argument  tainted  by  the  heresy  of  Nullification — 
Assault  upon  this  heresy  by  "A  Gentleman  at  Halifax,"  February, 
1765 — Range  and  method  of  this  first  Loyalist  pamphleteer  .  .  70 

IV. — Bitter  controversy  provoked  by  the  Halifax  Gentleman — Otis's 
attack  upon  him  in  his  "  Vindication  of  the  British  Colonies  against 
the  Aspersions  of  the  Halifax  Gentleman" — Rejoinder  in  "  A  De- 
fence of  the  Letter  from  a  Gentleman  at  Halifax,"  April,  1765.  .  75 

V. — Otis's  parting  shot,  in  his  "  Brief  Remarks" 77 

VI.— The  Halifax  Gentleman  identified  as  Martin  Howard,  of  Newport— 
His  career  and  character — His  flight  from  Newport  after  receiving 
outrage  from  a  mob 79 

CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   AMERICAN   DEBATE  AS   ENLIVENED   BY  A  BRITISH   PAMPHLETEER:    1/65.^ 

I. — The  literary  character  of  Soame  Jenyns — His  lively  pamphlet  entitled 
"  The  Objections  to  the  Taxation  of  Our  American  Colonies,  Briefly 
Considered  " — An  example  of  ease  and  gayety  in  the  solution  of  diffi- 
cult problems — His  discussion  of  the  maxim,  "  No  taxation  without 
representation  " — Admiration  of  this  pamphlet  in  England — Its  great 
immediate  success  as  a  political  irritant  .  .  .  .  .  .81 

II. — Otis's  reply  to  Soame  Jennys,  in  "Considerations  on  Behalf  of  the 
Colonies,  in  a  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,"  September,  1765 — The  con- 
troversial method  of  this  pamphlet — Otis  ridicules  the  doctrine  of  vir- 
tual representation — Scoffs  at  the  pretense  that  the  colonies  need 
protection — His  serious  discussion  of  constitutional  questions — Ad- 
vises the  British  government  to  be  careful  of  the  affections  of  the 
American  colonists 86 

CHAPTER  V. 

THE  STAMP  ACT  AS  A  STIMULANT  TO   POLITICAL  DISCUSSION  :   AUGUST, 
I705-JANUARY,  1766. 

I. — The  Stamp  Act  finds  the  Americans  already  alarmed  on  account  of 
their  political  dangers — Johnson's  lines  in  Goldsmith's  "  Traveller  " 
— His  unconsciousness  of  the  gravity  of  pending  legislation  .  .  92 

II. — John  Adams — His  literary  response  to  the  news  of  the  passage  of  the 
Stamp  Act,  August,  1765 — His  range  and  boldness  as  a  political 
thinker — His  literary  vivacity 93 


CONTENTS.  xvii 


I'AGI 


III. — J.ohn  Adams  regards  the  Anglo-American  dispute  as  but  one  chapter 
in  a  world-wide  dispute  between  individualism  and  corporate  author- 
ity— Such  authority  he  finds  embodied  in  the  canon  and  feudal  law — 
The  old  confederacy  of  kings  and  priests — This  confederacy  partly 
broken  up  by  the  Reformation  ........  94 

IV. — John  Adams  deems  the  Reformation  as  the  true  cause  of  English 
settlements  in  North  America — Hence  American  antagonism  to  all 
civil  and  ecclesiastical  tyranny — The  Stamp  Act  is  but  another  effort 
of  aggression  on  behalf  of  such  tyranny — To  resist  it  is  to  do  battle 
for  human  nature  everywhere — The  Americans  as  heirs  of  the  ancient 
spirit  of  English  liberty — The  publication  of  John  Adams's  essays  in 
Boston  and  in  London  ....  .....  95 

V. — The  political  essays  of  a  Connecticut  pastor,  Stephen  Johnson,  Sep- 
tember and  October,  1765 — Their  clear  warning  of  danger  to  the 
American  connection  with  Great  Britain 99 

VI. — Daniel  Dulany's  "Considerations,"  October,  1765 — His  personal 
history — His  high  standing  as  a  la%vyer  in  the  Middle  and  Southern 
Colonies 101 

VII. — Dulany's  great  argument  against  the  doctrine  of  virtual  representa- 
tion  103 

VIII. — Dulany  denies  that  his  disproof  of  virtual  representation  involves 
the  denial  of  the  legislative  authority  of  parliament — He  advises  his 
countrymen  to  be  loyal  and  orderly,  but  to  make  parliamentary  taxa- 
tion unprofitable  to  Great  Britain — Let  America  produce  all  she 
consumes 106 

IX. — Dulany  remains  faithful  to  his  doctrine  of  orderly  and  legal  opposi- 
tion— In  later  years  is  persecuted  as  a  Tory — His  argument  makes  a 
deep  impression  both  in  America  and  in  England — His  influence  seen 
in  the  speeches  of  Pitt  on  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  January  and 
February,  1766 no 

X. — The  public  papers  of  the  Stamp  Act  Congress,  October,  1765 — Their 

[M  en t  political  and  personal  significance 112 

XI. — "The  Late  Regulations  respecting  the  British  Colonies,"  by  John 
Dickinson,  December,  1765 — The  doctrine  of  Nullification  boldly 
advocated  in  "  Considerations  upon  the  Rights  of  the  Colonists,"  early 
in  1766 114 

XII. — American  political  anxiety  and  indignation  passionately  expressed 
by  an  American  verse-writer  in  London — His  Satire  of  "  Oppression," 
1765— -Outline  of  the  poem 115 

CHAPTER  VI. 
AN   EARLY   PULPIT-CHAMPION   OF  COLONIAL   RIGHTS:    1766. 

I. — Death  of  Jonathan  Mayhew  shortly  after  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act 
— His  gifts  for  intellectual  and  moral  leadership — His  special  influ- 
ence on  the  young  radicals  of  the  Revolutionary  period  .  .  .  121 


CONTENTS. 


II. — Outline  of  his  career — His  early  break  with  New  England  ecclesiasti- 

cisra — His  activity  as  a  writer — His  published  writings  .  .  .  125 

III. —  A  champion  of  individualism — His  traits  as  a  sermon-writer — His 
rationalism — His  defiance  of  authority — His  demand  that  religious 
thinking  be  practical — His  rancorous  denunciation  of  theological 
rancor 127 

IV. — His  use  of  the  pulpit  for  the  discussion  of  all  topics  of  the  time — 
The  avowed  sources  of  his  political  opinions — His  statesmanlike  view 
of  public  questions — His  political  foresight 132 

V. — His  particular  antagonism,  on  behalf  of  civil  liberty,  to  the  Roman 
and  Anglican  Churches — A  leader  in  the  American  crusade  against 
Anglican  bishops — Important  connection  of  that  excitement  with  the 
popular  suspicions  as  to  the  political  purposes  of  the  English  govern- 
ment— Mayhew's  invective  against  the  Church  of  England,  and  especi- 
ally against  bishops 133 

VI. — His  "Discourse  concerning  Unlimited  Submission" — Reflects  the 
influence  of  Milton's  political  tracts — Mayhew's  ridicule  of  the  saint- 
ship  and  martyrdom  of  Charles  the  First — The  right  of  the  people  to 
disown  and  resist  bad  rulers  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .135 

VII. — Immediate  effects  of  Mayhew's  preaching  on  the  Stamp  Act  riots  in 
Boston — His  last  political  discourse,  "  The  Snare  Broken,"  celebrates 
the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act — His  last  message  to  James  Otis  pleads  for 
a  permanent  union  of  the  colonies  as  a  defense  against  evils  to  come  .  138 

CHAPTER  VII. 

DESCRIPTIONS   OF   NATURE   AND   MAN   IN   THE   AMERICAN   WILDERNESS  : 
1763-1775. 

^^^ 

I. — Captain  Jonathan  Carver  in  1763 — His  plan  for  a  tour  of  discovery 
across  the  continent  of  North  America — His  personal  traits — The 
statesmanlike  character  of  his  plan 141 

II. — Carver's  expedition  into  the  Northwest,  in  1766  and  1767 — Descrip- 
tions of  the  Indians  and  their  lands — His  failure  ....  143 

III. — Carver  goes  to  England  in  1769  to  publish  his  discoveries,  and  to  get 
help  to  complete  them — Why  the  government  refused  help — His 
struggle  for  existence  in  England — Publishes  his  "  Travels  through 
the  Interior  Parts  of  North  America  " — Other  publications  .  .  147 

IV. — Carver's  death  in  London  in  great  poverty — Public  compassion  for 
him  after  he  ceased  to  need  it — Remembrance  of  him  in  America 
and  in  Europe — The  charm  and  fame  of  his  "Travels" — Schiller's 
interest  in  them 14$ 

V. — Major  Robert  Rogers — His  "  Journal  of  the  Siege  of  Detroit,"  in 
1763 — His  two  books  descriptive  of  the  Indians  and  the  English 
colonies,  1765 150 


CONTENTS.  xix 

PAGE 

VI. — "An  Historical  Account  of  the  Expedition  against  the  Ohio 
Indians,"  in  1764 — History  and  character  of  the  book — Its  wide 
diffusion  in  America  and  Europe 151 

VII. — William  Stork's  "Description  of  East  Florida,"  1766— Literary 
quality  of  the  book — Its  optimistic  account  of  reptiles  and  insects  in 
that  country  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .152 

VIII. — James  Adair's  "  History  of  the  American  Indians,"  1775 — His 
book  written  among  the  people  whom  it  describes — Its  method — The 
author's  theory  as  to  the  origin  of  the  Indians — Great  value  of  its 
direct  testimony  concerning  them — Its  manly  style — His  avowal  of 
sympathy  with  his  fellow-colonists  in  political  and  military  peril  .  154 

CHAPTER  VIII.   ^ 

BEGINNINGS   OF   NEW   LIFE   IN   VERSE   AND    PROSE  :    PHILADELPHIA, 
PRINCETON,    AND   NEW   YORK:    1763-1775. 

I. — Nathaniel  Evans's  "  Poems  on  Several  Occasions" — His  death  in  1767 
\^-  — "  To  Melancholy  " — "An  Ode,  Attempted  in  the  Manner  of  Horace"     157 

II. — Elizabeth  Fergusson — Her  "  Postscript,"  1764 — Her  verses  addressed 

to  Nathaniel  Evans :6o 

III. — Francis  Hopkinson  as  described  by  John  Adams  in  1776 — His  ver- 

.'•'  satility 162 

IV. — Hopkinson's  early  life— His  political  attitude  in  1766 — His  visit  to 
England  just  after  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act — His  occupations  in 
America  till  after  the  Declaration  of  Independence — His  character  as 

a  statesman  not  hurt  by  his  levity  as  a  writer 164 

(  V) — Hopkinson's  early  work  as  a  lyric  poet — "  My  Generous  Heart  Dis- 
\W,dains" — "  O'er  the  Hills  Far  Away  "— "  My  Love  is  Gone  to  Sea  "  .     168 
/  VI J — The  death  of  Philip  Freneau  in  extreme  old  age — Interest  attaching 
S — ^  to  his  long  career — His  unique  position  as  a  satirist  of  the  enemies  of 
the  Revolution 

VII. — Freneau's  lineage  and  early  training — His  graduation  at  Princeton 
in  1771 — His  earliest  work  as  a  verse-writer — Occupations  during  the 
Revolution — His  fondness  for  the  sea — His  sea-poetry— His  playful 
poem  on  the  ship's  crew  with  clerical  names  .  .  .  .  1 73 

VIII. — Other  examples  of  his  playful  manner  in  verse — His  prevailing  note, 
both  serious  and  severe — His  choice  of  satire  as  his  chief  poetic  voca- 
tion— His  gifts  for  other  and  higher  forms  of  verse — Oblique  tributes 
to  him  by  Campbell,  Walter  Scott,  and  other  British  writers  .  .175 

IX. — Freneau's  escape  from  the  poetic  mannerisms  of  English  verse  in 

his  time — His  "  Power  of  Fancy  " — His  "  Retirement "    .         .        .    (180 


XX  COX"  TEXTS. 

CHAPTER  IX. 

BEGINNINGS  OF  NEW    LIFE    IN    VERSE   AND   PROSE  :    NEW   ENGLAND. 
I763-I775- 

PACK 

I. — The  intellectual  activity  of  New  England  expressed  in  religious  dis- 
course, in  historical  narrative,  and  in  controversy — The  lack  of 
poetic  life  there— Benjamin  Church— Phillis  Wheatly  .  .  .184 

II. — The  promise  of  higher  work  in  American  letters  centres  in  two  young 
men,  Philip  Freneau  at  Princeton,  and  John  Trumbull  at  New 
Haven — Trumbull's  ancestry — His  intellectual  precocity  .  .  .187 

III. — Trumbull  as  an  undergraduate  at  Yale  College  from  1763  to  1767 — 
As  a  graduate-student  from  1767  to  1770 — The  range  and  character  of 
his  scholarship — A  group  of  clever  young  men  of  letters  associated 
with  him  there — Their  admiration  for  the  Queen  Anne  writers  .  .  192 

IV. — Trumbull's  first  publication,  a  series  of   ten  essays  called  ' '  The 

Meddler,"  1769  to  1770     .         .         .  193 

\V» — Trumbull  publishes  the  first  eight  of  the  essays  of  "  The  Correspond- 
ent," February  to  July,  1770 — The  new  tone  in  American  letters    .     201 

VI. — Trumbull's  plea  in  1770  for  the  fine  arts  in  America,  especially  for 

the  aesthetic  quality  in  literature 208 

VII. — Recognition  of  Trumbull's  poetic  promise  in  1770 — A  tutor  at  Yale 
from  1771  to  1773 — Tries  to  give  a  more  modern  and  literary  tone  to 
its  studies — His  own  models  in  English  verse — His  "  Ode  to  Sleep," 
in  1773  .  .  .  .  »-  1K._..  ^ 210 

|TNI. — Trumbull  publishes,  in  1773,  a  new  series  of  the  essays  of  "  The 

Correspondent"         .         . 213 

IX. — Trumbull's  place  as  a  social  satirist  in  verse — The  quality  of  his 

satire — His  satirical  trilogy,  "  The  Progress  of  Dullness  " .         .         .214 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE  REKINDLING   OF   THE   GREAT   DISPUTE:    1766-1769. 

I. — The  study  of  American  political  writings  resumed — Happiness  of  the 

colonies  over  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  in  the  Spring  of  1766  .  223 

II. — Commencement  exercises  at  the  College  ef  Philadelphia,  20  May,  1766 
—The  prize  by  John  Sargent  for  the  best  essay  on  "  A  Perpetual  Union 
between  Great  Britain  and  her  American  Colonies  " — Provost  Smith's 
congratulations  on  the  news  of  repeal  received  the  day  before — Publi- 
cation of  the  four  essays  written  for  the  Sargent  prize—  Their  political 
note — Francis  Hopkinson's  avowal  of  American  identity  with  England.  224 

III.— American  political  confidence  disturbed  by  the  Declaratory  Act — 

Political  anxiety  as  uttered  in  "Virginia  Hearts  of  Oak,"  May,  1766.  226 


CONTENTS.  xxi 

PACK 

IV. — A  great  stride  in  American  theories  as  to  the  legislative  authority  of 
parliament — The  new  doctrine  as  set  forth  by  Richard  Bland,  in  his 
"  Enquiry  into  the  Rights  of  the  British  Colonies,"  1766 — Jefferson's 
praise  of  this  pamphlet 229 

V. — American  distrust  greatly  increased  by  the  proceedings  of  parliament 

in  1767  under  the  lead  of  Charles  Townshend — His  three  measures 

reviving   the   American    controversy — Their    effects   in   America  as 

described  by  Lecky — Great  stimulus  thus  given  to  American  politi- 

^cal  literature — Traits  of  this  literature 231 

VI,^-The   supreme   significance  of  John   Dickinson's    "Letters  from  a 

^-'Farmer  in  Pennsylvania,"  December,  1767,  to  February,  1768 — Pur- 
pose and  method  of  these  essays — Their  unrivaled  success  in  America 
and  Europe — The  renown  thus  won  by  Dickinson — His  enormous 
popularity 234 

VII. — The  arrival  of  the  customs  commissioners  at  Boston — They  are 
driven  by  the  populace  to  take  refuge  on  an  island  in  the  harbor, 
June,  1768 — British  troops  summoned  from  Halifax  to  quell  Ameri- 
can resistance — Dickinson's  "Liberty  Song,"  in  response  to  these 
proceedings,  July,  1768 239 

VIII. — The  gravity  of  the  situation  as  revealed  in  other  writings  of  this 
year — Speech  at  the  dedication  of  a  Tree  of  Liberty  at  Providence — 
A  New  York  pamphlet  entitled  "  The  Power  and  Grandeur  of  Great 
Britain  founded  on  the  Liberty  of  the  Colonies  " — The  political  ten- 
sion prolonged  into  the  year  1769 — "  Liberty,  a  Poem  lately  Found  in 
a  Bundle  of  Papers  said  to  be  Written  by  a  Hermit  in  New  Jersey  "  .  241 

I X. — American  writers  then  resident  abroad — Their  sympathy  with  their 

countrymen  at  home — Arthur  Lee — His  chief  political  writings  .  .  244 

CHAPTER  XI. 

BRITISH   TEA   AS   A    POLITICAL   INTOXICANT   IN   AMERICA  :    1770-1774, 

I. — The  grotesque  prominence  given  to  Tea  in  the  Anglo-American  contro- 
versy— Outline  of  the  history  of  ministerial  measures  which  forced  on 
this  result — These  measures  derided  by  Junius,  and  by  Edmund  Burke .  246 

II. — Jests  by  English  opponents  of  the  ministry  on  its  policy  of  forcing 

the  Americans  to  drink  Tea       .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .251 

III. — The  American  verse-writers  imprecating  Tea  as  the  bearer  of  politi-    . 
cal  woes— "  Virginia  Banishing  Tea  " — "The  Blasted  Herb"— The 
malediction  of  Tea  in  "  The  American  Liberty  Song" — "  The  Cup 
infused  with   Bane" — "A    Lady's  Adieu   to    Her   Tea-Table" — A 
jocose  anathema  of  Tea  in  "  A  New  Song  to  an  Old  Tune  "       .         .     253 

IV. — A  humorous  version  of  the  Tea-troubles  given  in  "The  First  Book 

of  the  American  Chronicles  of  the  Times  " 257 

V.— How  the  controversy  over  Tea  brought  on  American  political  Unior, 

through  the  first  Continental  Congress  in  1774 265 


XX  ii  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XII. 

THE   SUMMONS   FOR  A   GREAT  AMERICAN   COUNCIL  :   MAY-SEPTEMBER,   1774. 

PACK 

I. — The  critical  character  of  the  year  1774  in  the  development  of  the 
Revolution — Marks  a  change  in  the  process  of  governmental  disci- 
pline of  the  colonies — Expectation  that  the  colonies  would  succumb  to 
the  pressure  thus  laid  upon  them 267 

II. — Action  of  Boston  at  the  news  of  the  port-bill — The  response  of  the 
twelve  colonies  to  Massachusetts — The  summons  for  the  first  Conti- 
nental Congress  ,.•  .  270 

III. — A  fresh  outburst  of  political  literature  immediately  prior  to  the  meet- 
ing of  the  Congress — Josiah  Quincy's  "  Observations  on  the  Boston 
Port-Bill  " — James  Wilson's  "  Considerations  on  the  Nature  and  Ex- 
tent of  the  Legislative  Authority  of  the  British  Parliament  "  .  .271 

IV. — "  A  Few  Political  Reflections  Submitted  to  the  Consideration  of  the 
British  Colonies,  by  a  Citizen  of  Philadelphia " — Demands  that 
American  opposition  should  be  legal  and  rational — Anticipates  two 
prominent  arguments  of  Thomas  Paine  ......  274 

V. — The  fundamental  theory  of  American  opposition  challenged  in  "  A 
Letter  from  a  Virginian  to  the  Members  of  the  Congress  " — Taxation 
and  government  are  inseparable — This  writer  blames  his  fellow  col- 
onists for  their  political  fickleness  and  inconsistency — He  denounces 
the  proposal  for  non-importation  and  non-consumption  .  .  .  276 

VI. — The  assembling  of  the  first  Continental  Congress — Their  meeting  is 
simultaneous  with  the  publication  of  "A  Pretty  Story"  by  Peter 
Grievous,  Esq. — The  invitation  of  the  preface 279 

VII. — Outline  of  "A  Pretty  Story"  as  an  allegorical  history  of  the  busi- 
ness that  brought  the  Congress  together — The  story  teller  stops  at  the 
point  where  the  Congress  takes  it  up 281 

VIII. — The  literary  charm  of  "  A  Pretty  Story  " — Comparison  of  it  with 
Arbuthnot's  "  History  of  John  Bull " — Francis  Hopkinson,  the  author 
of  "A  Pretty  Story,"  thus  takes  his  place  as  one  of  the  three  leading 
satirists  on  the  Whig  side  of  the  Revolution — The  character  of  his 
satire  as  compared  with  that  of  Trumbull  and  Freueau  .  .  .  290 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE  PARTY   OF  THE   LOYALISTS   AND   THEIR   LITERATURE. 

I. — The  slight  development  of  Loyalist  literature  prior  to  1774 — The 
rapid  crystallization  of  political  ideas  occasioned  by  the  first  Conti- 
nental Congress — In  argumentative  literature  the  period  of  chief 
Loyalist  activity,  from  1774  to  1776 293 


CONTENTS.  xxiii 

PACK 

II.-r-The  survival  among  us  of  the  partisan  ideas  and  prejudices  of  the 
Revolutionary  controversy — The  proper  historic  attitude  toward  the 
problems  and  parties  of  any  Revolution  .  .  .  296 

III. — The  Loyalist  party  judged  with  respect  to  its  size — The  Loyalist 
claim  that  the  promoters  of  the  Revolution  were  a  minority — Opin- 
ion of  John  Adams  and  Thomas  McKean  .....  297 

IV. — The  Loyalists  judged  with  respect  to  personal  value — In  general 
composed  of  the  more  conservative  section  of  American  society — The 
proportion  of  college-bred  men  among  them — Opinion  of  Anne  Grant 
of  Laggan 301 

"V. — The  Loyalists  judged  with  respect  to  the  value  of  their  logical  posi- 
tion— Complexity  and  difficulty  of  the  questions  involved  in  the  dis- 
pute— The  old  maxim,  "No  taxation  without  representation,"  not 
necessarily  in  conflict  with  the  tax  claim  of  parliament — The  maxim 
applauded  by  George  Grenville — According  to  the  historic  meaning  of 
the  word,  the  commons  of  America  were  represented  in  the  popular 
branch  of  the  imperial  parliament — That  this  representation  was  im- 
perfect and  unsatisfactory,  was  not  denied — The  true  remedy  was 
reform  of  the  representation,  and  not  nullification  of  the  laws  of  par- 
liament, nor  secession  from  the  empire — Opinions  of  experts  in  con- 
stitutional law — The  Loyalist  reply  to  the  argument  of  danger  from 
moderate  parliamentary  taxation 304 

"VI. — The  question  of  Independence  kept  in  abeyance  till  1776 — Three 

prevalent  errors  as  to  the  character  and  attitude  of  the  Loyalists  .  313 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

LOYALIST    SERMON    WRITERS  :    JONATHAN   BOUCHER. 

I. — Restraints  upon  the  freedom  of  the  Loyalist  clergy — The  career  of 
Jonathan  Boucher — His  frankness  and  courage  in  controversy — His 
physical  resistance  to  all  attempts  to  silence  him  ....  316 

II. — Publishes  in  London  thirteen  discourses  preached  in  America  on 
political  affairs  between  1763  and  1775— A  Loyalist  "View  of  the 
Causes  and  Consequences  of  the  American  Revolution  " — Notes  of 
his  intellectual  sincerity,  love  of  truth,  and  courage — His  fearless 
antagonism  of  evil  things  then  popular,  the  spirit  of  war,  disregard  of 
the  rights  of  the  Indians,  and  negro-slavery 320 

III. — His  fearless  antagonism  of  the  several  stages  of  the  Revolutionary 
movement — His  ideas  those  of  an  old-fashioned  believer  in  church  and 
king — Civil  government  of  divine  origin  and  authority — The  degrada- 
tion of  government  and  of  governors  through  the  opposite  theory — 
The  leadership  of  those  who  "  prevail  with  their  tongues  " — The  un- 
truth of  the  doctrine  of  the  natural  equality  of  all  men  .  .  .  322 


XXlV  CONTENTS. 

PACK 

IV. — His  consistency  in  opposing  the  Revolution — Depicts  the  decay  of 
old-time  loyalty  in  Virginia — Defines  an  American  Whig,  and  a  low 
churchman — His  attitude  toward  the  controversy  over  the  American 
episcopate — He  laments  the  taxing  policy  of  the  British  ministry  as  a 
blunder,  but  demands  that  it  be  resisted  by  lawful  means  only — The 
irresistible  power  of  submission — Boucher's  violent  ejection  from  his 
pulpit  and  from  the  country 325 

CHAPTER  XV. 

THE   LOYALISTS   IN   ARGUMENT   AGAINST   THE   MEASURES   OF   THE   FIRST 

CONGRESS — THE    "  WESTC  HESTER    FARMER":    NOVEMBER,    1774- 

APRIL,   1775. 

I. — The  papers  of  the  first  Continental  Congress — The  great  impression 
made  by  them  in  Great  Britain — Lord  Chatham's  tribute — Testimony 
of  British  newspapers 329 

II. — The  two  rival  methods  for  American  opposition — The  bolder  method 
decided  on  by  the  Congress — A  commercial  war  against  England — 
"  The  Association  " 331 

III. — Attack  on  the  measures  of  the  Congress  by  a  "  Westchester 
Farmer"— His  "Free  Thoughts  "—Tone  and  style  of  this  pow- 
erful writer — Sounds  an  alarm  to  the  agricultural  class  as  to  the 
odious  and  dangerous  features  of  "  The  Association  " — Great  excite- 
ment caused  by  this  pamphlet  ........  334 

IV. — The  "Westchester  Farmer's"  second  pamphlet,  "The  Congress 
Canvassed  " — An  alarmist  appeal  to  the  merchants  of  New  York — 
The  wider  range  and  more  elaborate  character  of  this  discussion — 
Constitutional  and  economic  aspects  of  the  question  ....  342 

V. — The  "  WTestchester  Farmer's"  third  pamphlet,  "A  View  of  the 
Controversy,"  in  reply  to  Alexander  Hamilton's  "  Full  Vindication 
of  the  Measures  of  the  Congress  " — A  broad  treatment  of  the  most 
important  questions  involved — The  Farmer's  fourth  pamphlet,  "An 
Alarm  to  the  Legislature  of  the  Province  of  New  York  " — His  fifth 
pamphlet  advertised  April  20,  1775,  but  never  published  .  .  .  345 

VI. — The  "  Westchester  Farmer's  "  gifts  for  controversial  authorship — 
His  extraordinary  literary  power — The  delight  and  the  anger  pro- 
duced by  his  pamphlets 348 

VII. — The  "Westchester  Farmer"  was  Samuel  Seabury,  rector  of  St. 
Peter's,  Westchester — His  early  history — Personal  traits — The  dangers 
incurred  by  him  on  account  of  these  pamphlets — His  abduction  by  a 
mob — His  imprisonment  in  New  Haven — Subsequent  persecutions — 
His  flight  within  the  British  lines — His  work  as  clergyman  and  physi- 
cian till  the  close  of  the  war — First  bishop  of  the  American  Episcopal 
Church 349 


CONTENTS.  XXV 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE  LOYALISTS   IN   ARGUMENT  AGAINST  THE   MEASURES  OF  THE 
FIRST  CONGRESS  :    "  MASSACHUSETTENSIS." 

PAGE 

I. — The  letters  of  "  Massachusettensis,"  December,  1774-April,  1775 — 
John  Adams's  high  estimate  of  their  literary  power — Previous  career 
of  their  author,  Daniel  Leonard — Satirized  by  Mercy  Warren  as 
"  Beau  Trumps  " — John  Adams  suggests  a  corrupt  motive  in  his 
politics 356 

II. — The  intellectual  and  moral  notes  in  "  Massachusettensis  "—The 
writer's  avowal  of  the  purity  and  patriotism  of  his  motives — His 
denunciation  of  the  arts  of  demagogues 359 

III. — The  tone  and  method  of  "  Massachusettensis"  suited  to  the  argu- 
mentative and  law-respecting  character  of  the  people  addressed  by 
him — His  denial  that  the  British  government  had  overstepped  its  con- 
stitutional limits — The  several  topics  discussed  by  him  .  .  .  360 

IV. — Examples  of  his  acuteness  and  literary  skill  in  controversy—  The 
groundlessness  of  the  prevailing  political  complaints — Committees  on 
grievances  our  worst  grievance — Where  are  the  traces  of  our  political 
servitude? — The  tyranny  of  the  champions  of  American  liberty — The 
inevitable  approach  of  war — The  inevitable  triumph  of  the  British  in 
such  a  conflict 363 

V. — The  author  of  the  letters  of  "  Massachusettensis  "  a  victim  of  popular 
violence — Personal  outrages  upon  him  and  his  family — His  banish- 
ment— His  property  confiscated — His  later  career  in  Bermuda  and 
England 367 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

THE   LOYALISTS  IN   ARGUMENT  AGAINST  THE  MEASURES   OF   THE 
FIRST  CONGRESS  :    JOSEPH   GALLOWAY. 

I. — Joseph  Galloway's  preeminence  as  a  Loyalist  writer  and  statesman 
— His  early  activity  in  the  politics  of  Pennsylvania — Associated  in 
personal  and  political  friendship  with  Franklin — His  enmity  to  John 
Dickinson  and  the  proprietary  government  of  Pennsylvania — His 
"  Speech  "  in  1764  ridiculed  by  Dickinson 369 

II. — Galloway  comes  into  general  prominence  at  the  time  of  the  first  Conti- 
nental Congress — Represents  in  that  body  the  Americans  who  desired 
to  secure  American  rights  but  without  revolutionary  violence — His 
"  Plan  of  a  Proposed  Union  between  Great  Britain  and  the  Colonies  " 
— Fragments  of  his  speeches  in  Congress  in  support  thereof  .  .  371 

III. — The  rejection  by  Congress  of  Galloway's  "  Plan  "  marks  the  parting 
of  the  ways  between  the  conservative  and  the  revolutionary  opponents 
of  parliamentary  taxation — Galloway  declines  a  reelection  to  Congress 


COA'TEA'TS. 


PAGE 

—  Appeals  from  the  adverse  decision  of  the  Congress  to  the  higher 
tribunal  of  public  opinion  —  Publishes  early  in  1775  "  A  Candid  Ex- 
amination of  the  Mutual  Claims  of  Great  Britain  and  the  Colonies"  — 
The  shocking  violations  of  American  liberty  by  the  champions  of 
American  liberty  —  The  controversy  a  dispute  between  the  supreme 
authority  of  the  state  and  some  of  its  members  —  Outline  of  his  argu- 
ment touching  the  rights  of  America  and  the  best  way  to  secure  them.  373 

IV.  —  Great  immediate  influence  of  Galloway's  pamphlet  —  Whatever  its 

merits,  it  comes  too  late  —  His  noble  appeals  swept  out  of  sight  by 
Lexington,  Concord,  and  Bunker  Hill  —  Galloway,  following  his  con- 
victions, enters  the  British  lines  in  the  autumn  of  1776  —  His  import- 
ant services  therein  —  Seeks  refuge  in  England  in  the  autumn  of  1778 
—His  death  there  in  1803  ........  379 

V.  —  Galloway's  activity  as  a  writer  on  American  affairs  not  diminished  by 

his  residence  in  England  —  His  pamphlets,  there  produced,  fall  into 
three  groups  —  First,  the  constitutional  and  political  issues  of  the  con- 
troversy —  Secondly,  the  American  Revolution  as  a  physical  conflict  — 
Thirdly,  the  motives,  services,  and  sacrifices  of  the  American  Loyalists.  381 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

THE  WHIG   PAMPHLETEERS   IN   REPLY   TO   LOYALIST   ATTACKS: 
NOVEMBER,  I774-APRIL,  1775- 

I.  —  The  two  chief  replies  to  the  "  Westchester  Farmer"  were  "  A  Full 

Vindication  of  the  Measures  of  the  Congress,"  and  "  The  Farmer 
Refuted  ~  —  Both  by  Alexander  Hamilton,  then  an  undergraduate  in 
King's  College  —  The  extraordinary  intellectual  ability  herein  dis- 
played .......  .....  384 

II.  —  The  leading  points  of  Hamilton's  argument  both  aggressive  and  de- 

fensive —  The  alleged  lack  of  legality  in  the  Congress  —  The  essential 
rights  of  mankind  not  derived  from  parchments  —  The  purpose  of  des- 
potism not  to  be  frustrated  by  the  force  of  entreaty  —  Civil  liberty  is 
natural  liberty  .  .'.•-.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  386 

III.  —  Hamilton's  anticipation  of  the  military  strategy  most  suitable  for  the 

Americans  in  the  war  then  imminent  —  His  own  confession  of  political 
faith  —  A  monarchist  and  a  believer  in  the  rights  of  man  —  The  vast 
range  of  thought  displayed  in  his  writings  during  the  Revolution  .  388 

IV.  —  The  letters  of  "  Massachusettensis  "  replied  to  by  John  Adams  in  the 

essays  of  "Xovanglus"  —  Great  reputation  of  these  essays  —  Their 
merits  and  defects  .  .  .........  .  .  391 

V.  —  The  Loyalist  writer,  Myles  Cooper  —  He  is  assailed  by  a  New  York 

mob  in  August,  1775  —  His  escape  to  England  and  his  rewards  there 
—His  "  American  Querist  "—His  "  Friendly  Address  to  all  Reason- 

able Americans  "     -    .  .    ^.."i.C_;  •.  ......       3Q2 


CONTENTS,  xxvii 


VIl — Cooper's  "  Friendly  Address"  replied  to  in  an  unfriendly  manner  by 
General   Charles  Lee— The    tatter's    "  Strictures " — His    insults   to 
Cooper  as  a  clergyman — I-ee's  droll  discussion  of  American  military   *" 
competence  in  the  impending  conflict  with  Great  Britain    .         .         .     395 


CHAPTER  XIX.    "' 

coKTROVEjau--^ 


OF   SATIRE   INTO   THE   REVOLUTIONARY 
PHILIP   FRENEAC,  1775.       /^ 

I. — The  transition  from  political  debate  to  civil  war,  April  19,  1775,  as  de- 
scribed by  two  British  officers — The  military  incidents  of  the  year — 
The  new  world  of  ideas  opened  to  the  Americans  by  this  change  in 
the  sphere  of  the  controversy  ........  402 

II. — Contemporary  comments  on  these  events  as  made  by  Franklin  in 

letters  to  Priestley  and  other  friends  in  England  ....  403 

III. — The  change  in  American  literary  expression  caused  by  the  transfer 
of  the  issue  from  reason  to  force — The  development  of  satire  as  a 
prominent  form  of  literature  in  the  Revolution  .  .......  .  406 

IT. — The  materials  for  satire  furnished  by  the  character  and  results  of  the 
earliest  collisions  between  the  British  regulars  and  the  American 
militia — British  opinion  as  to  the  lack  of  military  courage  and  of  mili- 
tary discipline  among  the  Americans — The  first  experience  of  the  regu- 
lars with  the  militia  at  Lexington  and  Concord — The  military  anti- 
climax presented  by  the  British  retreat — The  ironical  ballad  of  "  The 
King's  Own  Regulars,  and  their  Triumph  over  the  Irregulars  ".  .  408 

V.— The  Hibernian- Yankee's  epistle,  -  To  the  Troops  in  Boston  "—The 
scornful  tone  of  "A  New  Song  to  the  Tune  of  '  The  British  Grena- 
diers ' " — The  materials  for  ridicule  furnished  by  the  military  situation 
in  1775,  call  into  the  service  of  the  Revolution  two  great  artists  in 
satire,  Philip  Freneau  and  John  Tnimbull  .  .  .  .  .  411 

VI. — Freneau's  abandonment  of  higher  poetic  work  for  the  service  of  satire 
— His  fierceness  as  a  satirist — Lines  of  self-description — His  careful 
training  for  this  work  .".  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  413 

VII. — Freneau  begins  his  work  as  a  Revolutionary  satirist  in  1775 — Five 
satirical  poems  produced  by  him  in  the  latter  half  of  that  year — His 
response  to  General  Gage's  salutation  of  the  Americans  as  rebels — 
*'  On  the  Conqueror  of  America  Shut  up  in  Boston"  .  .  .  .  415 

VIII. — Freneau's  satire,  "  The  Midnight  Consultations,  or.  a  Trip  to 
Boston" — Declares  for  American  Independence  nearly  a  year  before 
its  official  proclamation — He  predicts  American  national  greatness- — 
He  relents  in  favor  of  reconciliation  with  England  .  ...  418 

IX. — Freneau  renews  more  fiercely  than  ever  his  demand  for  a  total  sepa- 
ration from  the  country  that  was  so  injuring  us — His  "  Libera  Nos, 
Domine  " 424 


XXviii  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XX. 

THE  SATIRICAL  MASTERPIECE  OF   JOHN   TRUMBULL  :    1775. 

PAGE 

I. — John  Trumbull  in  1773  abandons  letters  for  the  law — Enters  the  law 
office  of  John  Adams  in  Boston — His  verses  bidding  farewell  to  verse- 
making — Finds  himself  in  the  vortex  of  Revolutionary  politics  .  .  427 

II. — He  relapses  into  verse- making — "  The  Prophecy  of  Balaam,"  "The 
Destruction  of  Babylon,"  "  An  Elegy  on  the  Times,  Composed  at 
Boston  during  the  Operation  of  the  Port  Bill " — His  first  words  of 
harshness  toward  the  mother  country,  whose  ruin  he  predicts — His 
reluctance  to  surrender  himself  to  the  domination  of  politics  .  .  428 

III. — Trumbull  returns  to  New  Haven  in  November,  1774 — Publishes  in 
August,  1775,  a  Hudibrastic  burlesque  on  General  Gage's  Proclama- 
tion— The  first  canto  of  "  M'Fingal  "  is  sent  to  the  press  before  the 
end  of  1775 — Is  published  in  January,  1776 — The  action  of  the  poem 
is  just  after  the  day  of  Lexington  and  Concord — The  hero,  Squire 
M'Fingal — John  Adams  portrayed  as  Honorius 430 

IV. — The  town  meeting  to  consider  the  outbreak  of  hostilities — Speech  of 

Honorius  against  British  aggressions,  General  Gage,  and  the  Tories  .  432 

V. — Squire  M'Fingal  makes  reply — Denounces  the  Whigs  for  stupidity,  for 
lack  of  patriotism,  for  greed  and  cowardice — Vindicates  the  military 
proceedings  of  General  Gage — Predicts  the  utter  defeat  of  the  rebel- 
lion, with  titles  and  estates  in  the  hands  of  the  Tories,  and  the  Whigs 
all  hanged  or  reduced  to  slavery — The  indignant  reply  of  Honorius 
is  drowned  in  Tory  catcalls — The  meeting  breaks  up  in  confusion  .  436 

VI. — Such  was  the  plot  of  the  poem  in  its  original  form — The  poem  com- 
pleted in  four  cantos  and  published  in  1782 — Outline  of  the  story  as 
finished — Its  adherence  to  the  three  unities 441 

VII. — The  traditional  criticism  of  "  M'Fingal  "  as  an  imitation  of  "  Hucli- 
bras  " — Particulars  of  resemblance  and  of  dissimilarity  between  the 
two  poems — Trumbull's  real  master  in  satire  not  Butler,  but  Churchil  1 ,  443 

VIII. — The  breadth  and  variety  of  Trumbull's  literary  training  shown  in 
this  poem — His  delicate  and  effective  use  of  parody — The  essential 
originality  of  "  M'Fingal" — A  genuine  embodiment  of  the  spirit  and 
life  of  the  American  people  in  1775 — It  employs  satire  on  behalf  of 
lofty  and  humane  objects — Contrast  therein  with  "Hudibras"  and 
"The  Dunciad" — The  enormous  popularity  and  influence  of  "M'Fin- 
gal "  during  the  Revolution  and  in  several  national  emergencies  since 
then 446 

CHAPTER  XXI. 

THOMAS  PAINE  AND  THE  OUTBREAK  OF  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  INDEPENDENCE  : 
JANUARY-JUNE,  1776. 

I. — Paine's  arrival  in  America  late  in  the  year  1774,  introduced  by  a  letter 

from  Franklin — His  previous  history  in  England        .         .         .         .452 


CONTENTS.  XXIX 


II; — His  first  employment  in  Philadelphia — His  eagerness  for  information 
as  to  American  politics — His  gifts  and  limitations  for  political  discus- 
sion   454 

III/ — His  early  opinion  strongly  in  favor  of  reconciliation — The  events 
of  the  year  1775  changed  his  opinion,  and  prompted  him  to  write  the 
first  open  and  unqualified  argument  for  American  Independence  .  456 

IV. — History  of  American  opinion  as  to  Independence  prior  to  1776 — The 
controversy  had  been  conducted  on  a  perpetual  disavowal  of  the  pur- 
pose or  desire  for  Independence .  458 

V. — The  title  of  Paine's  pamphlet   happily  indicates  its   character — An~\ 
appeal  from  technical  law  to  common  sense — Its  argument  introduced  j 
by  crude  and  pungent  affirmations  as  to  government  in  general  and  ! 
the  British  government  in  particular — A  new  era  in  American  politics  [ 
created  by  the  transfer  of  the  dispute  from  argument  to  arms — All 
considerations  in  force  prior  to  April  19,  1775,  are  like  last  year's  al- 
manac— Disposal  of  the  arguments  based  on  filial  sentiment,  and  on 
our  former  prosperity  and  happiness  as  colonies          ....     462 

VI. — The  positive  disadvantages  of  the  American  connection  with  Eng- 
land— Interferes  with  the  freedom  of  American  commerce — Involves 
us  in  European  wars  and  quarrels — The  absurdity  of  a  great  continent 
remaining  dependent  on  any  external  power — Our  business  too  weighty 
and  intricate  to  be  managed  any  longer  by  a  power  distant  from  us  and 
ignorant  of  us — Reconciliation,  even  if  now  possible,  would  be  ruinous 
— The  American  people  are  competent  to  save  American  society  from 
anarchy — Solemn  warning  to  the  American  opponents  of  Independ- 
ence— Freedom,  a  fugitive  hunted  round  the  globe,  begs  for  an 

/••     asylum  in  America 465 

/  Vlly— The  pamphlet,  even  in  its  crudities,  exactly  fitted  for  its  purpose —     v 
^— -^ Effectiveness  of  its  method  of  thought  and  statement — It  uttered  at  the      / 
right  moment  what  multitudes  were  waiting  for — Numerous  editions 
of  it  in  America  and  Europe — Its  authorship  at  first  unknown,  but     \ 
ascribed  to  several  eminent  Americans,  especially  to  Franklin    .         .     468 

VIII.— Evidence  in  contemporary  writings  of  its  enormous  effects  on  public 

opinion  between  January  and  June,  1776 471 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

THE  POPULAR   DEBATE   OVER   THE   PROPOSAL  OF   INDEPENDENCE: 
JANUARY-JUNE,  1776. 

I.— The  proposal  of  Independence  was  the  proposal  of  a  political  heresy 
and  a  crime — American  Independence  was  American  secession — Im- 
possible for  the  Whigs  to  forget  their  repeated  denials  of  any  purpose 
or  desire  for  Independence 475 


XXX  CONTENTS. 


II. — Two  classes  of  Americans  opposed  to  Independence,  the  Loyalists 
and  many  Whigs  who  had  approved  even  of  armed  opposition  but 
drew  back  from  national  disruption — The  side  of  the  Loyalists  less 
ably  presented  in  this  discussion  than  in  previous  controversies — 
"Plain  Truth"  — "The  True  Interest  of  America  Impartially 
Stated" 478 

III. — The  ablest  opposition  to  Independence  came  from  American  Whigs 
— Substance  of  their  appeal  to  their  old  associates  against  a  measure 
so  inconsistent 481 

IV. — John  Joachim  Zubly,  of  Georgia,  a  champion  of  armed  resistance 
who  spurned  the  proposal  of  secession  from  the  empire — His  career 
and  writings — The  exact  nature  of  the  offense  for  which  he  was 
loaded  with  reproach 483 

V. — Philadelphia  as  the  focus  of  the  popular  debate  over  Independence — 
The  doctrine  denounced  in  the  "  Letters  of  Cato  "  by  Provost  Wil- 
liam Smith — The  temper  of  the  discussion  playfully  exhibited  in  "A 

Prophecy  "  by  Francis  Hopkinson 486 

'  VI.— Extraordinary  influence  of  the  advocacy  of  Independence  by  William 
Henry  Drayton,  of  South  Carolina — His  character  as  a  political 
thinker  and  essayist — His  writings — As  chief-justice  of  South  Caro- 
lina, in  April,  1776,  he  declares  the  government  of  that  colony  abdi- 
cated by  the  king,  and  all  obedience  to  him  there  no  longer  due  .  491 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 

THOMAS  JEFFERSON   AND   THE   GREAT  DECLARATION. 

I. — Jefferson's  first  entrance  into  Congress  in  June,  1775 — Public  papers 
then  written  by  him — "  Resolutions  of  the  Virginia  House  of  Bur- 
gesses"— "A  Summary  View  of  the  Rights  of  British  America" — 

"  Address  of  the  House  of  Burgesses  " 494. 

II. — His  special  gifts  for  service  in  Congress — His  ability  as  a  writer  of 
state  papers  promptly  recognized  there — Is  at  the  head  of  the  com- 
mittee to  prepare  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  becomes  its 
draughtsman 497 

1  III. — Two  opposite  conditions  of  mind  with  respect  to  the  intellectual 
worth  of  that  document — Its  great  authority  acquired  in  the  face  of 
abundant  criticism  ..........  498 

,  IV. — Attacked  in  the  year  of  its  promulgation — Governor  Thomas  Hutch- 
inson's  "  Strictures  " — "  An  Answer  to  the  Declaration  of  Congress  " 
by  John  Lind — Criticised  by  modern  English  writers  of  liberal  politics 
— Earl  Russell — His  criticism  anticipated  by  John  Adams — Criticism 

by  Goldwin  Smith 499 

V. — Criticised  by  American  statesmen  and  historians — By  Calhoun,  Rich- 
ard Henry  Lee,  Stephen  Cullen  Carpenter,  Charles  Campbell,  Littell, 
Paul  Leicester  Ford,  and  especially  by  John  Adams  ....  503 


CONTENTS.  XXXt 


VI.  —  Its  alleged  lack  of  originality  —  In  what  sense  true  —  In  what  sense 

not  true     ............  '505 

VII.  —  The  Declaration  of  Independence  to  be  judged  with  respect  to  its 
origin   and   purpose  —  Avowedly  a  party  manifesto  in  a  bitter   race 
quarrel  —  Contains   two   principal   accusations  —  Are   these   to  be  set 
aside  as  unhistoric  ?  —  The  accusation  respecting  an  intended  tyranny 
over  the  colonists  —  The  accusation  that  George  III.  was  chiefly  re- 
sponsible for  this  intended  tyranny    .......  (  509 

VIII.  —  Its  immediate  success  —  Its  vast  subsequent   influence  over   the  \ 
American  people  —  Connection  of  its  preamble  with  the  overthrow  of   ' 
slavery  in  America  —  Its  influence  upon  the  political  and  ethical  ideals 

of  mankind       ...         ........     515 

IX.  —  Estimate  of  its  purely  literary  character  ......  I  519 


CHAPTER   I. 

LITERARY  ASPECTS  OF  THE  PERIOD  OF  THE  REVOLUTION. 

I. — Three  stages  of  intellectual  development  during  the  Revolution,  with  respect 
to  the  issues  therein  involved. 

II. — The  entire  period  characterized  with  reference  to  the  promise  of  any 
literary  outcome  from  it. 

III. — The  note  of  American  literature  during  this  period  is  its  concern  with     " 
the  problems  of  American  society,  and  of  American  society  in  a  state 
of  extraordinary  alarm,  upheaval,  and  combat. 

IV. — The  surprising  amount  of  this  literature  considered  as  the  product  of 
a  disturbed  time — The  peculiar  quickening  of  the  intellectual  and  emotional 
energies  of  man  in  times  of  Revolutionary  excitement — The  American 
Revolution  to  an  unusual  degree  the  result  of  ideal  causes  operating  on  a 
people  keenly  sensitive  to  such  causes  and  to  their  possible  ultimate  effects. 

V. — The  need  of  distinguishing  between  those  writings  which  were  the  result  of 
general  intellectual  tendencies  and  interests  apart  from  the  Revolution,  and 
those  writings  which  resulted  directly  from  it — The  former  tJ  be  found  near 
the  beginning  and  the  end  of  the  period — They  represent  the  spiritual  side*7 
of  man's  nature,  his  delight  in  the  visible  framework  of  the  Now  World, 
or  his  curiosity  respecting  its  primitive  races ;  also,  the  historic  interest 
applied  to  the  origin  and  development  of  English  civilization  iii  America -=»••"•"• 
For  literature  in  its  higher  sense,  there  were  during  the  first  decade  of  the 
Revolution  two  new  centres  of  activity — The  New  England  centre  had  its 
chief  representative  in  John  Trumbull — That  of  the  Middle  Colonies,  ih~ 
Philip  Freneau — All  these  several  forms  of  literature  to  be  dealt  with  as 
apart  from  the  characteristic  life  of  the  period,  which  is  expressed  in  nine 
principal  classes  of  writings. 

VI. — The  first  class  consists  of  the  correspondence  of  the  time — Special  reasons 
for  its  development — Some  of  the  best  letter-writers  of  the  period — This 
class  of  writings  has  but  an  incidental  relation  to  the  purpose  of  the  present 
work. 

VII. — The  second  class  is  made  up  of  formal  and  official  statements  of  political 
thought,  called  State  Papers— The  extraordinary  service  then  rendered  by 
these  writings — They  were  the  first  authoritative  and  conspicuous  presenta- 
tion to  the  Old  World  of  the  intellectual  condition  of  the  New. 

VIII.— The  third  class  consists  of  oral  addresses,  secular  and  sacred— Their . 
traits. 


2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

IX.— The  fourth  class  consists  of  political  essays,  either  in  the  form  of  brief 
letters  communicated  by  eminent  men  to  the  newspapers,  or  in  the  form 
of  pamphlets — The  subordinate  place  of  the  newspaper  in  England  and 
America  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries — Explanation  of  the 
uncommon  merit  of  the  political  essays  then  contributed  to  the  newspapers 
— The  English  pamphlet  as  the  immediate  ancestor  of  the  newspaper — The 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  the  classic  period  of  the  pamphlet  in 
England — Our  Revolution  was  wrought  out  in  the  last  stage  of  this  period, 
and  was  on  its  literary  side  chiefly  a  pamphlet  war — The  power  of  the 
political  essay  during  the  period  of  our  Revolution  as  described  by  Sir 
Erskine  May  and  John  Richard  Green — The  predominance  of  the  political 
essay  in  French  literature  just  before  and  during  the  French  Revolution — 
The  interpretative  value  of  such  writings  as  set  forth  by  Bishop  White 
Kennet — Sir  Edward  Creasy's  estimate  of  American  pamphlets  written  in 
opposition  to  the  Stamp  Act. 

•^  X. — The  fifth  class  consists  of  regular  political  satires  in  verse — The  promi- 
nence of  this  form  of  literature  during  the  Revolution  due  to  conditions 
which  no  longer  exist — Dryden  as  the  founder  of  political  satire  in  verse  in 
modern  English  literature— Pope's  relation  to  social  and  literary  satire — 
Their  influence  on  American  writers  re-enforced  during  the  Revolution  by 
the  influence  of  Churchill — Churchill's  career — His  example  a  stimulus  to 
American  satirists,  especially  Trumbull,  Freneau,  and  Odell. 

XI. — The  sixth  class  consists  of  the  popular  lyric  poetry  of  the  period — The 
frankness  and  variety  of  these  folk-songs — The  seventh  class  consists  of  the 
minor  literary  facetiae  of  the  controversy — The  eighth  class,  of  its  dramatic 
compositions — To  the  ninth  class  belong  the  prose  narratives  of  actual  ex- 
perience in  the  Revolution,  whether  individual  or  collective. 

XII. — The  dividing  lines  between  these  several  classes  of  writings — The  his- 
toric method  in  the  treatment  of  these  writings — Their  chief  import- 
ance as  genuine  and  direct  interpretations  of  the  American  Revolution, 
and  of  the  American  people  who  took  part  in  it — Literature  as  the 
expression  of  society,  and  as  the  best  witness  to  the  character  of  a  people 
— The  humanistic  and  historic  interest  attaching  to  this  period  of  American 
literature. 

I. 

IN  the  intellectual  process  of  the  American  Revolution, 
are  to  be  observed  three  well  defined  stages  of  development 
on  the  part  of  the  men  who  began  and  carried  through  that 
notable  enterprise.  The  first  stage — extending  from  the 
spring  of  1763  to  the  spring  0^1775 — represents  the  noble 
anxiety  which  brave  men  must  feel  when  their  political 
'  safety  is  imperilled,  this  anxiety,  however,  being  deepened 


THREE   STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.  3 

in  their  case  by  a  sincere  and  even  a  passionate  desire,  while 
roughly  resisting  an  offensive  ministerial  policy,  to  keep 
within  the  bounds  of  constitutional  opposition,  and  neither 
to  forsake  nor  to  forfei^  that  connection  with  the  Mother 
Country  which  they  then  held  to  be  among  the  most 
precious  of  their  earthly  possessions.  The  second  stage — 
extending  from  the  spring  of  1775  to  the  early  summer  of 
1776 — represents  a  rapidly  spreading  doubt,  and  yet  at  first 
no  more  than  a  doubt,  as  to  the  possibility  of  their  continu- 
ing to  be  free  men  without  ceasing  to  be  English  colonists. 
This  doubt,  of  course,  had  been  felt  by  not  a  few  of  them 
long  before  the  day  of  the  Lexington  and  Concord  fights ; 
but  under  the  appalling  logic  of  that  day  of  brutality,  it 
became  suddenly  weaponed  with  a  power  which  mere  words 
never  had, — the  power  to  undo  swiftly,  in  the  hearts  of  a 
multitude  of  liegemen,  the  tie  of  race,  the  charm  of  an 
antique  national  tradition,  the  loyalty,  the  love,  and  the 
pride  of  centuries.  The  third  stage — extending  from  the 
early  summer  of  1776  to  the  very  close  of  the  whole  strug- 
gle— represents  a  final  conviction,  at  least  on  the  part  of  a 
working  majority  of  the  American  people,  that  it  would  be 
impossible  for  them  to  preserve  their  political  rights  and  at 
the  same  time  to  remain  inside  the  British  empire, — this 
conviction  being  also  accompanied  by  the  resolve  to  pre- 
serve those  rights  whether  or  no,  and  at  whatsoever  cost  of 
time,  or  effort,  or  pain. 

Of  course,  the  intellectual  attitude  of  the  Loyalists  of  the 
Revolution — always  during  that  period  an  immense  and  a 
very  conscientious  minority — correlated  to  that  of  the  Revo- 
lutionists in  each  one  of  these  three  stages  of  development : 
in  the  first  stage,  by  a  position  of  qualified  dissent  as  to  the 
gravity  of  the  danger  and  as  to  the  proper  method  of  deal- 
ing with  it ;  in  the  second  and  the  third  stages,  by  a  position 
of  unqualified  dissent,  and  of  implacable  hostility,  as  regards 
the  object  and  motive  and  method  of  the  opposition  which 
was  then  conducted  by  their  more  masterful  fellow- 
countrymen. 


4  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

II. 

Taking  our  stand,  therefore,  near  the  beginning  of  what 
proved  to  be  a  Revolutionary  period,  and  casting  our  eyes 
forward  across  that  entire  tract  or  time  as  now  spread  out 
before  us  under  the  light  with  which  history  shines  upon  it, 
let  us  interpret  to  ourselves  its  peculiar  character,  particu- 
larly with  reference  to  the  promise,  or  even  the  possibility, 
of  a  literary  outcome  from  it. 

Not  a  period  of  repose,  civic  or  domestic  or  personal,  as 
we  see  at  the  first  glance;  not  a  period  of  quiet  respiration 
for  man,  or  woman,  or  society;  no  normal  social  move- 
ment ;  the  forces  of  heart  and  of  brain  not  left  free  to  assert 
themselves  in  undisturbed  or  spontaneous  action ;  a  time, 
rather,  of  exceptional  upheaval,  perturbation,  tumult,  in 
which  the  English  race  in  America  appears  to  be  in  des- 
perate struggle  for  self-preservation  against  fatal  assault 
from  without  and  from  within;  hence,  a  time  in  which  vio- 
lent political  action,  and  subsidiary  to  that,  long,  painful, 
and  costly  military  action,  absorbs  nearly  all  possible  ener- 
gies locked  up  in  that  population  of  Americans.  Moreover, 
it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  deepest  impulse  to  all  this  enor- 
mous social  upheaval  and  effort  is  derived  from  the  need, 
only  gradually  making  itself  manifest,  and  even  then  to 
only  a  portion  of  the  community,  of  a  complete  and  final 
detachment  of  America  from  all  external  authority  whatso- 
ever, whether  resident  in  England  or  elsewhere  on  this 
planet.  "  But,  in  reality,"  so  pleaded,  with  pathetic  seri- 
ousness, many  of  the  best  Americans  of  that  time,  "  in 
reality,  is  there  such  need  of  our  detachm'ent  from  external 
authority,  especially  from  the  authority  of  the  Mother 
Country?"  And  to  this  question,  the  very  people  who 
asked  it  never  failed  to  make  answer,  firmly  and  sternly, — 
"  No  !"  And  they  were  sincere;  but  on  the  issue  thus 
framed,  came  that  final  and  dreadful  divergence  among  the 
Americans  themselves,  which  led  to  a  mutual  animosity 
more  rancorous,  more  inappeasable,  than  even  the  animosity 


SOCIAL   CONDITIONS.  5 

of  the  Revolutionary  party  toward  their  British  assailants. 
This  most  bitter  discord,  within  a  population  that  needed 
all  its  force  united  and  massed  against  the  common  danger 
from  without,  only  added  intellectual  complication  and  a 
sort  of  exquisite  ferocity  to  a  period  already  sufficiently 
enmeshed  in  confusion  and  hate. 

Such  is  the  epoch  into  which  we  now  presume  to  look  in 
search  of  literature:  an  epoch,  as  it  appears,  uptorn  by 
moral  earthquakes,  and  swept  by  hurricanes  of  passion ;  a 
fatal  time,  sorrowful,  grim,  pitiless  ;  a  time  of  immense 
hope,  of  immense  wrath,  of  immense  despair ;  a  time  when, 
even  among  ancient  friends,  even  among  kinsmen  once  most 
dear,  were  flashing  eyes  and  clenched  fists,  whole  families 
being  broken  asunder  forever  in  death,  or  in  a  hatred  worse 
than  death;  a  time  of  battle-fields,  and  prison-ships,  and 
scaffolds,  of  cities  sacked  and  burned,  of  rich  provinces  laid 
waste  and  left  bleeding  and  desolate  ;  weeks  and  months 
dragging  themselves  out  into  years  during  which,  for  two 
or  three  millions  of  men  and  women,  life  and  all  that  life  is 
worth  living  for,  were  in  suspense.  In  such  an  epoch,  why 
look  for  literature  ?  Can  it  be  supposed  that,  at  such  a 
time,  any  literary  thing  was,  or  could  have  been,  done  in 
this  land,  which  it  would  be  worth  our  while  now  to  shake 
from  the  dust  of  a  hundred  years,  and  to  inspect  even  for  a 
single  moment  ? 

It  has  fallen  to  my  lot  to  turn  over  and  to  look  through 
very  many  pages,  in  manuscript  and  in  print,  produced 
during  that  period ;  and  I  must  bear  witness  that  I  have  not 
found  many  pages,  whether  serious  or  sportive,  amid  the 
lines  of  which  did  not  seem  to  be  audible  the  reverberation 
of  that  old  civic  rancor, — reluctant  but  at  last  determined 
revolution,  eager  and  fierce  resistance  to  revolution.  This, 
indeed,  is  the  one  best  note  of  sincerity,  of  authenticity,  in 
these  writings.  And  since  the  authentic  and  sincere  litera- 
ture of  any  period  is  the  recorded  utterance  of  the  uppermost 
and  the  undermost  thought  of  that  period, — its  thought 
and  emotion  both, — there  would  be  room  for  distrust  or  for 


6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

disdain  should  we  find  proof  that  many  Americans,  between 
1763  and  1783,  had  written  altogether  disinterested  or  pas- 
sionless pages,  or  had  dealt  with  tranquil  literary  themes,  in 
song  or  story  or  philosophy,  wholly  apart  from  those  themes 
that  were  then  rushing  to  mortal  combat  in  the  brains  and 
on  the  battle-fields  of  that  time. 


III. 


The  chief  trait,  therefore,  of  American  literature  during 
the  period  now  under  view  is  this:  its  concern  with  the 
problems  of  American  society,  and  of  American  society  in  a 
peculiar  condition — aroused,  inflammable,  in  a  state  of  alarm 
for  its  own  existence,  but  also  in  a  state  of  resolute  combat 
for  it.  The  literature  which  we  are  thus  to  inspect  is  not, 
then,  a  literature  of  tranquillity,  but  chiefly  a  literature  of 
strife,  or,  as  the  Greeks  would  have  said,  of  agony;  and,  of 
course,  it  must  take  those  forms  in  which  intellectual  and 
impassioned  debate  can  be  most  effectually  carried  on.  The 
literature  of  our  Revolution  has  almost  everywhere  the 
combative  note;  its  habitual  method  is  argumentative,  per- 
suasive, appealing,  rasping,  retaliatory ;  the  very  brain  of 
man  seems  to  be  in  armor;  his  wit  is  in  the  gladiator's  atti- 
tude of  offense  and  defense.  It  is  a  literature  indulging 
itself  in  grimaces,  in  mockery,  in  scowls  :  a  literature 
accented  by  earnest  gestures  meant  to  convince  people,  or 
by  fierce  blows  meant  to  smite  them  down.  In  this  litera- 
ture we  must  not  expect  to  find  art  used  for  art's  sake. 
Nay,  art  itself,  so  far  as  it  is  here  at  all,  is  swept  into  the 
universal  conscription,  and  enrolled  for  the  serviced  the 
one  party  or  of  the  other  in  the  imperilled  young  Republic. 
No  man  is  likely  to  be  in  the  mood  for  aesthetics  who  has 
an  assassin's  pistol  at  his  head.  Even  the  passion  for  the 
beautiful  has  been  known  to  yield  to  the  instinct  for  self- 
preservation. 


REVOLUTIONARY  STIMULANTS. 


Looking,  then,  into  this  period  of  great  civic  trouble,  and 
being  content  that  the  authentic  literary  product  of  it 
should  also  have  a  troubled  look — a  look  of  anxiety  and 
wrath  and  combat — our  next  discovery  is  the  rather  notable 
one  that  such  a  period  actually  had  a  literary  product  very 
considerable  in  amount.  Even  in  those  perturbed  years 
between  1763  and  1783,  there  was  a  large  mass  of  literature 
produced  in  America.  This  fact  will  perhaps  bring  to  us  a 
surprise,  almost  a  perplexity.  Is  it  credible  ?  How  car 
this  be  ?  Certainly,  great  deeds  were  done  in  those  years, 
and  great  words  spoken — words  that  had  the  quality  of 
great  deeds;  and  yet,  as  we  shall  be  tempted  to  say,  that 
was  a  time  for  fighting,  not  for  writing :  it  was  a  time  for  a 
game  of  politics  astute,  robust,  unrelenting;  for  the  courage 
of  a  creative  statesmanship  ;  for  a  diplomacy  with  wit 
enough  to  confront  and  conciliate  a  world ;  for  a  generalship 
that  could  make  an  army  look  military,  though  dressed  in 
rags,  that  could  make  that  army  march  though  it  had  no 
shoes,  that  could  make  it  formidable  though  destitute  of 
gunpowder ;  for  a  daily  and  a  nightly  warfare,  on  the  part 
of  two  or  three  millions  of  people,  against  starvation,  and 
rags,  and  bankruptcy ;  and  it  may  well  seem  incredible  that, 
under  such  circumstances,  any  people  could  produce  writ- 
ings which  should  have  any  quality  that  now  entitles  them 
to  literary  remembrance,  or  which  it  would  not  be  a  bar- 
barous ingratitude  for  us  to  subject  to  criticism. 

This  is  the  first  view  of  the  situation.  Let  us  now  look  a 
little  deeper,  and  we  shall  see  that,  within  the  range  of  those 
literary  forms  capable  of  articulating  the  moods  of  a  period 
of  civil  and  military  conflict,  large  literary  production  is  the 
very  result  to  be  expected.  For  on  what  does  any  sort  of 
literary  production  depend  ?  Of  course,  it  depends  on  the 
quickening  of  man's  nature,  especially  of  his  intellect  and 
his  emotions.  And  what  is  a  period  of  war,  and  especially 
of  civil  war,  and  more  especially  of  revolutionary  civil  war, 


8  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

but  an  extraordinary  quickening  of  the  intellectual  and 
emotional  energies  of  man  ? 

The  turbulence  of  the  time  may,  indeed,  become  so  great 
as  to  drive  out  from  the  human  spirit  all  sense  of  security; 
but  in  that  case,  the  only  certain  result  on  literature  will  be 
to  drive  out  the  tranquil  forms  of  literary  expression,  leaving 
all  the  forces  of  the  quickened  life  of  the  people  free  to  con- 
centrate themselves  upon  those  forms  of  literary  expression 
which  are  not  tranquil,  that  is,  which  are  combative. 

Moreover,  in  the  case  of  the  American  Revolution,  liter- 
ary production  within  the  special  range  thus  indicated,  was 
likely  to  be  the  greater  for  the  reason  that  that  Revolution 
was  pre-eminently  a  revolution  caused  by  ideas,  and  pivoted 
on  ideas.  Of  course,  all  revolutions  are  in  some  sense 
caused  by  ideas  and  pivoted  on  them ;  but  in  the  case  of 
most  revolutions,  the  ideal  causes  of  them  are  not  generally 
perceived,  and  therefore  are  not  generally  acted  upon  until 
those  ideal  causes  become  fully  interpreted  through  real 
evils,  generally  through  a  long  experience  of  real  evils. 
This  was  the  case,  for  example,  with  the  French  Revolu- 
tion. But  in  the  case  of  the  American  Revolution,  the 
people  did  not  wait  until  ideal  evils  had  become  real  evils. 
With  a  political  intelligence  so  alert  and  so  sensitive  as  to 
discern  those  evils  while  still  afar  off,  they  made  their  stand, 
not  against  tyranny  inflicted,  but  only  against  tyranny 
anticipated.  They  produced  the  Revolution,  not  because 
they  were  as  yet  actual  sufferers,  but  because  they  were 
good  logicians,  and  were  able  to  prove  that,  without  resist- 
ance, they  or  their  children  would  some  day  become  actual 
sufferers.  As  was  said  of  them  by  a  great  contemporary 
statesman  in  England,  they  judged  "  of  the  pressure  of  the 
grievance  by  the  badness  of  the  principle."  They  augured 

misgovernment  at  a  distance."  They  snuffed  "  the 
approach  of  tyranny  in  every  tainted  breeze."  Hence, 
more  than  with  most  other  epochs  of  revolutionary  strife, 

1  Edmund  Burke,  "Speech  on  Moving  his  Resolutions  for  Conciliation  with 
the  Colonies,"  March  22,  1775.  "  Works,"  ii.  125. 


XOX-REVOLUTIONARY   WRITINGS.  g 

our  epoch  of  revolutionary  strife  was  a  strife  of  ideas:  a 
long  warfare  of  political  logic;  a  succession  of  annual  cam- 
paigns in  which  the  marshalling  of  arguments  not  only  pre- 
ceded the  marshalling  of  armies,  but  often  exceeded  them  in 
impression  upon  the  final  result. 

An  epoch  like  this,  therefore, — an  epoch  in  which  nearly 
all  that  is  great  and  dear  in  man's  life  on  earth  has  to  be 
argued  for,  as  well  as  to  be  fought  for,  and  in  which  ideas 
have  a  work  to  do  quite  as  pertinent  and  quite  as  effective  as 
that  of  bullets, — can  hardly  fail  to  be  an  epoch  teeming  with 
literature,  with  literature,  of  course,  in  the  particular  forms 
suited  to  the  purposes  of  political  co-operation  and  conflict. 

V. 

In  preparing  ourselves  to  deal  properly  with  the  Literary 
History  of  the  American  Revolution,  we  shall  be  much 
helped  by  keeping  in  mind  the  distinction  between  two 
classes  of  writings  then  produced  among  us:  first,  those 
writings  which  were  the  result  of  certain  general  intellectual 
interests  and  activities  apart  from  the  Revolutionary  move- 
ment, and,  secondly,  those  writings  which  were  the  result 
of  intellectual  interests  and  activities  directly  awakened  and 
sustained  by  that  movement. 

The  presence  of  the  first  class  we  discover  chiefly  in  the 
earlier  years  of  this  period,  before  the  Revolutionary  idea 
had  become  fully  developed  and  fully  predominant  ;  and, 
again,  in  the  later  years  of  the  period,  when,  with  the  suc- 
cess of  the  Revolution  assured,  the  Revolutionary  idea  had 
begun  to  recede,  and  men's  minds  were  free  to  swing  again 
toward  the  usual  subjects  of  human  concern,  particularly 
toward  those  which  were  to  occupy  them  after  the  attain- 
ment of  Independence  and  of  peace. 

There,  to  begin  with,  are  those  writings  which  stand  for 
the  spiritual  side  of  man's  nature, — his  thought  respecting 
the  Divine  and  the  human  and  the  relations  between  the 
two,  respecting  the  mystery  of  existence,  respecting  the  law 


10  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

of  life  here  and  hereafter.  Even  amid  all  the  uproar  and 
anguish  of  a  harsh  political  and  military  conflict,  this  sove- 
reign interest  of  the  soul  could  never  be  stifled ;  nay,  in  the 
prevailing  instability  of  all  earthly  good,  men  were  driven 
more  than  ever  to  find  sustenance  and  repose  in  the  consid- 
eration of  a  form  of  good  that  should  outlast  the  world. 
Thus,  it  was  in  1769  that  Joseph  Bellamy  published  his 
"  Four  Dialogues  between  a  Minister  and  his  Parishioner 
concerning  the  Half- Way  Covenant  "  ' ;  it  was  in  1770  that 
John  Woolman  published  his  "  Considerations  on  the  True 
Harmony  of  Mankind  "  * ;  it  was  in  .1773  that  Samuel  Hop- 
kins published  his  "  Inquiry  into  the  Nature  of  True 
Holiness." 

There,  also,  are  those  writings  which  stand  for  the  delight 
of  man  in  the  visible  framework  of  nature  in  the  New  World, 
and  for  his  curiosity  to  pierce  into  the  secrets  of  that  New 
World  as  hidden  in  plant,  and  mineral,  and  animal :  descrip- 
tions of  the  American  wilderness,  narratives  of  travel  among 
the  native  peoples,  with  sketches  of  their  characters  and 
ways.  Most  prominent  in  this  group  are  the  "  Historical 
Account  of  Bouquet's  Expedition  against  the  Ohio  Indians," 
the  "  Journals"  of  Major  Robert  Rogers,  together  with 
his  "  Concise  Account  of  North  America,"  William  Stork's 
"  Description  of  East  Florida,"  Carver's  "  Travels  through 
the  Interior  Parts  of  North  America,"  and  J  antes  Adair's 
"  History  of  the  American  Indians." 

There,  likewise,  are  the  writings  which  stand  for  the 
interest  of  the  American  people  in  their  own  past,  testifying 
in  this  case,  also,  to  a  noble  impulse  surviving  from  the 
colonial  time ;  such  as  the  fragments  of  local  history  by 
Stephen  Hopkins,  by  Amos  Adams,  by  Nathan  Fiske;  the 
ponderous  historical  monograph  of  Robert  Proud  on  the 
origin  of  Pennsylvania;  the  ecclesiastical  histories  of  Morgan 
Edwards  and  of  Isaac  Backus;  and,  above  all,  the  two 

1  The  Works  of  Bellamy,  ii.  665-711. 
"The  Works  of  Woolman,  350-381. 
3 The  Works  of  Hopkins,  iii.  3-141. 


NON-REVOLUTIONARY    WRITINGS.  II 

\ 

noble  volumes  of  Thomas  Hutchinson  on  the  history  of 
Massachusetts  down  tp  within  fifteen  years  of  the  Stamp  Act. 
Even  for  literature  in  the  higher  sense  of  that  word, — lit- 
erature as  an  expression  of  the  aesthetic  mood,  literature  apart 
from  mere  instruction,  apart,  also,  from  the  aims  of  any 
debate, — we  shall  find,  within  the  first  decade  of  this  period 
and  before  its  culmination  into  the  final  violence  of  the  Revo- 
lutionary controversy,  the  beginnings  of  a  new  and  a  truer 
life  in  America.  Of  this  new  literary  life  there  were,  in 
general,  two  chief  centres,  one  in  the  New  England,  one  in 
the  Middle  Colonies.  The  New  England  literary  centre 
was  at  New  Haven,  and  was  dominated  by  the  influence  of 
Yale  College,  within  which,  especially  between  1767  and 
1773,  was  a  group  of  brilliant  young  men  passionately 
devoted  to  the  Greek  and  Roman  classics,  and  brought  into 
contact  with  the  spirit  of  modern  letters  through  their  sym- 
pathetic study  of  the  later  masters  of  English  prose  and 
verse.  The  foremost  man  in  this  group  was  John  Trum- 
l^ull.  The  new  literary  life  of  the  Middle  Colonies  hacTits 
seat  in  the  neighborhood  of  New  York  and  Philadelphia, 
and  was  keenly  stimulated  by  the  influence  of  their  two 
colleges,  and  also  by  that  of  the  College  of  New  Jersey 
under  the  strong  man  who  came  to  its  presidency  in  1768. 
The  foremost  representative  of  this  new  literary  tendency 
was  Philip  Freneau,  a  true  man  of  genius,  the  one  poet  of 
unquestionable 'originality  granted  to  America  prior  to  the 
nineteenth  century.  Of  him  and  of  his  brother  poet  in  New 
England,  it  is  to  be  said  that/both  began  to  do  their  work 
while  still  in  youth;  both  seemed  to  have  a  vocation  for 
disinterested  literature  in  prose  as  well  as  in  verse;  both 
were  reluctantly  driven  from  that  vocation  by  the  intoler- 
able political  storm  that  then  burst  over  the  land ;  both 
were  swept  into  the  Revolutionary  movement,  and,  thence- 
forward, the  chief  literary  work  of  both  was  as  political 
satirists.  From  about  the  year  1774,  little  trace  of  an 
aesthetic  purpose  in  American  letters  is  to  be  discovered 
until  after  the  close  of  the  Revolution. 


12  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

While,  therefore,  these  several  forms  of  literature,  as 
produced  among  us  at  any  time  between  1763  and  1783, 
have  their  value  as  enabling  us  to  ascertain  and  to  feel 
certain  minor  phases  of  the  life  of  that  period,  it  is  not  into 
them  that  we  are  to  look  for  an  expression  of  its  most 
characteristic  life — the  life  that  made  that  period  so  great  in 
its  effects  upon  the  development  of  the  American  people, 
and  still  so  interesting  to  all  students  of  the  later  history  of 
mankind.  The  characteristic  life  of  the  period  we  now  have 
in  view  was  political,  and  not  political  only,  but  polemic, 
and  fiercely  polemic,  and  at  last  revolutionary ;  and  its  true 
literary  expression  is  to  be  recognized  in  those  writings, 
whether  in  prose  or  in  verse,  which  gave  utterance  to  that 
life.  Such  writings  seem  naturally  to  fall  into  nine  princi- 
pal classes. 

VI. 

First,  may  here  be  named  the  correspondence  of  the 
time ;  especially,  the  letters  touching  on  public  affairs 
which  passed  between  persons  in  different  portions  of  Amer- 
ica, and  in  which  men  of  kindred  opinions  found  one  another 
out,  informed  one  another,  stimulated,  guided,  aided  one 
another,  in  the  common  struggle.  Indeed,  the  correspon- 
dence of  our  Revolution,  both  official  and  unofficial,  con- 
stitutes a  vast,  a  fascinating,  and  a  significant  branch  of  its 
literature.  Very  strange  would  it  have  been  had  it  been 
otherwise.  An  immense  peril  was,  or  seemed  to  be, 
approaching  those  kindred  b,ut  sundered  communities.  In 
all  those  communities  the  men  who  meant  even  by  force  to 
resist  that  peril,  or  to  resist  those  who  thought  there  was  a 
'peril  to  be  so  resisted,  needed  to  ascertain  one  another's 
^existence,  to  interchange  opinions,  to  come  into  united 
measures.  This  they  could  not  do,  in  those  days  of  arduous 
and  snail-paced  travel,  by  personal  interviews ;  and  therefore 
far  more  than  can  ever  again  be  the  case,  communication 
by  writing  was  then  the  only  means  of  bringing  about  any 
general  concert  of  thought  or  action.  Moreover,  at  that 


CORRESPONDENCE.  \  3 

time,  the  art  of  letter-writing  for  ordinary  personal  uses  had 
not  yet  been  overtaken  by  the  fatal  boon  of  cheap  postage, 
and  perhaps  the  still  more  fatal  boon  of  stenographic  dicta- 
tion ;  and  consequently  it  had  not  lost  consciousness  of  its 
own  fine  function,  nor  become  content  that  its  missives 
should,  in  personal  quality  at  least,  be  worth  as  little  as 
they  now  cost.  In  those  days  men  and  women  still  took  time 
to  write  letters,  and  to  write  them  with  their  own  hands, 
and  to  put  ideas  into  what  they  wrote,  and  the  individual 
touch,  deliberate  and  deft  expression,  playfulness,  and 
grace,  and  force. 

Undoubtedly,  the  best  of  all  the  letter-writers  of  the  time  1 
was  Franklin ;  and  next  to  him,  perhaps,  were  John  Adams,  \ 
and  Abigail  Adams,  his  wife.  Indeed  the  letters  of  Mrs. 
Adams,  mostly  to  her  husband,  and  covering  this  entire 
period,  are  among  the  most  delightful  specimens  of  such  work) 
as  done  by  any  American :  they  are  alive  with  the  very  moods 
and  scenes  of  the  Revolution ;  they  reveal,  also,  the  strong 
intelligence,  the  high  faith,  the  splendid  courage  of  that 
noble  matron,  and  the  secret  of  her  life-long  power  as  the 
intellectual  companion  of  her  husband,  his  one  and  only 
confidante,  and  the  inspirer  of  all  that  was  greatest  and 
best  in  his  career.  Not  far  behind  these  first  three  letter- 
writers,  if  indeed  they  were  behind  them,  must  be  men-J 
tioned  Jefferson  and  John  Dickinson;  and,  for  shrewdness 
of  observation,  for  humor,  for  lightness  of  touch,  for  the 
gracious  negligee  of  cultivated  speech,  not  far  behind  any  of 
them,  was  a  letter-writer  now  almost  unknown,  Richard 
Peters  of  Philadelphia.  Of  course,  no  one  goes  to  the  letters 
of  Washington,  in  the  expectation  of  finding  there  spright- 
liness  of  thought,  flexibility,  or  ease  of  movement ;  yet,  in 
point  of  diligence  and  productiveness,  he  was  one  of  the 
great  letter-writers  of  that  age,  while  all  that  he  ever  wrote 
has  the  incommunicable  worth  of  his  powerful  and  noble 
character — sincerity,  purity,  robustness,  freedom  from  all 
morbid  vapors,  soundness  of  judgment  ripened  under  vast 
responsibility.  Who  can  hope  ever  to  know  the  mind  and 


14  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

conscience  of  our  Revolution,  its  motive,  its  conduct,  its 
stern  and  patient  purpose,  or  its  cost,  without  studying 
Washington's  letters  ? 

It  does  not  belong  to  the  purpose  of  the  present  work,  to 
make  any  other  than  an  incidental  mention  of  this  immense 
class  of  writings,  —  writings  which,  in  fact,  scarcely  came  to 
the  public  eye  during  that  perio'd,  and  which  seem  to 
require,  as  they  would  well  reward,  a  separate  treatise  for 
their  full  presentation.  Considerable  portions  of  all  this 
Revolutionary  correspondence  have  now  passed  into  print  ; 
very  large  portions  of  it  still  remain  in  manuscript  ;  already 
much  has  perished  by  fire,  by  mildew,  by  neglect.  As  a 
whole,  however,  the  epistolary  record  of  the  Revolution, 
could  we  now  look  upon  it,  would  set  forth  for  us,  in  vivid 
contemporary  colors,  every  passing  phase  of  that  time  of 
mighty  commotion  ;  and  would  embody  for  us  naive  exam- 
ples of  narrative,  of  character-painting,  of  earnest  and  high- 
spirited  discussion,  and  many  a  passage  of  genuine  pathos, 
and  satire,  and  wit. 

VII. 

The  second  form  of  literature  embodying  the  characteris- 
tic life  of  our  Revolutionary  era,  is  made  up  of  those  writ- 
ings which  were  put  forth  at  nearly  every  critical  stage  of 
the  long  contest,  either  by  the  local  legislatures,  or  by  the 
General  Congress,  or  by  prominent  men  in  public  office,  and 
which  may  now  be  described  comprehensively  as  State 


It  is  probable  that  we  have  never  yet  sufficiently  consid- 
ered the  extraordinary  intellectual  merits  of  this  great  group 
of  writings,  or  the  prodigious  practical  service  which,  by 
means  of  those  merits,  they  rendered  to  the  struggling  cause 
of  American  self-government,  particularly  in  procuring  for 
the  insurrectionary  colonists,  first,  the  respectful  recogni- 
tion, and  then  the  moral  confidence,  of  the  civilized  world. 
The  writers  of  these  State  Papers  were  the  representatives  of 


STATE   PAPERS.  I  5 

the  great  party  of  discontent.  They  were  among  the  ablest^ 
and  most  cultivated  men  in  the  several  colonies  to  which  I 
they  belonged.  Prior  to  the  occasion  which  first  brought 
them  together  into  an  intercolonial  assemblage,  they  were 
in  person  scarcely  known  to  one  another,  while  to  the  world 
at  large  they  were  of  course  quite  unknown.  Indeed,  the 
world  at  large  then  knew  but  little  of  the  American  people 
in  any  way,  and  cared  still  less  for  them.  In  spite  of  thisj 
however,  the  members  of  these  intercolonial  assemblages, 
obscure  provincial  politicians  though  they  then  were,N 
began  to  send  forth,  first  in  the  year  1765  and  again  in  the! 
year  1774,  their  elaborate  and  stately  appeals  to  the  reason! 
and  the  justice  of  mankind.  At  the  time  when  these  % 
papers  were  issued,  the  people  of  Europe  were  becoming  ) 
dimly  aware  of  some  sort  of  political  disturbance  in  Amer- 
ica, and  with  that  condescension  which  still  sits  so  gracefully 
upon  them  in  their  occasional  allusions  to  us,  were  begin- 
ning to  ask,  what  sort  of  people  these  Americans  might  be 
like.  Whether  they  were  white,  or  red,  or  black,  was  not 
then  generally  known  in  Europe,  if  indeed  the  mind  of 
Europe  can  be  said  even  yet  to  be  altogether  clear  upon 
that  difficult  question ;  but  were  the  Americans  even  a  civ- 
ilized people  ?  Evidently,  whatever  they  were,  they  were 
not  disposed  to  an  abject  submission  to  their  parent  state; 
but,  in  what  spirit,  according  to  what  method,  were  they 
asserting  their  supposed  claims  ?  Was  it  in  a  spirit  of 
sheer  lawlessness,  of  wild,  fierce,  and  truculent  insubordina- 
tion ?  And  if  the  Americans  were  indeed  sufficiently 
advanced  in  culture  to  have  acqyired  the  art  of  writing, 
what  sort  of  announcements  of  themselves  would  they  be 
capable  of  putting  forth  ?  Very  naturally,  their  writings 
would  be  crude  in  thought,  inconclusive  in  reasoning,  desti- 
tute of  the  great  precedents  and  traditions  of  political  lit- 
erature as  cherished  in  the  older  portions  of  the  world,  and 
expressed  of  course  in  the  fervor  and  rant  of  gasconading 
patriotism  and  of  revolutionary  rhapsody.  It  was  under 
precisely  these  circumstances  that  the  State  Papers,  for 


1 6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

example,  of  the  Stamp  Act  Congress  and  of  the  Congress 

of    1774,  were  borne  across  the  Atlantic,   and  distributed 

among    the    publicists    of    Europe.       These    constituted, 

/indeed,  the  first  conspicuous  and  authoritative  presentation 

(to  the  Old  World  of  the  intellectual  and  political  condition 

lof  the  New.     It  is  now  known  with  what  surprise  many 

Vnlightened  men   in   Europe,   who  had  imagined  that  the 

Americans  wet;e   a   rabble  of  illiterate  backwoodsmen,    of 

headstrong,  blustering  and  law-defying  revolutionists,  then 

read  these  political    documents, — finding   in    them    nearly 

every  quality  indicative  of  personal,  and  national  greatness, 

— reverence,  sobriety,  conservatism,  familiarity  with  history, 

exact  and  extensive  legal  learning,  the  most  lucid  exposition 

of  constitutional  principles,  urbanity  of  tone,  and  a  literary 

execution  at  once  graceful  and  forceful, — showing,  indeed, 

/that  somehow,  out  into  that  American  wilderness  had  been 

I   carried    the    very    accent    of    cosmopolitan    thought    and 

\  speech. 

VIII. 

The  third  class  of  writings  directly  expressive  of  the  spirit 
and  life  of  the  Revolution,  consists  of  oral  addresses,  either 
cular.or  sacred, — that  is,  of  speeches,  formal  orations,  and 
olitical  sermons.     The  inte/est  now  to   be   found  in  the 
reading  of  these  productions  must  be  derived  almost  wholly 
from  one's  perception  of  their  value  as  authentic  interpreta- 
tions of  the  thought  and  passion  of  their  time.     Undoubt- 
edly, the  best  words  actually  spoken  during  the  Revolution 
I  were  the  words  that  did  not  survive  the  occasions  which 
called  them  forth, — namely,  the  speeches  that  leaped  from 
(the  lips  of  a  few  great  statesmen  and  orators  in  the  strenu- 
\ous   passages   of   those   debates   which,    in    the   provincial 
assemblies  or  in  the  great  congresses,  decided  the  course  of 
(  American  policy  in  opposition  to  the  measures  of  the  min- 
\  istry.     Spoken,  as  these  speeches  were,  behind  closed  doors, 
heard  by  no  official  reporters,  they  have  lived  since  then 
only  in  the  historic  effects  they  wrought,  in  vague  tradition, 


POLITICAL  ESSAYS.  \J 

or  in  the  fragmentary  jottings  of  some  ear- witness  who  hap- 
pened to  be  a  letter-writer  or  a  diarist.  As  to  the  formal 
oratory  of  this  period,  much  of  which  went  into  print,  it 
must  be  described  as  having  very  little  of  the  sparkle  and 
flavor  of  Revolutionary  life,  being  to  a  degree  passing  all 
modern  endurance,  verbose,  stilted,  and  jejune.  Unques- 
tionably, the  most  vital  of  the  survivals  of  the  spoken 
eloquence  of  the  Revolution  are  in  the  form  of  political 
discourses  from  a  few  chiefs  of  the  Revolutionary  pulpit. 

IX. 

The  three  classes  of  writings  just  mentioned,  have  their 
undoubted  value  in  enabling  us  to  trace  the  Literary  His- 
tory of  the  American  Revolution ;  and  yet  their  value  for 
thi ;  purpose  is  somewhat  less  than  that  of  the  fourth  class 
of  \vritings  now  to  be  mentioned,  namely,  the  political! 
essays  of  the  period.  More  than  in  all  other  publications,  it 
was  in  these  political  essays  that  the  American  people,  on 
bpth  sides  of  the  great  controversy,  gave  utterance  to  their 
real  thoughts,  their  real  purposes,  their  fears,  their  hopes,, 
their  hatreds,  touching  the  bitter  questions  which  then 
divided  them, — doing  so  under  almost  every  form  of  ex- 
pression, from  serious  argument  and  earnest  persuasion,  to 
mere  invective,  vituperation,  and  banter. 

Respecting  these  political  essays,   however,  a  somewhat 
mechanical  distinction  has  to  be  noted, — a  distinction  arisingj- 
from  the  fact  that  some  of  them  were  written  for  publication  i 
in  their  newspapers,  while  the  others  were  written  for  publi- 1 
cation  as  separate  tracts.     This  distinction,  slight  as  it' may 
seem,  is  worth  considering,  since  it  develops  two  rather  im- 
portant peculiarities  attaching  to  all  popular  discussion  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic, — the  \ 
subordinate  place  then    occupied    by   the    newspaper,    the    ] 
supreme  place  then  occupied  by  the  pamphlet. 

In  our  own  time,  the  imperial  function  of  journalism,  as 
an  instrument  of  immediate  influence,  in  almost  every 


1 8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

sphere  of  thought  and  action,  is  fully  developed  and  fully 
recognized.  The  analogy  can  hardly  deserve  to  be  called  a 
forced  one,  if  modern  journalism,  for  its  instantaneous  and 
enormous  power,  be  compared  to  ancient  oratory,  as  oratory 
was,  for  example,  at  Athens  in  her  great  days.-.  Indeed, 
journalism  has  now  grown  to  be  the  universal  silent  oratory 
of  the  human  race:  it  is  oratory  dispensing  with  a  vocal 
rendering,  for  the  reason  that  it  has  found  in  the  printed 
sheet  a  mightier  elocution  than  that  of  the  human  voice. 

Of  course,  at  the  period  of  the  American  Revolution, 
journalism  had  nowhere  reached  this  advanced  stage  of 
effectiveness.  In  America,  especially,  the  newspapers  were 
petty,  dingy,  languid,  inadequate  affairs;  and  the  depart- 
ment of  the  newspaper  now  devoted  to  editorial  writing, 
then  scarcely  existed  at  all.  Nevertheless,  while  the  editor 
of  those  days  was  only  the  printer,  and  merely  arranged  and 
put  into  type  what  went  into  his  paper,  instead  of  himself 
writing  any  part  of  what  went  into  it,  he  had,  especially  in 
times  of  excitement,  the  active  assistance  of  a  magnificent 
staff  of  unpaid  contributors, — the  foremost  men  in  the  land, 
politicians,  lawyers,  clergymen,  scholars,  and  other  men 
of  cultivated  thought  and  leadership, — who  found  the  col- 
umns of  these  journals  a  convenient  medium  for  the  instant 
diffusion  of  their  opinions,  and  who,  accordingly,  wrote  for 
these  dull-looking,  ill-printed,  little  sheets,  some  of  the  most 
finished  and  most  forceful  specimens  of  literary  work  done 
among  us  in  those  days.  In  this  particular,  also,  the  news- 
papers then  published  in  America  differed  but  little  from 
the  newspapers  then  published  in  England.  In  the  latter, 
says  the  English  editor  of  a  recent  edition  of  "  Junius," 
"  there  existed  none  of  those  leading  articles  or  elaborate 
commentaries  on  public  questions,  which  now  occupy  so 
prominent  a  place  in  our  daily  papers.  The  correspondents 
of  the  press  were  then  the  only  writers  of  political  commu- 
nications which  bore  the  character  of  leaders  :  and,  as 
reports  of  the  debates  were  not  permitted,  members  of 
either  house  suffered  equally  with  the  people  in  possessing 


POLITICAL  ESSAYS.  19 

no  common  channel  by  which  the  one  could  learn,  and  the 
other  convey,  their  sentiments.  In  consequence  of  this 
restrictive  system,  the  correspondence  of  newspapers  formed 
the  most  talented  portion  of  their  contents,  influential  men 
of  all  parties  adopting  this  medium  as  the  best  for  giving 
publicity  to  their  opinions."  J 

We  have  but  a  slight  step  to  take  in  passing  from  these 
brief  political  essays  written  for  our  Revolutionary  news-  ' 
papers,  to  those  longer  and  more  elaborate  political  essays  \ 
which  first  saw  the  light  in  the  form  of  pamphlets.  In  tak-V 
ing  this  step,  however,  it  is  well  for  us  to  recall  the  great 
part  played  by  this  form  of  literature  in  the  two  centuries 
preceding  our  own, — a  form  of  literature  now  almost 
extinct.  The  pamphlet  is  the  immediate  ancestor  of  the 
newspaper  ;  and,  like  a  good  ancestor,  it  first  carefully 
reared  its  colossal  child,  and  then  promptly  got  out  of  the 
way,  leaving  to  its  offspring  the  inheritance  of  the  whole 
estate — which  was,  in  fact,  the  entire  world  of  readers. 
The  maturity  of  journalism  really  meant  the  old  age  and 
death  of  pamphleteering.  For  the  first  three  hundred  years, 
however,  after  the  introduction  of  printing,  journalism  was 
either  unborn  or  in  its  infancy  and  during  the  most  of  that 
time,  the  pamphlet  had  perhaps  the  highest  place  among 
the  instruments  of  immediate  popular  influence.  The  sev- 
enteenth and  the  eighteenth  centuries  may  be  called  the 
classic  era  of  the  English  pamphlet.  No  reader  of  English 
literature  can  forget  how  John  Milton,  just  on  the  threshold 
of  his  manhood,  and  with  all  his  powers  of  poetic  utterance 
in  fresh  and  jubilant  action,  turned  away  from  the  starry 
call  of  poetry,  abandoned  his  dream  of  a  great  national  epic 
on  King  Arthur,  and  of  a  dramatic  poem  on  the  Fall  of 
Man,  and  gave  up  his  health,  his  eyesight,  and  the  vigor  of 
the  best  twenty  years  of  his  life,  in  order  to  devote  himself 
to  this  tremendous  function  of  writing  pamphlets  on  English 
politics.  The  chief  significance  of  John  Dryden  in  his  non- 
dramatic  and  non-lyric  poetry,  may  almost  be  said  to  be 

1  John  Wade,  in  "  Junius,"  ii.  Preface,  iii.-iv. 


20  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

that  which  attaches  to  a  writer  of  political  pamphlets  in 
verse.  The  power  which  centred  in  Dean  Swift,  and  on 
account  of  which  even  great  statesmen  and  noblemen  paid 
court  to  a  rough  and  plebeian  priest  in  the  Irish  Establish- 
ment, was,  in  no  inconsiderable  part,  derived  from  the  fear 
and  the  hope  he  inspired  as  a  writer  of  pamphlets.  And 
when,  shortly  before  our  Revolution,  Samuel  Johnson,  hav- 
ing in  his  Dictionary  defined  the  word  pension  as  "  an  allow- 
ance made  to  any  one  without  an  equivalent,"  and  as  being 
in  England  "  generally  understood  to  mean  pay  given  to  a 
state-hireling  for  treason  to  his  country,"  himself  submitted 
to  receive  a  pension,  doubtless  many  people  in  England  felt 
that  the  pamphlets  which  he  afterwards  wrote  in  defense  of 
the  colonial  policy  of  the  ministry  and  in  disparagement  of 
the  American  claim,  were  so  splendid  an  equivalent  for  this 
bounty  of  the  government,  as  to  protect  him  from  the  back- 
ward stroke  of  at  least  the  first  part  of  his  own  sarcasm. 

It  was  in  such  a  period,  therefore, — the  later  stage  of  the 
classic  pamphleteering  period, — that  our  Revolution  was 
wrought  out.  The  great  part  performed  in  that  conflict  by 
pamphlets  written  by  Americans  on  both  sides  of  the  ques- 
tion, was,  therefore,  fully  in  accord  with  the  literary  method 
then  prevalent  in  all  political  discussion ;  and  it  has  be- 
queathed to  us  the  most  abundant  and  the  most  important 
of  all  existing  materials  for  our  Literary  History  during  that 
period.  Indeed,  to  so  marked  a  degree  was  this  form  of 
literature  the  chief  weapon  in  the  intellectual  warfare  of  the 
American  Revolution,  that  even  its  approach  might  have 
been  challenged  in  the  very  words  with  which  the  approach 
of  Gloster  is  challenged  by  Winchester,  in  the  play: 

"  Com'st  thou  with  deep  premeditated  lines, 
With  written  pamphlets  studiously  devised  ? "  ' 

The  political  essay,   then,   whether  in  the  shape  of  the 
newspaper  article  or  in  that  of  the  pamphlet,  gives  us  the 
'  King  Henry  VI.  Part  I.  Act  iii.  Sc.  I. 


POLITICAL  ESSAYS.  21 

most  characteristic  type  of  American  literature  for  that 
portion  of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  is  this  form  of 
writing,  also,  which  is  chiefly  meant,  when  historians  now 
speak  of  what  they  are  apt  to  call  the  political  press,  in 
America  or  in  England.  Thus,  the  power  of  the  political 
essay  in  America  during  the  Revolution  is  perfectly, 
even  if  unconsciously,  described  by  Sir  Erskine  May 
when,  of  the  political  press  in  England  during  the  same 
period,  he  says,  that,  having  first  proved  "  its  influence 
as  an  auxiliary  in  party  warfare"  it  began  "  to  rise  above 
party,  and  to  become  a  great  popular  power, — the  rep- 
resentative of  public  opinion."1  Another  and  a  still  later 
English  historian  has  likewise  called  attention  to  the 
striking  fact  that  even  in  England  itself,  "  the  political 
power  of  the  press,  and  the  struggle  with  America  ' '  began 
at  the  same  time,  that  is,  with  the  ministry  of  George  Gren- 
ville."  In  this  respect,  moreover,  the  literature  of  the 
American  Revolution  seems  to  correspond  to  that  of  France 
during  the  closing  years  of  the  eighteenth  century, — "  une 
litterature  devenue  toute  politique,  et,  pour  dernier  oeuvre, 
faisant  naitre  la  tribune."  3  Furthermore,  the  worth  of  just 
these  literary  memorials  of  political  controversy,  for  inter- 
preting the  life  of  any  people  to  whom  such  methods  of 
political  controversy  are  permitted,  was  recognised  long 
before  the  American  Revolution  by  a  famous  English  prel- 
ate who  was  also  a  learned  political  philosopher.  "  The 
bent  and  genius  of  the  age,"  said  Bishop  Kennet,  "  is  best 
known  in  a  free  country,  by  the  pamphlets  and  papers  that 
daily  come  out  as  the  sense  of  the  parties  and  sometimes  as 
the  voice  of  the  nation."  4 

Finally,  as  to  the  great  body  of  those  political  essays 

1  May,  "Const.  Hist.  Eng.,"  ii.  247. 

*  J.  R.  Green,  "  Short  Hist.  English  People,"  733. 

'  Villemain,  "  Tableau  de  la  Litterature  au  XVIII6  Siecle,"  iii.  195. 

4  Cited  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  as  a  motto  on  the  title-page  of  his  great  "  Collec- 
tion of  Scarce  and  Valuable  Tracts,"  somewhat  improperly  lettered  on  the  back 
as  "Lord  Somers's  Tracts."  The  sentence  is  taken  from  Bishop  White  Ken- 
net's  "  Register  and  Chronicle,  Ecclesiastical  and  Civil." 


22  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

which  were  produced  among  us  between  1763  and  1783,  and 
through  which  may  now  be  traced  in  unbroken  sequence  the 
development  of  the  thought  and  passion  of  the  American 
people  during  that  period,  it  may  justly  be  said  that  we 
ourselves  have  been  slower  to  recognize  their  merits,  than 
have  been  some  of  our  kinsmen  in  England.  Doubtless, 
among  these  writings  are  to  be  found  not  a  few  examples  of 
crudity  of  thought  and  slovenliness  of  style,  of  partisan 
malice,  of  provincial  pettiness,  and  of  a  dulness  quite  too 
dense  for  penetration  by  any  faculties  now  possessed  by  us. 
Nevertheless,  when  Sir  Edward  Creasy  said  of  the  American 
pamphlets  written  in  opposition  to  the  Stamp  Act,  that 
"  some  of  them  are  very  able,"  and  "  for  clearness  of  argu- 
ment and  boldness  of  political  views,  may  be  ranked  with 
the  splendid  orations  afterward  pronounced  on  the  same  side 
in  the  British  Senate,"  '  he  delivered  a  critical  judgment 
which  may  be  applied  with  equal  truth  to  the  American 
pamphlets  written  in  the  later  stages  of  the  same  con- 
troversy. 

X. 


Closely  associated  with  the  political  essay  as  the  most 
/  powerful  form  of  prose  in  the  literature  of  the  American 
\  Revolution,   should  be  mentioned    the   political   satire,   as 
being  likewise  the  most  powerful  form  of  verse  during  the 
same, period,  and  as  constituting  the  fifth  class  of  writings 
directly  expressive  of  its  thought  and  passion. 

:With  the  political  satire,  also,  as  with  the  political  essay, 
ive  have  to  note  how  its  extraordinary  prominence  during 
the  Revolution  was  derived  from  literary  conditions  which 
existed  then,  but  which  exist  no  longer.  In  the  poetic  lit- 
erature of  modern  England,  satire  was  first  made  a  notable 
weapon  in  political  controversy  by  John  Dryden,  even  as 
social  and  literary  satire  was  brought  into  fresh  vogue  by 
Pope,  from  whom,  also,  it  descended  along  the  line  of  his 
poetic  disciples  until  it  found  its  last  great  masters  in  Gif- 

1  "  British  Empire,"  151. 


: 


POLITICAL    SATIRES.  2$ 

ford  and  Byron.  Accordingly,  at  about  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  these  thirteen  communities  of  English- 
men in  America,  so  far  as  they  were  under  any  literary\ 
tutelage,  were  in  poetry  under  the  tutelage  chiefly  of  Dry-J 
den  and  Pope;  and  in  their  own  experiments  at  satiricl 
verse,  dealing  with  phases  of  social  and  political  life  in  their 
several  neighborhoods,  they  reflect  the  influences  which,  in 
all  the  English-speaking  world,  had  then  given  such  splen- 
dor and  favor  to  this  not  very  noble  species  of  poetry. 
Certainly,  the  best  examples  of  satire  to  be  met  with  among 
us  before  the  Revolutionary  dispute  had  reached  its  culmi- 
nation, may  be  seen  in  the  earlier  and  non-political  verse  of 
Freneau  and  John  Trumbull.  As  a  token,  also,  of  the  intel- 
lectual habits  of  that  age,  the  fact  should  not  be  overlooked 
that  the  arrival  of  this  rather  flippant  literary  mode  was  not 
accepted  without  a  shock  of  alarm  and  disapproval,  espe- 
cially in  the  more  sedate  communities;  as  was  discovered, 
for  example,  by  the  most  brilliant  master  of  satire  in  New 
England,  where,  as  he  complained, 

*' priests  drive  poets  to  the  lurch 

By  fulminations  of  the  church  ; 
Mark  in  our  title-page  our  crimes, 
Find  heresies  in  double  rhymes, 
Charge  tropes  with  damnable  opinion, 
And  prove  a  metaphor  Arminian, 
Peep  for  our  doctrines,  as  at  windows, 
And  pick  out  creeds  of  innuendoes."  ' 

It  happened,  moreover,  that  just  at  the  beginning  of  our 
Revolutionary  era,  an  enormous  impulse  was  given  to  the 
use  of  political  satire  in  England,  and  consequently  in 
America,  through  the  tumultuous  and  dazzling  success  of 
Charles  Churchill.  Having  in  1761,  acquired  sudden  noto- 
riety by  his  three  non-political  satires,  "  The  Rosciad," 
"  The  Apology,"  and  "  Night,"  it  was  in  1762  and  by  his 
"  Prophecy  of  Famine" — a  tremendous  onslaught  on  the 

1  Trumbull,  "  Poetical  Works,"  ii.  75- 


24  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

x 

Scottish  and  other  political  enemies  of  Wilkes — that  this 
brilliant  but  disorderly  genius  burst  into  the  field  of  English 
politics.  Though  his  profligate  life  came  to  a  sudden  end 
only  two  years  afterward,  yet  in  that  brief  interval,  and 
through  a  rapid  succession  of  satirical  poems,  such  as  "  The 
Duellist,"  "  Gotham,"  "  The  Candidate,"  and  "  The 
Ghost,"  he  had  astonished  the  English  and  the  American 
public  by  the  energy  and  variety  of  his  resources  in  the 
literary  expression  of  political  hate  and  scorn,  and  had 
given  thereby  a  fresh  revelation  of  the  effectiveness  of  satire 
in  political  warfare.  No  one  can  fail  to  see,  also,  that  upon 
all  his  work,  hasty  and  vindictive  as  much  of  it  is,  may  be 
found,  as  John  Forster  has  declared,  "  the  coarse  broad 
mark  of  sincerity."  It  is  true  that  the  impulse  thus  given 
by  Churchill  to  the  employment  of  political  satire  in  verse 
was,  as  it  deserved  to  be,  almost  as  brief  as  it  was  violent ;. 
yet  the  greatness  of  his  temporary  Influence  is  shown,  not 
only  in  the  fear  of  him  and  in  the  flattery  of  him  on  the 
part  of  some  of  the  most  powerful  politicians  in  England, 
but  in  the  admiration  or  the  enmity  with  which  he  was 
regarded  by  the  greatest  of  his  literary  contemporaries. 
Goldsmith  described  him  as  a  mere  partisan  versifier  "  dig- 
nified with  the  name  of  poet,"  whose  "  tawdry  lampoons 
are  called  satires,"  whose  "  turbulence  is  said  to  be  force, 
and  his  phrensy  fire. "  a  "  I  called  the  fellow  a  blockhead 
at  first,"  said  Dr.  Johnson  in  1763,  "  and  I  call  him  a  block- 
head still";  the  "temporary  currency"  of  Churchill's 
poetry  being  due,  as  the  same  critic  thought,  only  to  "  its 
audacity  of  abuse,"  and  to  its  "  being  filled  with  living 
names."'  Cowper,  on  the  other  hand,  declared  that 
Churchill  was  a  great  poet;  that  Churchill's  merits  were 
above  those  of  "  any  other  contemporary  writer  "  ;  indeed, 
that  for  the  technique  of  his  art  he  made  Churchill  his 

1  "Edinburgh  Review,"  Ixxxi.  69. 

8  This  was  in  the  dedication  to  "The  Traveller,"  published  in  December,. 
1764,  only  a  month  after  Churchill's  death.     Goldsmith's  "  Works,"  i.  4. 
3  Boswell,  "  Life  of  Johnson,"  i.  419,  418. 


POLITICAL   SATIRES.  2$ 

model.1  At  the  sudden  death  of  this  poet  militant  many 
an  eminent  man  in  England  seems  to. have  breathed  a  sigh 
of  relief;  and  the  curious  mixture  of  admiration  and  alarm 
with  which  some  of  them  had  regarded  him,  is  well  con- 
veyed in  the  comment  made  by  Horace  Walpole  on  the 
news  of  Churchill's  abrupt  disappearance  from  the  scene: 
"  The  meteor  blazed  scarce  four  years."  J 

Of  course,  it  is  not  without  some  effort  of  the  imagination 
that  we  shall  now  bring  ourselves  to  understand  the  great- 
ness of  this  satirist's  influence  on  the  literary  method  of 
political  controversy,  especially  in  America.  Much  of  that 
oblivion  which  Johnson  then  so  confidently  predicted  for 
Churchill's  poetry,  has  long  since  befallen  it.  That  his  very 
name  has  now  become  indistinct  to  the  mass  of  readers,  and 
that  the  sort  of  writing  he  did  has  lost  its  hold  upon  the 
public  respect,  are  abundantly  implied  in  the  question  lately 
asked  by  a  clever  English  critic — "  Where  is  the  great,  the 
terrific,  the  cloud-compelling  Churchill  ? "  This  is  a  ques- 
tion, indeed,  which  no  one  in  America  could  have  asked 
during  the  two  decades  of  American  literature  which  we  are 
about  to  survey.  Certainly,  second  only  to  the  political 
essay,  among  the  literary  forces  of  the  American  Revolution, 
was  the  political  satire,  and  the  political  satire  as  stimulated 
by  the  success  and  shaped  by  the  method  of  Churchill;  and 
without  a  clear  recognition  of  Churchill's  influence  upon  our 
writers,  will  it  be  impossible  to  understand  this  extremely 
important  phase  of  the  Revolutionary  controversy. 

It  is  true  that  in   that  controversy  no  great  place  was^j 
given  to  satire  until  about  the  year  1775 — that  is,  until  the/ 
debate  had  nearly  passed  beyond  the  stage  of  argument. 
From  that  time,  however,  and  until  very  near  to  the  close  1 
of  the  Revolution,  this  form  of  literature  rivalled,  and  at  I 

1  Southey,  "  Life  and  Works  of  Cowper,"  i.  61. 

9  Cited  in  an  article  on  Churchill  in  "Edinburgh  Review,"  Ixxxi.  86. 
This  article,  which  was  by  John  Forster,  is  perhaps  the  best  critical  account  of 
Churchill  yet  made.  In  Southey's  "Life  of  Cowper"  is  an  interesting  and 
helpful  chapter  on  Churchill. 

3  Edmund  Gosse,  "Questions  at  Issue,"  105. 


26  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

times  almost  set  aside,  the  political  essay  as  an  instrument 
of  impassioned  political  strife.  On  the  Revolutionist  side, 
the  chief  masters  of  political  satire  were  Francis  Hopkinson, 
John  Trumbull,  and  Philip  Freneau.  On  the  side  of  the 
Loyalists,  the  satirical  poet  who  in  art  and  in  power  sur- 
\passed  all  his  fellows,  was  Jonathan  Odell. 

XI. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  for  us  to  forget  that  the  develop- 
ment of  political  thought  and  emotion  during  the  American 
Revolution  may  be  traced  in  other  forms  of  verse  than  in 
the  form  of  regular  satire, — in  forms  of  verse,  also,  less  arti- 
ficial than  such  satire,   nearer  to  the   primary  modes  and 
impulses  of  human  nature,  more  spontaneous,  more  direct, 
more  universal.     For  the  sixth  class  of  writings,  then,  char- 
i  acteristic    of   the   period,   we  may  take   the   popular  lyric 
I  poetry  of  the   Revolution, — the   numberless   verses,    com- 
monly quite  inelaborate  and  unadorned,  that  were  written 
to  be  sung  at  the  hearth-stone,  by  the  camp-fire,  on  the 
march,  on  the  battle-field,  in  all  places  of  solemn  worship, — 
songs  for  the  new  fatherland,  for  home,  for  liberty, — party- 
songs,  army-songs,  ballads,  and  hymns  of  patriotic  thank- 
fulness and  trust.     Indeed,  we  shall  find  the  path  of  that 
tremendous  conflict,  especially  the  latter  half  of  it,  to  be 
strown  with  verses  that  seem  to  have  sprung  up  like  wild 
flowers  almost  from  the  very  ground  over  which  angry  men 
were  trampling,  and  that  still  seem  to  breathe  forth  what 
was  then  in  the  hearts  of  the  sorely  divided  people  of  this 
land.     Without  doubt,  these  folk-songs  of   the  American 
Revolution    should    now  be   of   uncommon    use  to   us,   as 
embodying,  often  roughly,  always  frankly,  the  sincere  aspi- 
/  rations  and  antipathies  of  both  parties  in  the  war,   or  as 
\portraying   those    incidents   of   the   long   struggle,   heroic, 
[  pathetic,  tragic,  or  mirthful,  which  at  the  time  appealed  to 
\the  admiration,  or  sympathy  of  the  people,  to  their  hope, 
jor  fear,  or  hatred,  and,  in  many  cases,  to  their  mere  delight 


DRAMATIC    WRITINGS— PROSE  NARRATIVES.          27 

in  the  drolleries  which  always  abound  in  the  midst  of  hap- 
penings the  most  serious. 

Our_sevenlh_class_.of  Revolutionary  writings  will  gather 
/  up  the  numerous-literary  memorials  of  the  long  struggle  as 
(   a  mere  wit-combat,  a  vast  miscellany  of  humorous  produc- 
\tions  in  verse  and  prose  which,  trivial  as  they  may  seem,  are 
lyet  too  characteristic  of  the  spirit  and  method  of  a  great 
\jiistoric  conflict  to  be  here  justly  left  out  of  the  account. 
In  these  writings,  we  shall  note  the  actual  play  of  popular 
humor  disporting  itself  amid  all  the  ferocities  of  the  conflict, 
the  very  jokes  and  jibes  of  the  contestants,  their  frolicsome 
moods,  even  while  .in  the  act  of  fighting,  their  interpolations 
of  loud  laughter  into  the  text  of  a  composition  that  was  in 
the  main  sufficiently  serious,  their  literary  burlesques,  paro- 
dies, hoaxes,  all  the  slight  and  casual  reliques  of  the  war  as 
a  war  of  ridicule  and  sarcastic  repartee. 

For  tV)p_eijrh<-h  ^1a<^  of  Revolutionary  writings,  partly  in 
prose,  chiefly  in  verse,  we  shall  bring  together  thejjramatic 
compositions  of  the  period, — a  class  not  inconsiderable  in 
nurrTEer,  in  variety,  in  vigor,  and  thoroughly  representative 
both  of  the  humor  and  of  the  tragic  sentiment  of  the 
period. 

Finally,  to  the  ninth  class  belong  those  prose  narratives) 
that  sprang  out  of  the  actual  experiences  of  the  Revolution,! 
and  that  have  embodied  such   experiences   in  the  several/ 
forms  of  personal  diaries,  military  journals,  tales  of  adven-j 
ture  on  land  or  sea,  and  especially  records  of  suffering  in 
the  military  prisons.     Besides  these,  there  are  several  elab- 
orate contemporary  histories  of  the  Revolution,  as  the  third 
volume  of  Hutchinson's  "  History  of  Massachusetts,"  the 
four  volumes  of  Gordon's  "  History  of  the  Rise,  Progress, 
and    Establishment    of   the    Independence    of    the    United 
States  of  America,"  and  the  three  volumes  of  Mercy  War- 
ren's "  History  of  the  Rise,  Progress,  and  Termination  of 
the  American  Revolution." 


28  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

XII. 

The  classification  we  have  thus  made  of  the  somewhat 
diversified  mass  of  writings  handed  down  to  us  from  the 
American  Revolution,  should  help  us  to  form  injidyance  a 
'[sufficiently  clear  general  view  of  the  range  and  nature  of 
\  those  writings,  without  imposing  upon  us  any  needless 
mechanical  restraints  as  we  try  to  comejnto  direct  contact 
with  them.  In  the  further  prosecution  of  our  studies,  i& 
will  be  best  for  us  to  deal  with  the  various  writings  included  ] 
in  these  several  groups,  chiefly  according  to  their  historic  . 
sequence, — in  the  very  order  of  time  wherein  they  severally 
came  into  life  and  wrought  their  work  in  the  world, — thus 
permitting  the  principal  members  of  these  different  groups 
of  literature  to  appear  upon  these  pages,  and  to  unfold  their 
message  to  us,  somewhat  as  they  actually  made  their  first 
appearance  in  the  successive  scenes  of  that  great  transaction 
in  which  they  bore  so  significant  a  part. 

This,  of  course,  is  not  the  place  in  which  to  express  a 
critical  judgment  upon  these  writings,  either  as  separate 
productions  in  literature,  or  as  forming  a  collective  body  of 
literature  associated  with  a  great  period  in  our  national 
history.  Moreover,  the  chief  purpose  of  the  present  work 
is  to  call  attention  to  these  writings,  not  so  much  for  their 
independent  artistic  value  as  for  their  humanistic  and  his- 
toric value,  interpreting,  as  they  do,  with  direct  and  undis- 
guised speech,  the  very  spirit  and  life  and  inward  process  of 
the  American  Revolution,  nay,  the  very  spirit  and  life  and 
character,  the  motives,  the  secret  moods  and  experiences, 
of  that  race  of  Americans  who  were  concerned  in  bringing 
about  the  Revolution,  or  in  trying  to  stay  its  progress. 
Even  the  French  people — a  nation  of  artists  almost  from 
their  birth,  to  whom,  especially,  literary  art  appeals  with  a 
delicate  force  seldom  known  among  us — do  not  fail  to  recog- 
nize the  legitimacy  and  the  high  worth  of  this  purely  repre- 
sentative aspect  of  literature.  "  La  litterature,"  they  are 
accustomed  to  say,  "  est  1'expression  de  la  soci£te."  It  is 

1  J.  Demogeot,  "  Histoire  de  la  Litterature  Frar^aise,"  565. 


LITERATURE  HUMANISTIC.  29 

precisely  this  aspect  of  literature  which  we  have  chiefly 
before  us,  as  we  here  study  the  writings  of  the  American 
people  in  the  period  now  under  consideration, — viewing 
American  literature,  then,  chiefly  as  the  expression  of 
American  society,  stirred,  and  at  last  convulsed,  by  the 
pangs  and  throes  of  Revolution.  Respecting  the  soundness 
of  our  method,  we.  scarcely  need  to  be  troubled  by  any 
doubt :  we  are  but  trying  to  come  to  an  immediate  and 
somewhat  intimate  knowledge  of  the  American  people  in 
their  most  heroic  age,  by  means  of  that  through  which,  in 
any  age,  according  to  Matthew  Arnold,  "  a  people  best 
express  themselves — their  literature."  '  Whatever,  there- 
fore, may  be  our  final  conclusion  as  to  the  purely  artistic 
value  of  this  portion  of  American  literature,  it  must  con- 
tinue to  have  a  deep  interest  for  us,  and  in  some  degree  for 
all  other  students  of  the  history  of  human  nature,  as  con- 
taining a  perfectly  sincere  revelation  of  themselves  on  the 
part  of  a  high-spirited  people  in  a  supreme  crisis  of  their 
development.  For,  as  has  been  nobly  said,  in  our  own  time, 
by  a  most  exacting  master  and  critic  of  literary  art,  "  noth- 
ing which  has  ever  interested  living  men  and  women  can 
wholly  lose  its  vitality — no  language  they  have  spoken,  nor 
oracle  by  which  they  have  hushed  their  voices,  no  dream 
which  has  once  been  entertained  by  actual  human  minds, 
nothing  about  which  they  have  ever  been  passionate,  or 
expended  time  and  zeal."  * 

1  "  On  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature,"  24. 

8  Walter  H.  Pater,  "  Studies  in  the  History  of  the  Renaissance,"  38. 


CHAPTER   II. 

THE  PRELUDE   OF   POLITICAL  DEBATE:     1761-1764. 

I. — The  part  of  James  Otis  in  the  early  development  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion. 

II. — The  argument  on  the  petition  for  writs  of  assistance  in  the  Superior  Court 
of  Massachusetts,  1761 — The  character  and  effects  of  Otis's  speech — Con- 
temporary testimony  of  John  Adams. 

III. — Otis's  early  career — His  interest  in  classical  studies — His  "  Rudiments  of 
Latin  Prosody" — His  "  Rudiments  of  Greek  Prosody" — His  sound  taste 
in  modern  literature — His  traits  as  a  controversial  writer. 

IV. — Otis  takes  the  lead  of  political  opinion  in  New  England — In  the  Massa- 
chusetts house  of  representatives,  he  calls  to  account  the  royal  governor. 

V. — Otis  publishes  "  The  Vindication  of  the  House  of  Representatives,"  1762 
— Its  importance  in  the  development  of  constitutional  ideas  in  America— 
Its  leading  propositions — Its  relation  to  the  subsequent  literature  of  Revolu- 
tionary controversy. 

VI. — Otis  recognizes  the  new  and  stronger  spirit  of  British  colonial  policy, 
beginning  with  the  Peace  of  Paris,  in  1763 — The  act  of  Parliament  for 
raising  an  imperial  revenue  from  the  colonies,  April,  1764 — Official  notifi- 
cation of  the  Stamp  Act. 

VII. — Otis  arraigns  this  new  policy  in  "The  Rights  of  the  British  Colonies 
Asserted  and  Proved,"  July,  1764 — Outline  of  this  pamphlet — Its  character 
and  power. 

VIII. — Otis's  object  was  to  find  a  constitutional  basis  for  the  permanent  con- 
nection of  the  colonies  with  the  British  empire. 

IX. — The  debate  carried  on  by  Oxenbridge  Thacher,  in  "  The  Sentiments  of  a 
British  American,"  September,  1764 — Thacher's  personal  history — The 
rational  and  conciliatory  spirit  of  his  argument  for  the  recognition  of 
American  rights  within  the  empire. 

X. — Two  other  pamphlets  for  the  same  object,  but  from  the  industrial  and  com- 
mercial point  of  view — "An  Essay  on  the  Trade  of  the  Northern  Colonies," 
Philadelphia,  1764 — "Some  Thoughts  on  the  Method  of  Improving  and 
Securing  the  Advantages  which  accrue  to  Great  Britain  from  the  Northern 
Colonies,"  New  York,  1764. 

I 

No  student  of  the  American  Revolution  can  have  failed  to 
notice    how,    from    beginning    to    end,    its    several    stages 


JAMES  OTIS.  31 

unfolded  themselves  and  succeeded  one  another  with  some- 
thing of  the  logical  sequence,  the  proportion,  and  the  unity 
of  a  well-ordered  plot.  It  is  quite  other  than  a  rhetorical 
commonplace  to  speak  of  the  Revolution  as  a  drama.  And 
in  this  drama,  James  Otis  was  a  very  great  actor.  His 
mighty  part,  however,  was  played  and  completed  in  the 
earlier  Acts.  At  the  outset,  no  one  is  so  prominent  and  so 
predominant.  He  even  speaks  the  prologue.  It  is  he  who 
rushes  upon  the  front  of  the  stage  in  the  first  Scene,  in  the 
second,  in  the  third.  As  the  play  goes  on,  he  is  still  in  the 
foreground, — his  flashing  eyes,  his  passionate  words,  his 
gestures  of  anger  or  of  supplication,  his  imperious  personal- 
ity, seeming  to  direct  the  course  of  events,  and  to  mark 
him  as  the  hero  of  the  whole  plot.  But,  suddenly,  long 
before  the  climax  is  reached,  he  disappears  from  the  stage 
altogether:  he  no  longer  has  any  relation  to  the  play,  except 
as  one  of  the  motley  crowd  that  are  watching  its  progress, 
— a  breathing  effigy  of  James  Otis,  a  man  of  disordered 
intellect  and  unsteady  will,  being  occasionally  seen  moving 
mournfully  through  the  lobbies  qf  the  theatre,  and  even 
gazing  as  a  bewildered  spectator  upon  the  culmination  of  a 
plot  which  had  once  seemed  to  derive  its  chief  force  and 
direction  from  him.  James  Otis  has  no  real  part  in  thej 
Revolution  after  1769. 

II. 


In  February,  of  the  year  1761,  the  council-chamber  of  the 
Old  Town  House,  in  Bostoii^was  the  scene  of  a  great  legal 
debate.  The  room  was  a  splendid  and  a  stately  one.  The 
superior  court  of  the  colony  was  in  session  there.  The  five 
judges,  including  the  chief-justice,  presided  in  full  wigs, 
bands,  and  robes  of  scarlet.  From  full-length  portraits  on 
the  walls,  Chares  the  Second  and  James  the  Second  seemed 
to  look  down  with  mute  indignation  upon  an  assemblage  of 
provincial  politicians  and  lawyers,  one  of  whom  at  least  pre- 
sumed on  that  occasion  to  discuss  the  spirit  of  their  reigns 


32  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

and  the  limits  of  the  royal  prerogative,  with  an  uncourtly 
frankness  for  which,  had  they  been  anything  but  painted 
kings,  they  would  have  sent  him  to  the  Tower.  A  great 
throng  of  people  filled  the  place.  The  cause  to  be  argued 
there  might  at  first  glance  seem  to  be  one  of  no  great 
importance, — that  of  the  legality  of  granting  new  writs  of 
assistance  to  officers  of  the  customs  in  the  ports  of  Massa- 
chusetts,— the  old  writs,  which  had  been  freely  granted  in 
that  colony  under  the  reign  of  George  the  Second,  being 
then  about  to  expire  in  consequence  of  the  death  of  that 
monarch.1  Slight  as  the  question  may  seem,  it  did  in  fact 
reach  very  far;  it  involved  the  property,  the  political  stand- 
ing, the  liberties,  the  passions,  of  all  the  American  colonists 
of  England ;  and  the  trial  of  it,  in  the  presence  of  that  great 
and  excited  assemblage,  may  be  said  to  have  begun  a  new 
era  in  the  history  of  the  human  race." 

The  argument  for  the  writ  was  made  by  Jeremy  Gridley. 
The  case  in  opposition  was  then  argued,  in  the  first  instance, 
by  Oxenbridge  Thacher,  a  lawyer  eminent  for  ability  and 
probity,  who,  according  tp  the  testimony  of  one  who  heard 
him,  spoke  "  with  the  softness  of  manners,  the  ingenuity 
and  cool  reasoning,  which  were  remarkable  in  his  amiable 
character."  '  Then  Otis  arose  to  speak  upon  the  same  side. 
Of  the  speech  which  he  thus  made,  the  historic  importance, 
with  reference  to  the  American  Revolution,  has  doubtless 


1  The  account  above  given  of  the  origin  of  this  celebrated  case  differs  in 
some  important  particulars  from  that  usually  given,  e.  g.,  in  George  Bancroft, 
"  Hist.  U.  S.,"  last  rev.,  ii.  531  ;  in  Tudor,  "  Life  of  Otis,"  52-53  ;  and  in  J. 
Adams,  "Works,"  x.  246-247.  This  part  of  my  narrative  is  founded  on 
Quincy's  "  Reports  of  Cases  Argued  and  Adjudged  in  the  Superior  Court  of 
Judicature  of  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  between  1761  and  1772"; 
especially  its  learned  "Appendix  I.,"  on  Writs  of  Assistance,  395-540.  The 
last  is  an  important  contribution  to  the  early  history  of  our  Revolution,  being 
the  work  of  Horace  Gray,  formerly  of  the  Suffolk  bar,  now  one  of  the  Justices 
of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States. 

5  "  This  is  the  opening  scene  of  American  resistance,"  Bancroft,  "  Hist.  U. 
S.,"  last  rev.,  ii.  546. 

'  J.  Adams,  "  Works,"  x.  247. 


/ JAMES  OTIS.  33 

been  overestimated  by  some  writers.  It  is  not  an  overesti- 
mation  of  it  to  say,  that  it  forms  a  notable  landmark  in  the 
history  of  our  relations  to  the  Mother  Country :  it  is  in  itself 
an  authentic  token  of  that  sensitive  and  proud  condition  of 
the  American  colonial  mind  out  of  which  all  the  later  acts 
of  Revolutionary  resistance  were  born ;  while,  among  the 
younger  leaders  of  public  opinion  in  the  colony  of  Massa- 
chusetts, it  gave  a  distinct  addition  both  to  that  sensitive- 
ness and  to  that  pride.  Only  a  few  weeks  before,  Otis  had 
laid  down  the  office  of  advocate-general,  for  the  reason  that 
he  could  not  support  this  very  application  for  writs  of 
assistance, — these  being  a  judicial  precept  which  he  proceeded 
to  describe  as  "  the  worst  instrument  of  arbitrary  power, 
the  most  destructive  of  English  liberty  and  the  fundamental 
principles  of  law,  that  ever  was  found  in  an  English  law- 
book."  "  I  must  therefore,"  he  continued,  "  beg  your 
honors'  patience  and  attention  to  the  whole  range  of  an 
argument  that  may  perhaps  appear  uncommon  in  many 
things,  as  well  as  to  points  of  learning  that  are  more  remote 
and  unusual.  ...  I  shall  not  think  much  of  my  pains 
in  this  cause,  as  I  engaged  in  it  from  principle.  I  was  solic- 
ited to  argue  this  cause  as  advocate-general ;  and  because  I 
would  not,  I  have  been  charged  with  desertion  from  my 
office.  To  this  charge  I  can  give  a  very  sufficient  answer. 
I  renounced  that  office,  and  I  argue  this  cause,  from  the 
same  principle;  and  I  argue  it  with  the  greater  pleasure,  as 
it  is  in  favor  of  British  liberty,  at  a  time  when  we  hear  the 
greatest  monarch  upon  earth  declaring  from  his  throne  that 
he  glories  in  the  name  of  Briton,  and  that  the  privileges  of 
his  people  are  dearer  to  him  than  the  most  valuable  prerog- 
atives of  his  crown ; '  and  as  it  is  in  opposition  to  a  kind  of 

1  "  Born  and  educated  in  this  country,  I  glory  in  the  name  of  Briton.  .  .  . 
The  civil  and  religious  rights  of  my  loving  subjects  are  equally  dear  to  me  with 
the  most  valuable  prerogatives  of  my  crown."  From  the  speech  of  the  young 
king,  George  III.,  on  opening  the  first  parliament  after  his  accession,  18  Nov- 
ember, 1760.  Hansard,  "  Parl.  Hist,  of  Eng.,"  xv.  982.  This  allusion  in 
Otis's  argument  touched  most  expertly  a  royal  utterance  which  was  just  then 
not  only  a  fresh  topic  of  news  in  Boston,  but  a  theme  of  prodigious  interest 


34  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

power,  the  exercise  of  which,  in  former  periods  of  English 
history,  cost  one  king  of  England  his  head,  and  another  his 
throne.  .  .  .  The  writ  prayed  for  in  this  petition,  being 
general,  is  illegal.  It  is  a  power  that  places  the  liberty  of 
every  man  in  the  hands  of  every  petty  officer.  ...  In 
the  first  place,  the  writ  is  universal,  being  directed  . 
to  every  subject  in  the  king's  dominions.  Every  one,  with 
this  writ,  may  be  a  tyrant.  If  this  commission  be  legal,  a 
tyrant  in  a  legal  manner  may  control,  imprison,  or  murder 
any  one  within  the  realm.  In  the  next  place,  it  is  perpet- 
ual: there  is  no  return.  A  man  is  accountable  to  no  person 
for  his  doings.  Every  man  may  reign  secure  in  his  petty 
tyranny,  and  spread  terror  and  desolation  around  him.  In 
the  third  place,  a  person  with  this  writ,  in  the  day  time, 
may  enter  all  houses,  shops,  etc.,  at  will,  and  command  all 
to  assist  him.  .  .  .  Now,  one  of  the  most  essential 
branches  of  English  liberty  is  the  freedom  of  one's  house. 
This  writ,  if  it  should  be  declared  legal,  would 
totally  annihilate  this  privilege.  Custom-house  officers  may 
enter  our  houses  when  they  please.  .  .  .  Their  menial 
servants  may  enter,  may  break  locks,  bars,  and  everything 
in  their  way;  and  whether  they  break,  through  malice  or 
revenge,  no  man,  no  court,  can  enquire.  .  .  .  Thus, 
reason  and  the  constitution  are  both  against  this  writ.  Let 
us  see  what  authority  there  is  for  it.  Not  more  than  one 
instance  can  be  found  in  all  our  law-books ;  and  that  was  in 
the  zenith  of  arbitrary  power,  namely,  in  the  reign  of 
Charles  II.,  when  star-chamber  powers  were  pushed  to- 
extremity  by  some  ignorant  clerk  of  the  exchequer.  But 
had  this  writ  been  in  any  book  whatever,  it  would  have  been 
illegal.  All  precedents  are  under  the  control  of  the  princi- 

throughout  the  whole  British  empire.  The  playfulness  of  Thackeray's  comment, 
some  fifty  years  ago,  on  the  famous  saying  of  young  George  III.,  should  not 
keep  us  from  seeing  how  shrewdly  it  penetrates  into  the  inner  truth  of  history  : 
"Our  chief  troubles  began  when  we  got  a  king  who  gloried  in  the  name  of 
Briton,  and  being  born  in  the  country,  proposed  to  rule  it."  "The  Four 
Georges,"  39. 


JAMES  OTIS.  35 

pies  of  law.  Lord  Talbot  says  it  is  better  to  observe  these 
than  any  precedents.  .  .  .  No  acts  of  parliament  can 
establish  such  a  writ.  .  .  .  An  act  against  the  constitu- 
tion is  void."  ' 

These  sentences,  being  a  part  of  some  notes  taken  on  the 
spot  by  a  young  lawyer  who  was  eagerly  watching  the 
scene,"  can  give  probably  but  a  faint  idea  of  the  intellectual 
range  and  force  of  an  argument  which  occupied  four  or  five 
hours  in  the  delivery,  which  exhibited  great  learning  and 
acuteness,  and  which  constantly  presented  the  subject  as 
having  relations  infinitely  larger  and  more  solemn  than  the 
particular  topic  out  of  which  it  grew,  showing,  as  its  reporter 
testifies,  "  not  only  the  illegality  of  the  writ,  its  insidious 
and  mischievous  tendency,  but  .  ...  the  views  and 
designs  of  Great  Britain,  in  taxing  us,  of  destroying  our 
charters,  and  assuming  the  powers  of  our  government,  leg- 
islative, executive,  and  judicial,  external  and  internal,  civil 
and  ecclesiastical,  temporal  and  spiritual ;  and  all  this 
with  such  a  profusion  of  learning,  such  convincing 
argument,  and  such  a  torrent  of  sublime  and  pathetic  elo- 
quence, that  a  great  crowd  of  spectators  and  auditors  went 
away  absolutely  electrified." 

And  the  witness,  to  whose  somewhat  exuberant  memo- 
randa we  are  indebted  for  the  only  original  description  we 
have  of  this  great  scene,  and  who  was  himself  just  entering 
upon  his  own  sturdy  career  in  the  service  of  his  country, 
seemed  to  the  very  end  of  his  life  to  dwell  with  almost 
equal  enthusiasm  upon  the  splendor  and  power  of  Otis's 
oratory  on  that  day,  and  upon  the  historic  significance  of 
the  wonderful  speech  in  which  Otis  thus  exhibited  it. 
"  James  Otis  was  Isaiah  and  Ezekiel  united."  4  His  speech 

1 J.  Adams,  "  Works,"  ii.  523-525. 

*Ibid.  ii.  124  n.  Also  Horace  Gray  in  App.  to  Quincy's  "  Mass.  Reports," 
479.  The  notes  actually  taken  in  the  court  room  by  John  Adams  seem  to  have 
been  written  out  with  care  shortly  afterward  ;  and  it  is  from  these  revised  notes 
that  I  have  quoted. 

3J.  Adams,  "Works,"  x.  183. 

4  Ibid.  272. 


36  777  E  AMERICA  A7  REVOLUTION. 

was  in  a  style  of  oratory  that  I  never  heard  equalled  in 
this  or  any  other  country."  "  Otis's  oration  against  writs 
of  assistance  breathed  into  this  nation  the  breath  of  life."  3 
"  Otis  was  a  flame  of  fire  !  With  a  promptitude  of  classical 
allusions,  a  depth  of  research,  a  rapid  summary  of  historical 
events  and  dates,  a  profusion  of  legal  authorities,  a  pro- 
phetic glance  of  his  eye  into  futurity,  and  a  torrent  of 
impetuous  eloquence,  he  hurried  away  everything  before 
him.  American  Independence  was  then  and  there  born; 
the  seeds  of  patriots  and  heroes  were  then  and  there  sown. 
.  .  .  Every  man  of  a  crowded  audience  appeared  to  me 
to  go  away,  as  I  did,  ready  to  take  up  arms  against  writs  of 
assistance.  Then  and  there  was  the  first  scene  of  the  first 
act  of  opposition  to  the  arbitrary  claims  of  Great  Britain."  3 


III. 


At  the  time  of  making  that  speech,  James  Otis  was  six- 
and-thirty  years  old.  After  his  graduation  at  Harvard,  at 
the  age  of  eighteen,  he  had  spent  a  year  and  a  half  at  home 
in  the  study  of  literature  and  philosophy;  then,  devoting 
himself  to  the  law,  he  had  begun  its  practice  at  Plymouth 
in  1748;  after  two  years  of  residence  there,  he  had  removed 
to  Boston,  and  in  spite  of  his  youth,  he  had  quickly  risen  to 
the  highest  rank  in  his  profession.  In  1760,  when  he  was 
five-and-thirty  years  old  and  had  been  for  twelve  years  in 
the  full  tide  of  a  laborious  law-practice,  he  proved  his  con- 
tinued devotion  to  fine  literary  studies  by  publishing  with- 
out his  name  a  book  entitled  "  The  Rudiments  of  Latin 
Prosody ;  with  a  Dissertation  on  Letters  and  the  Principles 

1  J.  Adams,  "  Works,"  x.  362. 

s  Ibid.  276. 

8  Ibid.  247-248.  This  characteristic  bit  of  declamation  by  John  Adams  has 
perhaps  been  taken  too  literally  and  too  seriously  by  some  writers,  as  by  W. 
V.  Wells,  who  in  his  "  Life  of  Samuel  Adams,"  i.  44,  has  tried  to  show  that 
Otis's  speech  "  was  not  the  prologue  of  the  great  drama."  See,  also,  WiW 
Ham  Wirt  Henry,  "  Life,  Corn,  and  Speeches  of  Patrick  Henry,"  i.  102. 


JAMES  OTIS.  37 

of  Harmony  in  Poetic  and  Prosaic  Composition," — a  book 
of  minute  and  precise  textual  scholarship, — a  book  which 
shows  that  its  author's  natural  aptitude  for  eloquence,  oral 
and  written,  had  been  developed  in  connection  with  the 
most  careful  technical  study  of  details.  No  one  would 
guess,  in  reading  that  book,  that  it  was  written  by  perhaps 
the  busiest  lawyer  and  politician  in  New  England.  It  seems 
rather  to  be  the  production  of  some  clever  and  painful 
classical  professor,  and  to  have  been  born  of  the  cloistered 
leisure  of  a  college.  Indeed,  so  deep  was  the  satisfaction  of 
James  Otis  in  these  tranquil  studies, — as  a  relief,  doubtless, 
from  the  rough  contentions  of  his  public  life, — that  he  wrote 
a  similar  treatise  on  "  The  Rudiments  of  Greek  Prosody," 
— which,  however,  was  never  printed,  but  perished  in  the 
general  conflagration  that,  by  his  own  hand,  overtook  all 
his  papers  near  the  close  of  his  life. 

Throughout  his  whole  career,  he  held  to  his  early  love  of 
the  Roman  and  Greek  classics,  particularly  of  Homer;  while 
in  English  his  literary  taste  was  equally  robust  and  whole- 
some. At  a  time  when  some  of  his  American  and  English 
contemporaries  were  surrendering  themselves  to  the  weak 
and  imitative  graces  of  that  brood  of  small  poets  then  chirp- 
ing in  England, — as  Shenstone,  William  Whitehead,  Aken- 
side,  Beattie, — this  New  England  lawyer  protested  against 
the  tendency,  and  pointed  away  to  the  true  masters  of 
English  verse.  To  a  young  man,  a  kinsman  and  a  name- 
sake of  his  own,  in  whose  education  he  took  a  special  inter- 
est, Otis  wrote  of  certain  Americans  as  being  then  "  very 
fond  of  talking  about  poetry,  and  repeating  passages  of  it. 
The  poets  they  quote  I  know  nothing  of;  but  do  you  take 
care,  James,  that  you  don't  give  in  to  this  folly.  If  you 
want  to  read  poetry,  read  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Dryden, 
and  Pope,  and  throw  all  the  rest  in  the  fire.  These  are  all 
that  are  worth  reading."  ' 

Yet  with  all  Otis's  soundness  of  taste  as  a  student  of  lit- 
erature, he  often  seemed  wholly  lacking  in  taste  when  he 

1  Tudor,  "  The  Life  of  James  Otis,"  16-17. 


38  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

himself  came  to  the  act  of  literary  composition.  He  was  a 
powerful  writer,  and  he  wrote  much ;  but  in  the  structure 
and  form  of  what  he  wrote,  there  are  few  traces  of  that 
'  enthusiasm  for  classical  literature  which  we  know  him  to 
have  possessed.  Perhaps  his  nature  was  too  harsh,  too  pas- 
sionate and  ill-balanced,  to  yield  to  the  culture  even  of  a 
literary  perfection  which  he  could  fully  recognize  and  enjoy 
in  others.  He  was,  above  all  things,  an  orator;  and  his 
\  oratory  was  of  the  tempestuous  kind — bold,  vehement, 
J  irregular,  overpowering.  When  he  took  pen  in  hand,  he 
was  an  orator  still ;  and  the  habit  of  extemporaneous,  impet- 
uous, and  reckless  expression  which  he  had  long  indulged  in 
at  the  bar,  controlled  him  at  his  desk.  In  writing  upon  any 
subject  of  controversy,  he  seemed  to  storm  across  his  own 
pages  in  mighty  rage,  even  as  he  had  been  accustomed  to 
pace  stormily  up  and  down  before  a  jury,  to  throw  to  the 
winds  all  the  classic  virtues  in  expression, — temperance, 
order,  lucidity;  to  catch  at  bold  allusions,  flaming  images, 
grotesque  comparisons;  and  to  leave  unrevised  upon  the 
paper,  and  in  all  its  original  extravagance  and  inaccuracy, 
whatsoever  in  the  fury  of  composition  he  had  once  flung 
down  upon  it.  He  seemed  even  to  despise  the  correction 
of  his  own  work,  perhaps  to  be  incapable  of  it.  Thus,  hav- 
ing on  one  occasion  composed,  on  behalf  of  the  house  of 
representatives  of  Massachusetts,  some  very  elaborate  and 
very  important  state-papers,  which  had  been  afterward  care- 
fully revised  and  corrected  by  his  political  compeer,  Samuel 
Adams,  Otis  said  at  the  time,  in  his  jocular  fashion, — "  I 
have  drawn  them  all  up,  and  given  them  to  Sam  to  '  quieu- 
whew  '  them,"  '—an  indispensable  literary  process  which, 
however  it  may  be  described,  his  own  writings  generally 
showed  abundant  proofs  of  lacking.  And  thus  it  came 
about,  that  the  man  whose  taste  in  reading  was  so  severely 

1  J.  Adams,  "  Works,"  x.  367  ;  Tudor,  "  Life  of  Otis,"  316-317.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  my  present  purpose  to  determine  just  what  the  papers  were  which 
Otis  thus  claimed  to  have  written.  See  important  note  by  W.  V.  Wells,  in  his 
"  Life  of  Samuel  Adams,"  i.  172-174. 


JAMES   OTIS.  39 

classic,  was  often  in  his  own  writing  an  unrestrained  bar- 
barian. Disproportion,  incoherence,  exaggeration,  coarse- 
ness, inaccuracy — these  are  faults  not  uncommon  in  his 
pages;  and  along  with  these,  was  a  certain  wildness  of  man- 
ner which  early  brought  upon  him,  especially  in  England, 
the  imputation  of  madness. 

But  great  as  are  the  literary  blemishes  upon  Otis's  work, 
[that  work  is  still  full  of  power.  Even  its  style,  with  all  its 
Gothic  irregularity  and  intemperance,  is  always  vivid  and 
significant, — at  times,  it  is  impressive  to  an  extraordinary 
degree.  His  learning  on  many  subjects  was  considerable, 
even  if  disorderly ;  and  he  had  instant  command  over  the 
resources  of  his  own  memory.  He  had,  moreover,  the  abil- 
ity to  grasp  quickly  all  the  principles  and  facts  of  a  given 
case,  to  pierce  to  the  core  of  them,  and  to  perceive  the  logic 
which  controlled  them ;  and  even  while  pressing  forward  in 
his  track  along  a  zigzag  path  of  his  own  choosing,  and  with 
many  a  wide  and  dangerous  sweep  of  digression,  he  yet 
never  lost  sight  of  the  logical  goal  which  he  had  set  out  to 
reach.  In  his  pamphlets,  too,  as  in  his  speeches,  he  gave  i 
free  rein  to  his  enjoyment  of  humor,  and  to  his  uncommon  ) 
faculty  of  sarcasm.  A  serious  discomfiture  of  his  opponent/ 
was  never  quite  enough  to  appease  his  ambition  in  debate  J 
he  must  also  cover  his  antagonist  with  ridicule,  and  drivel 
him  from  the  field  amid  shouts  of  derision. 

IV. 

Otis's  speech  against  writs  of  assistance  made  him  at  once 
a  leader  of  public  opinion  in  New  England  respecting  the 
constitutional  rights  of  the  colonies,  even  as  it  vastly 
increased  the  public  sensitiveness  respecting  official  encroach-  . 
ments  upon  those  rights.  In  the  following  year,  1762,' 
occurred  a  series  of  events  which  still  further  intensified  that 
sensitiveness,  and  gave  to  Otis  the  occasion  for  the  first  of 
those  powerful  controversial  pamphlets,  to  which  he  owes 
his  great  place  in  the  political  literature  of  the  Revolution. 


40  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that,  fully  three  years  before  the 
thirteen  colonies  were  aroused  by  the  Stamp-Act  to  an 
alarmed  consideration  of  their  constitutional  rights  in  the 
matter  of  taxation,  Otis  was  the  hero  of  a  little  struggle  in 
the  single  colony  of  Massachusetts,  in  which  he  had  the 
opportunity  of  rehearsing  in  miniature  the  part  he  was  to 
take  in  the  larger  subsequent  struggle  involving  the  whole 
continent ;  and  to  fix  clearly  in  his  own  mind  the  logical 
formula  under  which,  in  protecting  the  rights  of  Massachu- 
setts, the  rights  of  all  America  were  to  be  protected.  "  It 
shows  in  a  strong  light,"  as  John  Adams  thought,  "  the 
heaves  and  throes  of  the  burning  mountain,  three  years  at 
least  before  the  explosion  of  the  volcano  in  Massachusetts 
or  Virginia."  In  an  emergency  of  considerable  public 
danger,  but  at  a  time  when  the  colonial  legislature  was  not 
in  session,  Governor  Bernard,  with  the  advice  of  the  council, 
had  assumed  authority  to  fit  out  an  armed  vessel,  thereby 
incurring  an  expense  not  expressly  provided  for  by  the 
house  of  representatives.  A  few  years  before  that  time, 
such  an  act  on  the  part  of  the  governor  would  perhaps 
have  been  crowned  with  the  public  gratitude,  or  at  any  rate 
would  have  been  passed  over  without  disapproval.  It  de- 
notes the  alert  and  even  the  inflamed  condition  of  the  public 
mind  respecting  the  barriers  of  prerogative,  that  at  its  next 
session  the  house  of  representatives,  led  on  by  Otis,  boldly 
confronted  the  governor  with  its  stern  expostulation : — 
"  Justice  to  ourselves  and  to  our  constituents  obliges  us  to 
remonstrate  against  the  method  of  making  or  increasing 
establishments  by  the  governor  and  council.  It  is  in  effect 
taking  from  the  house  their  most  darling  privilege,  the  right 
of  originating  all  taxes.  It  is,  in  short,  annihilating  one 
branch  of  the  legislature.  And  when  once  the  representa- 
tives of  a  people  give  up  this  privilege,  the  government  will 
soon  become  arbitrary.  No  necessity,  therefore,  can  be 
sufficient  to  justify  a  house  of  representatives  in  giving  up 
such  a  privilege;  for  it  would  be  of  little  consequence  to  the 

1  "Works,"  x.  300. 


'•"JAMES  OTIS.  41 

people  whether  they  were  subject  to  George,  or  Louis,  the 
king  of  Great  Britain,  or  the  French  king,  if  both  were  arbi- 
trary, as  both  would  be,  if  both  could  levy  taxes  without 
parliament." 

On  the  very  same  day  on  which  this  bold  address  was 
sent  to  the  governor,  it  was  returned  by  him  to  the  house, 
with  a  message  earnestly  entreating  that  body  not  to  enter 
upon  its  minutes  the  words  in  which  the  "  sacred  and  well- 
beloved  name  "  of  the  king  was  "  so  disrespectfully  brought 
into  question."  Upon  the  reading  of  this  message,  and  in 
the  midst  of  great  excitement,  and  with  cries  of  "  raze 
them,"  "  raze  them,"  the  house  voted  to  expunge  the 
"  dreadful  words  under  which  his  excellency  "  had  "  placed 
a  black  mark."  But,  as  the  governor  still  persisted  in  the 
claim  that  his  course,  in  incurring  expense  not  authorized 
by  the  legislature,  was  justifiable,  the  house  appointed  a 
committee  to  present  to  the  public  a  more  careful  view  of 
its  own  position.  Of  this  committee,  Otis  was  a  member; 
and  performing  alone  the  work  which  had  been  assigned  to 
the  committee,  he  published,  in  the  autumn  of  1762,  "  A 
Vindication  of  the  Conduct  of  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives of  the  Province  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay :  more  particu- 
larly in  the  Last  Session  of  the  General  Assembly." 

V.  / 

The  importance  of  this  pamphlet  is  very  great,  as  illus- 
trating both  the  intellectual  traits  of  James  Otis  and  the 
development  in  America  of  clear  thought  and  of  keen 
anxiety  respecting  the  constitutional  rights  of  the  colonies. 
In  the  opinion  of  a  critic  inclined,  certainly,  to  set  its  full 
value  on  any  performance  of  Otis,  this  brochure  "  may  be 
considered  the  original  source,  from  which  all  subsequent 
arguments  against  taxation  were  derived."1  The-£xas- 

1  The  message  of  the  house,  from  which  these  sentences  are  taken,  was  of 
course  written  by  Otis.  "A  Vindication  of  the  Conduct,"  etc.,  15  ;  also,  Tudor, 
"  Life  of  Otis,"  119-120. 

9  Tudor,  "  Life  of  Otis,"  122. 


42  THE  AMERICAN  REVOI+UTIOX. 

perating  candor  of  the  pamphlet,  as  well  as  the  sting  deftly 
concealed  in  many  an  insinuation  along  its  pages,  is  not 
unfairly  suggested  even  by  the  rhymed  motto  which  con- 
fronts us  on  the  title-page : 

"  Let  such,  such  only,  tread  this  sacred  floor, 
Who  dare  to  love  their  country  and — be  poor  : 
Or,  good  though  rich,  humane  and  wise  though  great, — 
Jove  give  but  these,  we  've  nought  to  fear  from  fate." 

Passing  over  details  which  are  of  no  permanent  interest,  we 
find  that  Otis  here  bases  his  whole  argument  on  certain 
general  propositions  as  to  human  rights,  which  it  is  perhaps 
startling  to  see  thus  bluntly  proclaimed  in  the  colonies  so 
early  as  in  1762:  "  i.  God  made  all  men  naturally  equal. 
2.  The  ideas  of  earthly  superiority,  pre-eminence,  and  gran- 
deur are  educational  ; — at  least  acquired,  not  innate.  3. 
Kings  were, — and  plantation  governors  should  be, — made 
for  the  good  of  the  people,  and  not  the  people  for  them. 
4.  No  government  has  a  right  to  make  hobby-horses,  asses, 
and  slaves  of  the  subjects,  nature  having  made  sufficient  of 
the  two  former,  .  .  .  but  none  of  the  last, — which 
infallibly  proves  they  are  unnecessary.  5.  Though  most  gov- 
ernments are  '  de  facto  '  arbitrary,  and  consequently  the 
curse  and  scandal  of  human  nature,  yet  none  are  '  de  jure  ' 
arbitrary.  6.  The  British  constitution  of  government  as 
now  established  in  his  majesty's  person  and  family,  is  the 
wisest  and  best  in  the  world.  7.  The  king  of  Great  Britain 
is  the  best  as  well  as  most  glorious  monarch  upon  the  globe, 
and  his  subjects  the  happiest  in  the  universe.  8.  It  is  most 
humbly  presumed,  the  king  would  have  all  his  plantation 
governors  follow  his  royal  example,  in  a  wise  and  strict 
adherence  to  the  principles  of  the  British  constitution,  by 
which,  in  conjunction  with  his  other  royal  virtues,  he  is 
enabled  to  reign  in  the  hearts  of  a  brave  and  generous,  free 
and  loyal  people.  9.  This  is  the  summit,  the  '  ne  plus 
ultra,'  of  human  glory  and  felicity.  10.  The  French  king 


JAMES  OTIS.  43 

is  a  despotic  arbitrary  prince,  and  consequently  his  subjects 
are  very  miserable." 

Thus,  even  in  the  construction  of  a  constitutional  argu- 
ment, James  Otis  reveals  the  habit  of  his  mind,  wherein 
gravity  and  frolic,  logic  and  sarcasm,  all  rush  together  for 
expression.  And  the  entire  pamphlet  is  but  an  amplifica- 
tion of  the  ideas  and  the  feelings  which  color  these  words, 
— an  avowal  of  loyalty  to  the  king  so  hyperbolical  as  to 
suggest  its  dangerous  nearness  to  irony,  a  robust  assertion 
of  colonial  rights  under  the  British  constitution,  all  blended 
with  mirthful  and  contemptuous  allusions  to  any  man  who 
should  deny  or  qualify  those  rights.  Everywhere  he  stands 
for  the  freeman's  privilege  of  plain  speech  in  the  discussion 
of  matters  relating  to  the  state:  "  The  province  can  be  in 
no  danger  from  a  house  of  representatives  daring  to  speak 
plain  English,  when  they  are  complaining  of  a  grievance."  * 
And  he  never  lets  his  readers  lose  sight  of  the  greatness  of 
the  principle  at  the  bottom  of  all  their  petty  altercations 
with  provincial  governors  wanting  to  be  despots ;  declaring, 
for  instance,  that  if  the  doctrine  then  insisted  on  by  Gover- 
nor Bernard  in  Massachusetts  had  "  prevailed  in  England, 
we  should  have  heard  nothing  of  the  oppressions  and  mis- 
fortunes of  the  Charleses  and  the  Jameses ;  the  Revolution 
would  never  have  taken  place ;  the  genius  of  William  the 
Third  would  have  languished  in  the  fens  of  Holland,  or 
evaporated  in  the  plains  of  Flanders;  the  names  of  the 
three  Georges  would  doubtless  have  been  immortal, — but 
Great  Britain,  to  this  day,  might  have  been  in  chains  and 
darkness,  unblessed  with  their  influence."  ' 

Certainly,  the  interest  attaching  to  this  pamphlet  will  not 
be  diminished  by  a  remembrance  of  its  relation  to  the 
entire  body  of  political  literature  produced  in  America  dur- 
ing the  subsequent  twenty  years.  "  How  many  volumes," 
exclaimed  John  Adams,  with  some  characteristic  exaggera- 

1  "A  Vindication  of  the  Conduct,"  etc.,  17-21. 
8  Ibid.  25. 
3  Ibid.  44-45- 


44  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

tion,  "  are  concentrated  in  this  little  fugitive  pamphlet,  the 
production  of  a  few  hurried  hours,  amidst  the  continual 
solicitations  of  a  crowd  of  clients  !  .  Look  over  the 

declaration  of  rights  and  wrongs  issued  by  congress  in  1774. 
Look  into  the  Declaration  of  Independence  in  1776.  Look 
into  the  writings  of  Doctor  Price  and  Doctor  Priestley. 
Look  into  all  the  French  constitutions  of  government ;  and, 
to  cap  the  climax,  look  into  Mister  Thomas  Paine's  '  Com- 
mon Sense,'  '  Crisis,'  and  '  Rights  of  Man.'  What  can  you 
find  that  is  not  to  be  found,  in  solid  substance,  in  this 
'  Vindication  of  the  House  of  Representatives  '  ?  "  ' 

VI. 

Thus  far  in  his  career,  this  protagonist  for  colonial  rights 
had  grappled  only  with  the  subordinate  and  local  agents  of 
the  English  government, — with  such  small  foemen  as  cus- 
tom-house officers,  provincial  judges,  and  colonial  gov- 
ernors, all  of  whom  he  was  at  liberty  to  treat  as  though  they 
misrepresented  the  benignant  and  free  spirit  which  he 
adroitly  assumed  as  the  commanding  trait,  not  only  of  the 
British  empire,  but  of  its  king  and  of  its  king's  ministers. 
Behind  this  pleasant  fiction,  however,  he  was  not  long  per- 
mitted to  conduct  the  controversy.  The  new  zeal  of  Eng- 
lish officers  in  America  had  been  the  result  of  a  new  and  a 
sterner  policy  on  the  part  of  the  government  in  England ; 
and  by  the  middle  of  the  year  1764,  Otis  found  it  necessary 
to  look  beyond  the  petty  colonial  agents  and  consignees  of 
the  imperial  authority,  and  to  address  his  appeals  directly 
to  that  authority  itself. 

For  by  that  time,  the  evidence  had  become  irresistible  in 
the  colonies  that  England  had  entered  upon  a  new  and  a 
much  more  thorough  system  of  colonial  administration. 
Early  in  the  previous  year,  she  had  concluded  with  France 
that  proud  treaty,  whereby  she  received  from  her  ancient 
enemy  an  enormous  enlargement  of  her  territorial  posses- 

1  "  Works,"  x.  310-311. 


JAMES  OTIS.  45 

sions  in  America.  Under  all  the  circumstances,  it  was  but 
natural,  it  was  but  right,  that  England  should  think  that  at 
last  the  time  had  come  for  an  entire  readjustment  of  her 
somewhat  loose,  irregular,  and  unbusiness-like  relations  to 
those  American  possessions,  particularly  with  the  view  of 
making  them  contribute  some  substantial  help  to  the  gen- 
eral cost  of  the  empire,  in  the  benefits  of  which/they  all 
participated.  For  many  years,  acts  of  parliament  had  been 
nominally  in  force  in  the  colonies,  imposing  duties  on  the 
importation  of  various  articles  of  common  use ;  but  from  all 
these  sources  of  revenue,  and  along  with  an  outlay  of  more 
than  seven  thousand  pounds  a  year  for  its*  collection,  the 
treasury  had  received  only  an  insignificant  sum, — on  an 
average  of  thirty  years,  less  than  nineteen  hundred  pounds 
sterling  a  year.1  Up  and  down  the  entire  coast  of  America, 
the  revenue  laws  had  been  notoriously  evaded,  with  the 
corrupt  connivance,  in  many  cases,  of  the  very  officers  who 
had  been  appointed  to  execute  them. 

This  state  of  things  was  to  continue  no  longer.  A  com- 
prehensive scheme  of  colonial  reconstruction  was  to  be 
drawn  out.  The  laws  of  parliament  for  the  procurement  of 
a  revenue  from  America  were  to  be  strictly  enforced ;  and 
new  laws  were  to  be  passed  providing  for  a  still  larger  rev- 
enue. All  persons  concerned  in  the  collection  of  customs 
were  to  be  ordered  to  their  posts ;  their  numbers  were  to  be 
increased ;  more  stringent  instructions  were  to  be  given  to 
them ;  all  who  faltered  in  duty  were  to  be  dismissed.  More- 
over, the  governors  of  colonies,  and  all  other  officers  there, 
civil,  military,  or  naval,  were  to  co-operate  in  the  execution 
of  the  new  system,  the  efficiency  of  which,  likewise,  was  to  be 
still  further  strengthened  by  the  establishment  of  new  courts 
of  admiralty. 

All  these  tokens  of  a  change  in  policy  had  been  instantly 
noted  by  Otis  and  by  other  sagacious  American  observers, 
and  had  produced  throughout  the  colonies  no  little  uneasi- 

1  "  The  Regulations  lately  made  concerning  the  Colonies,"  57.  This 
pamphlet  was  inspired,  if  not  actually  written,  by  George  Grenville. 


46  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

ness,  when,  in  the  early  summer  of  1764,  news  arrived  which 
seemed  to  justify  their  gloomiest  apprehensions.  An  act 
had  just  passed, — so  it  was  announced, — not  only  retaining 
but  even  enlarging,  the  old  duties  and  restrictions  on  trade 
to  and  from  America;  for  example,  laying  new  and  larger 
imposts  on  foreign  wines,  molasses,  and  sugar.  But  this 
was  not  the  worst.  In  all  former  acts  of  this  kind,  the  pur- 
pose of  deriving  a  revenue  from  the  colonies  by  authority 
of  parliament,  had  been  mercifully  veiled  under  the  pretext 
of  simply  regulating  the  trade  of  the  empire.  Now,  all 
disguises  were  thrown  off.  ^or  the  first  time  in  the  history 
of  Knglish  legislation,  it  was  plainly  mentioned  in  an  act  of 
parliament  that  the  raising  of  a  revenue  from  the  colonies, 
by  its  direct  authority,  was  the  chief  intent  of  the  act.1 
And  even  this  was  not  the  worst.  "  These  new  taxes," 
wrote  one- of  the  secretaries  of  the  treasury,  "  will  certainly 
not  be  sufficient  to  defray  that  share  of  the  American  ex- 
pense which  America  ought,  and  is  able,  to  bear.  Others 
must  be  added."2  Among  those  others  loomed,  at  that 
moment,  the  dark  and  sinister  shape  of  the  Stamp  Act. 

This  latter  measure,  which  proved  to  be  of  so  mighty  an 
import  to  America,  to  England,  and  to  mankind,  it  had 
been  the  original  purpose  of  the  ministry  to  press  upon  the 
attention  of  the  house  of  commons  at  its  spring  session  in 
1764;  but  in  a  spirit  of  politic  forbearance,  they  had  con- 

1  For  the  resolutions  of  the  committee  of  ways  and  means,  during  the  session 
from  8  December,  1763,  to  19  April,  1764,  embodying  these  plans  for  regulating 
and  increasing  taxes  upon  the  colonies,  see  Hansard  "  Parl.  Hist,  of  Eng.,"  xv. 
1425-1434.  The  chief  legal  result  of  these  resolutions  was  the  act  passed 
during  that  session,  and  containing  in  its  preamble  these  epoch-making  words  : 
"  Whereas  it  is  expedient  that  new  provisions  and  regulations  should  be  estab- 
lished for  improving  the  revenue  of  this  kingdom,  and  for  extending  and 
securing  the  navigation  and  commerce  between  Great  Britain  and  your  majesty's 
dominions  in  America,  which,  by  the  peace,  have  been  so  happily  enlarged  ; 
and  whereas  it  is  just  and  necessary,  that 'a  revenue  be  raised,  in  your  majesty's 
said  dominions  in  America,  for  defraying  the  expenses  of  defending,  protecting, 
and  securing  the  same,"  etc.,  4  George  III.  c.  15.  "  Statutes  at  Large,"  ix. 
152-161. 

8  Quoted  in  Bancroft,  "  Hist,  of  U.  S.,"  last  rev.,  iii.  73. 


JAMES  OTIS.  47 

tented  themselves  with  giving  notice  of  their  intention  to 
bring  in  such  a  measure  at  the  next  session  of  parliament, 
in  the  following  year.1 

VII. 

The  significance  of  all  these  acts  of  the  home  govern- 
ment, no  man  in  America  saw  more  clearly  than  did  James 
Otis;  and  it  was  in  July,  1764,  in  the  midst  of  the  general 
anxiety  caused  by  the  news  of  them,  that  he  published  his 
gravest  and  most  elaborate  pamphlet,  "  The  Rights  of  the 
British  Colonies  Asserted  and  Proved."  " 

Of  all  his  political  writings,  this  is  the  most  sedate.  It 
has  even  a  tone  of  solemnity.  It  is  as  if  he  then  realized 
that  the  logical  movement  of  the  controversy  in  which  he 
had  become  involved,  was  rapidly  sweeping  him  onward  to 
a  position  of  appalling  responsibility;  from  which  soon 
there  would  be  no  path  of  retreat ;  in  which  he  would  have 
to  deal  no  longer  with  local  politicians  and  the  subordinate 
tools  of  power,  but  with  the  king  of  England  himself,  the 
peers  and  commons  of  England,  the  whole  illimitable  might 
of  the  British  empire  at  that  moment  victorious  beyond  all 
modern  precedent.  Thus,  James  Otis  pauses  in  his  career; 
reviews  the  situation ;  reconsiders  the  grounds  of  his  polit- 
ical faith ;  measures  his  own  relation  to  the  impending 
contest ;  strengthens  his  fortitude  by  the  renewed  assurance 
that  the  principles  on  which  he  had  planted  himself  were 
sound,  and  that  the  course  of  action  which  they  demanded 
of  him,  whether  or  not  it  should  prove  to  be  safe,  was  at 
least  right.  Hence,  it  happens  that  this  pamphlet  has  un- 
wonted sobriety;  few  humorous  or  grotesque  passages;  few 
bursts  of  passion ;  in  many  places  a  moderation  of  tone 
almost  judicial.  Indeed,  its  moderation  of  tone,  at  the 
time,  gave  considerable  offense  to  some  of  his  own  asso- 

1  Hansard,  "  Parl.  Hist,  of  Eng.,"  xv.  1427. 

2  Advertised  in  "The  Boston  Gazette"  for  23  July,  1764,  as  published  that 
day. 


48  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION, 

ciates.  The  pamphlet  was  said  to  have  satisfied  nobody. 
Yet  it  gave  food  for  thought  to  everybody ;  and  it  is  the 
one  work  of  Otis  on  which  rests  his  reputation  as  a  serious 
political  thinker. 

It  was  impossible  for  him  to  find  a  basis  for  his  theory  of 
immediate  political  duty,  except  in  some  clear  system  of 
fundamental  political  thought.  In  trying  to  ascertain  the 
rights  of  the  British  colonies,  he  was  driven  back  to  a  fresh 
study  of  the  primary  rights  of  man ;  and  thus  his  tract  on 
the  relations  between  the  British  colonies  and  the  British 
parliament,  becomes  in  some  sense  an  institute  of  politics. 
It  may  be  said  to  fall  into  three  portions:  the  origin  of 
government,  the  nature  and  rights  of  colonies  in  general, 
and  the  nature  and  rights  of  the  British  colonies  in  par- 
ticular. 

In  the  first  place,  he  holds  that  government  is  founded, 
not  on  grace,  nor  on  force,  nor  on  compact,  nor  on  prop- 
/  erty,  but  on  the  will  of  God  as  expressed  in  the  necessities 
\J  of  human  nature;  hence,  that  "  an  original,  supreme,  sover- 
eign, absolute,  and  uncontrollable  earthly  power  must  exist 
in  and  preside  over  every  society,  from  whose  final  decisions 
there  can  be  no  appeal  but  directly  to  heaven.  It  is,  there- 
fore, originally  and  ultimately  in  the  people ;  .  .  .  and 
they  never  did  in  fact  freely,  nor  can  they  rightfully,  make 
an  absolute,  unlimited  renunciation  of  this  divine  right.  It 
is  ever  in  the  nature  of  the  thing  given  in  trust,  and  on  a 
condition  the  performance  of  which  no  mortal  can  dispense 
with,  namely,  that  the  person  or  persons  on  whom  the 
sovereignty  is  conferred  by  the  people,  shall  incessantly 
consult  their  good.  Tyranny  of  all  kinds  is  to  be  abhorred, 
whether  it  be  in  the  hands  of  one,  or  of  the  few,  or  of  the 
<w  many."  ' 

In  the  second  place,  as  regards  the  nature  and  rights  of 
colonies  in  general,  he  affirms  that  a  colony  is  neither  an 
ali  jn  nor  a  menial  member  of  the  empire  to  which  it  belongs ; 
that  it  is  •'  a  settlement  of  subjects  in  a  territory  disjointed 

1  "  The  Rights  of  the  British  Colonies,"  etc.,  12-13. 


JAMES  OTIS.  49 

or  remote  from  the  mother  country  "  ';  that  modern  colo- 
nists "  are  the  noble  discoverers  and  settlers  of  a  new  world, 
from  whence,  as  from  an  endless  source,  wealth  and  plenty, 
the  means  of  power,  grandeur,  and  glory,  in  a  degree  un- 
known to  the  hungry  chiefs  of  former  ages,  have  been 
pouring  into  Europe  for  three  hundred  years  past  ";  that 
"  those  colonies  have  received  from  the  several  states  of 
Europe,  except  from  Great  Britain,  .  .  .  nothing  but 
ill-usage,  slavery,  and  chains,  as  fast  as  the  riches  of  their 
own  earning  could  furnish  the  means  of  forging  them  "'; 
but  that  they  "  are  entitled  to  as  ample  rights,  liberties, 
and  privileges  as  the  subjects  of  the  mother  country  are, 
and  in  some  respects  to  more." 

When  he  comes,  in  the  third  place,  to  speak  of  the  nature 
and  rights  of  the  British  colonies,  he  insists  upon  a  distinc- 
tion in  their  favor,  founded  on  the  august  superiority  of 
the  English  constitution  in  its  historic  developments  and 
achievements  on  behalf  of  human  liberty.  Whatever  may 
be  the  case  with  the  colonies  of  other  nations,  the  colonies 
of  England,  because  they  are  the  colonies  of  England,  can 
wear  no  badge  of  political  servitude :  the  possession  of  full 
political  rights  belongs  to  their  lineage.  "  I  think  I  have 
heard  it  said,  that  when  the  Dutch  are  asked  why  they 
enslave  their  colonies,  their  answer  is,  that  the  liberty  of 
Dutchmen  is  confined  to  Holland,  and  that  it  was  never 
intended  for  provincials  in  America,  or  anywhere  else.  A 
sentiment  this, — very  worthy  of  modern  Dutchmen ;  but  if 
their  brave  and  worthy  ancestors  had  entertained  such  nar- 
row ideas  of  liberty,  seven  poor  and  distressed  provinces 
would  never  have  asserted  their  rights  against  the  whole 
Spanish  monarchy.  .  .  .  It  is  to  be  hoped  none  of  our 
fellow-subjects  of  Britain,  great  or  small,  have  borrowed 
this  Dutch  maxim  of  plantation  politics.  If  they  have, 
they  had  better  return  it  from  whence  it  came ;  indeed  they 

1  "  The  Rights  of  the  British  Colonies,"  38. 

1  Ibid.  37. 
*  Ibid.  38. 


50  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

had.     Modern  Dutch  or  French  maxims  of  state  never  will 
suit  with  a  British  constitution."  l 

Therefore,  he  insists  that  the  rights  of  the  British  colonies 
are  based  especially  on  the  large  and  free  principles  of  the 
British  constitution;  that  those  principles  were  in  force 
before  any  charters  for  British  colonies  were  given,  and  will 
remain  in  force  after  all  those  charters  shall  have  been 
annulled ;  that  in  the  latter  case,  the  colonists  would  still 
"  be  men,  citizens,  and  British  subjects  "  ";  that  every  Brit- 
ish subject,  anywhere  in  the  dominions  of  Great  Britain, 
4 '  is  by  the  law  of  God  and  nature,  by  the  common  law,  and 
by  act  of  parliament  .  .  .  entitled  to  all  the  natural, 
essential,  inherent,  and  inseparable  rights  of  our  fellow- 
subjects  in  Great  Britain"3;  that  all  the  colonies  "are 
subject  to  and  dependent  on  Great  Britain"4;  that  the 
parliament  of  Great  Britain,  as  the  supreme  legislature  of 
the  empire,  "  has  an  undoubted  power  and  lawful  authority 
to  make  acts  for  the  general  good,  that,  by  naming  them, 
shall  and  ought  to  be  equally  binding  as  upon  the  subjects 
of  Great  Britain  within  the  realm  "  *;  that  no  legislature, 
"  supreme  or  subordinate,  has  a  right  to  make  itself  arbi- 
trary ";  that  the  supreme  legislature  "  cannot  take  from 
any  man  any  part  of  his  property  without  his  consent  in 
person  or  by  representation"';  "that  no  parts  of  his 
majesty's  dominions  can  be  taxed  without  their  consent; 
that  every  part  has  a  right  to  be  represented  in  the  supreme 
or  some  subordinate  legislature;  that  the  refusal  of  this 
would  seem  to  be  a  contradiction  in  practice  to  the  theory 
of  the  constitution  ;  that  the  colonies  are  subordinate 
dominions,  and  are  now  in  such  a  state  as  to  make  it  best, 
for  the  good  of  the  whole,  that  they  should  not  only  be 
continued  in  the  enjoyment  of  subordinate  legislation,  but 
be  also  represented,  in  some  proportion  to  their  number  and 
estates,  in  the  grand  legislative  of  the  nation ;  that  this 
would  firmly  unite  all  parts  of  the  British  empire  in  the 

1  "  The  Rights  of  the  British  Colonies,"  58. 

1  Ibid.  50.  3  Ibid.  52.  4  Ibid.  49.  'Ibid.  •  Ibid.  55. 


JAMES  OTIS.  51 

greatest  peace  and  prosperity,   and  render  it  invulnerable 
and  perpetual."  l 

VIII. 

Thus,  the  real  object  of  Otis  in  this  powerful  pamphlet  \ 
was  not  to  bring  about  a  revolution,  but  to  avert  one.) 
There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  sincerity  of  his  protestations 
of  loyalty  to  Englantrron  behalf  of  himself  and  of  his  fellow- 
colonists: — ""We  all  think  ourselves  happy  under  Great 
:-- ""Britain.  We  love,  esteem,  and  reverence  our  mother- 
x^ountry,  and  adore  our  king.  And  could  the  choice  of 
independency  be  uffeied  tlte-cnlunics,  ui  subjection  to  Great 
Britain  upon  any  terms  above  absolute  slavery,  I  am  con- 
vinced they  would  accept  the  latter.  The  ministry,  in  all 
future  generations,  may  rely  on  it,  that  British  America  will 
never  prove  undutiful,  till  driven  to  it,  as  the  last  fatal 
resort  against  ministerial  oppression,  which  will  make  the 
wisest  mad,  and  the  weakest  strong."  " 

To  prevent  so  awful  a  catastrophe,  therefore,  Otis  im- 
plores the  government  of  England  to  recognize  the  colonies 
as  in  normal  relations  to  the  British  constitution,  and  as 
entitled  to  some  participation  in  that  imperial  council  of  the 
empire,  by  which  the  pecuniary  burdens  of  the  empire  are 
distributed.  Granting  this,  the  disasters  that  now  darken 
the  horizon,  and  fill  all  hearts  with  dread,  will  forever  sink 
out  of  sight. 

But  while  the  actual  purpose  of  this  pamphlet  was  to 
avert  a  revolution,  its  actual  effect  was  to  furnish  the 
starting-point  for  the  entire  movement  of  revolutionary 
'reasoning,  by  which  some  two  millions  of  people  were  to 
justify  themselves  in  the  years  to  come,  as  they  advanced 
along  their  rugged  and  stormy  path  toward  Independence. 
It  became  for  a  time  one  of  the  legal  text-books  of  the 
opponents  of  the  ministry;  it  was  a  law-arsenal,  from  which 
other  combatants,  on  that  side,  drew  some  of  their  best 


1  "  The  Rights  of  the  British  Colonies,"  99.  9  Ibid.  77. 


52  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

/weapons.     It  expounded,   with   perfect    clearness,    even    if 

/    with  some  shrinking,  the  constitutional  philosophy  of  the 

whole  subject ;  and  it  gave  to  the  members  of  a  conservative 

1     and  a  law-respecting  race,  a  conservative  and  a  lawful  pre- 

\  text  for  resisting  law,  and  for  revolutionizing  the  govern - 

Inent.1 

IX. 

Not  far  from  the  middle  of  the  month  of  September,  1764, 
— nearly  two  months,  therefore,  after  Otis's  blood-warm 
pamphlet  had  set  out  on  its  journey  into  the  world, — there 
came  from  the  press  in  Boston  another  and  a  quieter  pam- 
phlet, entitled  "  The  Sentiments  of  a  British  American,"  " 
written  by  Oxenbridge  Thacher,  one  of  Otis's  associates  at 
the  Boston  bar.  Born  about  forty-four  years  before  that 
date,  a  graduate  of  Harvard  in  the  class  of  1738,  he  had 
begun  his  career  by  taking  up  the  hereditary  vocation  of 
the  family — that  of  the  ministry;  but  lacking  strength  of 
voice  and  a  robust  frame,  he  had  failed  to  win  in  the  pulpit 
that  success  which,  according  to  one  of  his  ministerial  con- 
temporaries,3 is  often  attained  by  those  "who  have  only  the 
sounding  brass  to  give  them  a  reputation." 

At  the  bar,  to  which  he  went  with  much  reluctance,  he 
soon  attained  a  distinguished  position,  on  account  of  his 
learning,  acuteness,  good  sense,  and  the  gravity  and  stain- 
less probity  of  his  character.  Whatever  quietness  of  manner 

1  In  the  same  year  in  which  this  pamphlet  of  Otis's  was  published,  there  ap- 
peared in  Boston  a  new  edition  of  Wood's  "  New  England  Prospect,"  with  a 
somewhat  remarkable  preface  in  which  were  freely  discussed  the  troubled  rela- 
tions between  the  colonies  and  the  mother-country.  This  preface  was  declared 
by  James  Bowdoin  to  have  been  written  by  Otis  ;  and  Robert  C.  Winthrop  has 
presented  some  considerations  in  support  of  that  view.  "  Mass.  Hist.  Soc. 
Proc.,"  vi.  250-251.  From  internal  evidence,  however,  it  seems  to  me  alto- 
gether unlikely  that  Otis  was  the  author  of  the  preface,  which,  probably,  was 
the  work  of  Nathaniel  Rogers,  A.M.,  of  Harv.,  1762.  Pref.  to  Wood's  "  N.  E. 
Prosp.,"  ed.  1865,  p.  ix. 

9  Advertised  in  the  "  Boston  Gazette"  for  September  17,  1764,  as  then  just 
published. 

'  J.  Eliot,  "  Biog.  Diet.,"  454. 


OXEXBKIDGE    THACHER.  53 

he  may  have  had  in  act  or  speech  was  due  to  no  lassitude  of 
conviction  on  any  subject ;  for  within  that  fragile  and  inva- 
lided form  there  glowed  a  fiery  spirit,  intense  in  opinion, 
jealous  and  anxious  for  the  right,  and  ready  at  any  cost  to 
contend  against  the  arms  or  the  arts  of  evil — or  of  what  he 
took  to  be  evil.  Three  or  four  years  before  the  time  at 
which  he  is  here  introduced  to  the  reader,  he  had  written 
for  one  of  the  newspapers  a  series  of  articles  on  an  exciting 
matter  of  local  interest ;  and  these  articles  had  been  gathered 
up  into  a  pamphlet,  published  in  Boston  in  1761  under  the 
title  of  "  Considerations  on  Lowering  the  Value  of  Gold 
Coins  within  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay."  That, 
apparently,  had  been  his  sole  literary  achievement  prior  to 
1764. 

A  larger,  a  more  difficult,  a  more  impassioned  subject  he 
next  took  in  hand,  when,  in  that  year,  brooding  over  the 
approach  of  a  mistaken  and  a  disastrous  parliamentary  policy 
toward  the  colonies,  he  spread  before  readers  both  American 
and  British  "  The  Sentiments  of  a  British  American":  a 
calm,  well-reasoned,  manly,  lawyer-like  argument  against 
the  new  measures  of  the  imperial  government;  with  no 
flourishes  or  tumults  of  speech ;  with  not  a  touch  of  brill- 
iance ;  most  sincere  in  tone,  most  conciliatory  ;  almost 
pathetic,  likewise,  in  its  tenderness  of  love  and  reverence 
for  England.  If  we  would  now  seize  the  very  essence  of 
the  best  American  thought  in  its  earliest  stage  of  dissent 
from  the  new  and  firmer  policy  of  the  empire,  we  must  at 
least  glance  at  the  outline  of  this  argument  by  Oxenbridge 
Thacher. 

A  nation  in  great  prosperity,  thus  his  argument  begins, 
should  be  on  its  guard  against  the  special  dangers  which  are 
apt  to  follow  from  great  prosperity.  Great  Britain  is  now 
"  arrived  to  a  height  of  glory  and  wealth  which  no  European 
nation  hath  ever  reached  since  the  decline  of  the  Roman 
empire."  This  prosperity  is  in  part  due  to  its  colonies, 
which,  therefore,  have  a  special  claim  to  be  taken  into 
account  in  the  development  of  imperial  plans.  No  people 


54  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

on  earth  are  more  jealous  of  their  rights  than  the  British 
people.  .  The  American  colonists  are  a  part  of  the  British 
people — not  their  "  mere  property."  It  is  assumed  that 
the  British  parliament  intends  to  be  just  to  the  British  col- 
onies. The  enquiry,  therefore,  is, — whether  the  British 
parliament,  by  its  recent  act  "  for  granting  certain  duties  in 
the  British  colonies  .  .  .  in  America,"  has  overstepped 
the  line  of  justice  toward  those  colonies. 

To  this  act  of  parliament,  there  are  five  objections, — the 
first  four  affecting  British  subjects  in  America,  the  fifth 
affecting  British  subjects  everywhere,  particularly  in  Great 
Britain. 

First,  it  is  a  tax, — a  tax  laid  on  the  colonies  without  the 
consent  of  their  representatives;  and,  in  addition  to  that,  a 
tax  of  peculiar  hardship,  because  the  colonies  have  already 
to  bear  a  tax  in  support  of  their  own  subordinate  govern- 
ments. Nor  is  this  objection  removed  by  saying  that  the 
colonies,  now  enjoying  the  benefits  accruing  to  them  from 
the  late  war  with  France,  ought  also  to  share  in  the  burdens 
which  that  war  has  entailed :  for  the  war  has  been  of  no 
less  benefit  to  Great  Britain ;  while  the  war  lasted,  the  col- 
onies contributed  to  it  their  full  proportion ;  by  its  terri- 
torial acquisitions,  they  are  not  particular  gainers;  Great 
Britain  is  a  great  gainer  by  them. 

Secondly,  the  act  gives  an  alarming  extension  to  the 
courts  of  admiralty  in  America,  subverting  and  abolishing 
many  of  the  ancient  rights  of  Englishmen  under  the  com- 
mon law. 

Thirdly,  the  act  gives  to  the  commanders  of  the  king's 
ships  in  American  waters  dangerous  authority  over  the  per- 
sons and  the  goods  of  British  subjects  there. 

Fourthly,  the  act  gives  to  all  officers  of  the  government 
in  America,  on  land  and  sea,  extraordinary  powers,  but 
without  the  usual  checks  of  English  law  against  the  wanton 
and  unjust  exercise  of  those  powers. 

Fifthly,  as  this  act  imperils  the  interest  of  British  subjects 
in  America,  so  does  it  imperil  the  interests  of  British  sub- 


OXEXBRIDGE    THACHER.  55 

jccts.  in  Great  Britain.  What  spectacle  is  now  produced 
before  the  eyes  of  men  ?  It  is  the  spectacle  of  "  a  million 
and  a  half  of  British  subjects  disfranchised,  or  put  under 
regulations  alien  from  our  happy  constitution."  And  what 
pretense  may  not  this  "  afford  to  after  ministers  to  treat  the 
inhabitants  of  the  island  itself  after  the  same  manner!  "  ' 
Nevertheless,  upon  this  aspect  of  danger  to  England  we  do 
not  now  insist;  nor  upon  the  ultimate  damage  which  must 
fall  upon  England  merely  from  the  "  alienation  of  the  affec- 
tions "  of  her  American  children.  This,  however,  we  do 
insist  upon :  the  immediate,  material  damage  to  the  com- 
mercial interests  of  England  through  her  retention  and 
development  of  this  new  policy  toward  her  colonies.  For 
the  greatest  interest  of  England  to-day  is  her  colonial  trade. 
But  on  what  does  her  colonial  trade  depend  ?  Of  course,  it 
depends  on  the  ability  of  the  colonies  to  pay  her  for  what 
they  buy  of  her.  The  effect  of  this  new  legislation,  how- 
ever, will  be  to  force  the  colonies  to  stop  buying  of  Eng- 
land, merely  by  taking  from  them  the  commercial  facilities 
under  which  they  have  hitherto  acquired  the  means  of 
paying  England.  Henceforth,  either  they  will  manufacture 
their  own  goods,  or  they  will  go  without  them.  In  any 
case,  England  will  have  lost  her  best  customers,  and  her 
chief  trade  will  be  ruined. 

"  These,"  says  Oxenbridge  Thacher,  at  last,  as  he  brings 
his  noble  argument  to  a  still  nobler  close,  "  are  the  senti- 
ments of  a  British  American,  which  he  ventures  to  expose 
to  the  public,  with  an  honest,  well-meant  freedom.  Born  in 
one  of  the  colonies,  and  descended  from  ancestors  who  were 
among  the  first  planters  of  that  colony,  he  is  not  ashamed 
to  avow  a  love  to  the  country  that  gave  him  birth ;  yet  he 
hath  ever  exulted  in  the  name  of  Briton.  He  hath  ever 
thought  all  the  inhabitants  in  the  remotest  dominions  of 
Great  Britain  interested  in  the  wealth,  the  prosperity,  and 
the  glory  of  the  capital.  And  he  desireth  ever  to  retain 
these  filial  sentiments.  ...  He  concludes  all  with  his 

1  "  The  Sentiments,"  etc.,  12. 


56  TJJE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

most  ardent  wishes,  that  the  happy  island  of  Great  Britain 
may  grow  in  wealth,  in  power  and  glory,  to  yet  greater 
degrees ;  that  the  conquests  it  makes  over  foreign  enemies 
may  serve  the  more  to  protect  the  internal  liberties  of  its 
subjects  ;  that  her  colonies,  now  happily  extended,  may 
grow  in  filial  affection  and  dutiful  submission  to  her,  their 
mother  ;  and  that  she,  in  return,  may  never  forget  her 
parental  affections;  that  the  whole  English  empire,  united 
by  the  strongest  bands  of  love  and  interest,  formidable  to 
the  tyrants  and  oppressors  of  the  earth,  may  retain  its  own 
virtue,  and  happily  possess  immortality."  ' 


X. 


These  two  pamphlets, — the  one  by  Otis,  the  other  by 
Thacher, — may  fairly  be  said  to  give  us  the  attitude  of 
patriotic  American  lawyers  and  politicians  in  the  year  1764, 
toward  the  new  colonial  policy  of  the  British  government, 
— a  policy  which,  as  was  natural,  they  viewed  chiefly  in  its 
political  and  legal  aspects.  At  about  the  time  when  these 
pamphlets  were  published  in  New  England,  in  the  Middle 
Colonies  were  published  two  other  pamphlets,  which  should 
have  great  interest  for  us,  as  exhibiting  the  attitude  of 
large-minded  American  merchants  toward  the  same  colonial 
policy,  which,  as  was  natural,  they  viewed  chiefly  in  its 
industrial  and  commercial  aspects. 

The  first  of  these  pamphlets,  entitled  "  An  Essay  on  the 
Trade  of  the  Northern  Colonies  of  Great  Britain  in  North 
America,"  was  printed  in  Philadelphia  in  1764,  and  was 
reprinted  in  London  before  the  close  of  the  year.5  Quiet 
and  conversational  in  tone,  pure  in  style,  free  from  the  pet- 

1  "  The  Sentiments,"  etc.,  16. 

3 1  have  used  the  London  reprint,  belonging  to  the  library  of  Harvard 
University.  I  do  not  remember  to  have  met  with  the  original  Philadelphia 
edition,  which  is  mentioned  on  the  title-page  of  the  London  edition.  It  ap- 
pears to  have  been  seen  by  Hildeburn  :  "  Issues  of  the  Pennsylvania  Press," 
ii.  12. 


COMMERCIAL   INTERESTS.  57 

tiness  of  provincial  sentiment,  and  from  every  trace  of 
asperity  or  harshness,  it  applies  to  British  colonial  policy 
the  test  of  broad  commercial  considerations;  and  working 
out  the  argument  with  great  practical  knowledge,  with 
ingenuity,  candor,  and  force,  it  shows  that  the  industrial 
interests  of  the  whole  British  empire,  and  the  prosperity  of 
all  British  subjects,  would  be  improved  by  taking  off,  rather 
than  increasing,  these  tax-restrictions  on  the  American 
colonial  trade. 

The  second  pamphlet,  similar  to  the  first  in  purpose  and 
tone,  but  still  stronger  in  execution,  is  entitled  "  Some 
Thoughts  on  the  Method  of  Improving  and  Securing  the 
Advantages  which  accrue  to  Great  Britain  from  the  North- 
ern Colonies."  It  was  first  published  in  a  New  York  news- 
paper probably  in  August,  1764,  whence  it  was  republished 
in  London  in  the  following  year.  Containing  no  allusion  to 
the  proposal  of  a  Stamp  Act,  with  no  mention  even  of  the 
revenue  law  of  April,  1764,  with  no  denial  of  the  right  of 
parliament  to  tax  the  Americans,  it  deals  only  with  the 
impolicy  of  all  such  measures, — their  impolicy  as  affecting 
the  practical  interests  of  the  whole  empire  and  of  every 
member  of  it. 

The  writer  takes  his  stand  at  that  point  of  time  in  the 
previous  year,  when,  with  inexpressible  loyalty  and  delight, 
the  American  colonies  heard  of  the  Treaty  of  Paris  whereby 
Great  Britain  had  come  into  possession  of  all  the  vast 
American  domain  claimed  by  France  east  of  the  Mississippi 
River.  In  the  presence  of  this  stupendous  success,  two 
questions  spring  up : — first,  how  shall  these  American  pos- 
sessions, the  old  and  the  new,  be  secured  to  Great  Britain  ? 
— and,  secondly,  how  shall  they  be  improved  to  her  great- 
est advantage  ? 

1  I  have  used  the  London  edition,  also  belonging  to  the  Harvard  library. 
The  preface  states  that  it  is  a  reprint  from  the  "  New  York  Mercury."  A 
pencilled  inscription  in  the  pamphlet  states  that  George  Bancroft  considered  it 
as  the  work  of  Mauduit.  This  must  be  a  mistake  ;  since  the  doctrine  of  the 
pamphlet  is  the  opposite  of  that  held  by  Mauduit  as  regards  parliamentary 
taxation. 


58  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

The  first  question  is  easily  answered.  From  external 
attack,  these  colonies  are  secured  by  the  fleet  of  Britain; 
and  from  the  loss  of  them  through  internal  revolt,  she  is 
secured  by  the  fact,  that  she  gives  them  no  motive  for  such 
revolt:  "  History  does  not  furnish  an  instance  of  a  revolt 
begun  by  the  people,  which  did  not  take  its  rise  from 
oppression."  "  As  we  are  sure  Britain  will  not  oppress  her 
colonies,  and  it  is  evident  that  nothing  else  can  give  them 
cither  power  or  inclination  to  rebel,  we  may  safely  conclude 
that  they  will  remain  steadfastly  and  firmly  united  to  her, 
and  by  contributing  to  her  wealth  and  power,  continue  to 
increase  their  own  security,  and  that  dependence  which  they 
esteem  their  happiness,  and  which  carries  with  it  so  many 
real  advantages."  ' 

The  answer  to  the  second  question  is  equally  clear, 
although  it  involves  considerations  then  less  familiar.  The 
colonies  can  be  made  to  yield  the  greatest  commercial 
advantage  to  Great  Britain,  by  being  permitted  to  acquire 
the  greatest  commercial  prosperity  for  themselves.  Not  by 
taxing  them,  but  by  buying  of  them  and  selling  to  them, 
will  the  mother  country  make  them  most  profitable  to  her- 
self; and  the  more  the  colonies  have  to  sell,  the  more  will 
they  have  to  buy,  and  the  more  will  they  have  with  which 
to  pay  for  what  they  buy.  Of  such  commercial  prosperity, 
what  is  the  essential  condition  ?  It  is  freedom.  Why  is  it 
that  the  northern  colonies,  though  under  a  stern  climate 
and  upon  a  hard  soil,  should  already  have  yielded  so  im- 
mense a  profit  to  the  mother  country  ?  "  This  has  no 
other  cause,  but  that  which  made  Rome  the  mistress  of  the 
world,  gave  grandeur,  riches,  and  power  to  Venice,  and  at 
present  constitutes  the  glory  of  Britain — liberty  !"*  "I 
will  conclude  all  with  this  observation  .  .  .  that  Brit- 
ain, by  being  contented  with  all  her  colonies  can  yield — 
which  may  be  obtained  by  a  wise  regulation  of  their  trade — 
will  found  the  greatest  empire  in  the  world,  and  such  a  one 

1  "  Some  Thoughts,"  etc.,  9-10. 
1  Ibid.,  15. 


COMMERCIAL  INTERESTS.  59 

as  her  American  subjects  will  ever  find  it  their  truest  inter- 
est to  support." 

Upon  the  whole,  it  may  be  said  of  this  wise  and  most 
persuasive  presentation,  in  1764,  of  the  American  view  as  to 
British  colonial  policy,  that  had  the  brain  of  George  Gren- 
ville  and  of  George  the  Third  been  capable  of  absorbing  it, 
there  would  have  been  no  American  Revolution. 

1 "  Some  Thoughts,"  etc.,  23. 


CHAPTER   III. 

UNDER  THE    MENACE    OF    THE    STAMP  ACT:     NOVEMBER, 

1774-APRiL,   1765. 

I. — The  notification  of  a  Stamp  Act*a"t  first  obscured  in  America  by  the  tax- 
legislation  just  before  enacted — The  public  anxiety  at  last  converges  upon 
the  proposed  measure — A  token  of  this  change,  in  the  "  Dream  of  the 
Branding  of  Horses  and  Asses." 

II. — "  The  Rights  of  Colonies,"  by  Stephen  Hopkins,  Governor  of  Rhode 
Island,  December,  1764 — His  character  and  career— Outline  of  his  pam- 
phlet— Its  moderation  of  tone — Its  great  influence  in  America  and  England. 

III. — The  American  argument  tainted  by  the  heresy  of  Nullification — Assault 
upon  this  heresy  by  "A  Gentleman  at  Halifax,'1  February,  1765 — Range 
and  method  of  this  first  Loyalist  pamphleteer. 

IV. — Bitter  controversy  provoked  by  the  Halifax  Gentleman — Otis's  attack 
upon  him  in  his  "  Vindication  of  the  British  Colonies  against  the  Asper- 
sions of  the  Halifax  Gentleman  "—Rejoinder  in  "A  Defence  of  the  Letter 
from  a  Gentleman  at  Halifax,"  April,  1765. 

V.— Otis's  parting  shot,  in  his  "  Brief  Remarks." 

VI.— The  Halifax  Gentleman  identified  as  Martin  Howard,  of  Newport— His 
career  and  character — His  flight  from  Newport  after  receiving  outrage 
from  a  mob. 

I. 

THE  several  writings  thus  far  mentioned  as  products  of 
the  year  1764,  are  among  the  earliest  manifestations,  in 
literary  form,  of  American  disfavor  toward  the  new  taxing- 
policy  of  the  government.  A  curious  fact,  however, 
attaches  to  all  these  writings.  Though  published  weeks  or 
even  months  after  the  official  announcement  of  an  intended 
Stamp  Act,  not  one  of  them  contains  the  slightest  allusion 
to  that  measure;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  actual  pas- 
sage, in  April,  1764,  of  the  act  for  deriving  an  imperial  rev- 
enue from  certain  port-duties  in  the  colonies,  appears  to  be 
60 


THE  DREAM.  6 1 

the  one  fact  over  which  the  American  people  are  invited  to 
take  alarm.  Thus,  as  it  seems,  the  American  people,  bewil- 
dered in  the  thicket  of  passing  events,  did  not  at  first  per- 
ceive their  true  relations  and  proportions.  But,  at  about 
the  time  of  the  appearance  of  Thacher's  pamphlet,  that  is, 
in  the  early  autumn  of  1764,  the  appalling  significance  of  the 
notice  of  the  Stamp  Act  began  to  dawn  upon  them ;  and 
then,  almost  at  once,  the  centre  of  gravity  shifted  from  the 
immediate  past  to  the  immediate  future, — from  the  measure 
that  had  become  a  law  in  the  preceding  March,  to  the  meas- 
ure that  might  become  a  law  in  the  following  March. 

One  of  the  earliest  tokens  of  this  change  in  the  direction 
of  the  public  solicitude,  is  to  be  seen  in  a  bit  of  comic  writ- 
ing, the  humor  of  which  was  already  characteristic  of  the 
American  mind,  then,  as  since  then,  not  unwilling  to  veil  its 
serious  and  even  its  angry  and  uncompliant  moods  under 
droll  anecdotes  and  grimly  ironical  terms  of  ultra-submissive- 
ness.  In  the  leading  newspaper  of  Rhode  Island  there 
appeared,  on  the  tenth  of  November,  1764,  a  communica- 
tion '  purporting  to  be  from  a  rough  and  ready  colonist 
in  humble  circumstances,  a  man  without  any  knowledge  of 
books,  as  he  says,  excepting  the  Bible  and  Pilgrim's  Progress. 
Not  long  before,  he  had  sat  up  one  evening  with  a  neighbor 
of  his  till  eleven  o'clock,  trying  to  make  out  the  bear- 
ings of  this  queer  news  about  "  a  stamping  law  "  ;  and,  part- 
ing from  his  friend  no  wiser  than  before  their  talk  began,  he 
went  to  bed,  and,  straightway  falling  asleep,  he  had  this 
dream: — "  Methought  the  stamp  law  ended  in  one  for 
stamping  all  our  beasts  of  burthen,  and  for  that  end  a  ship 
had  arrived  with  the  branding-master  and  his  company,  who 
soon  after  sent  order  to  our  town  to  have  all  such  beasts 
within  a  proper  enclosure  on  a  certain  day.  And,  accord- 
ingly, in  the  morning  of  the  day,  I  fancied  that  I  saw  all 

1  For  a  carefully  authenticated  manuscript  copy  of  this  "  Dream,"  taken  from 
the  files  of  the  "  Providence  Gazette,"  I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  W.  E.  Foster  of 
that  city.  I  became  aware  of  the  existence  of  this  curious  piece,  through  an 
allusion  to  it  in  one  of  the  pamphlets  of  "  The  Halifax  Gentleman,"  who, 
perhaps  from  mere  rumor,  attributes  it  to  Stephen  Hopkins. 


62  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

the  horses  of  the  town  brought  together  in  a  pasture  of  my 
neighbor's,  that  was  fenced  better  than  ordinary — the 
pound  being  too  small — and  amongst  them  were  about  a 
half  a  dozen  asses,  being  all  we  had.  Soon  after,  the  brand- 
master  with  his  retinue  approached  the  pasture  with  great 
pomp,  one  carrying  a  large  silver  brand  in  the  form  of  the 
letter  S ;  and,  upon  entering  the  field,  they  began  with  the 
asses,  and  branded  them  without  the  least  interruption. 
They  then  drew  near  to  the  horses,  and  would  have  laid 
hold  on  a  stately  bay  horse ;  but,  taking  fright  at  the  glit- 
tering of  the  brand,  he  snorted,  kicked  up  his  heels,  and 
went  off.  I  was  sorry  to  see  him  fling  the  dirt  into  the 
gentleman's  face;  and  the  whole  drove  being  struck  with 
the  same  panic,  they  leapt  the  fence,  and  ran  off  snorting 
and  flinging  up  their  heels,  so  that  I  saw  them  no  more. 
And  whilst  the  branding-company  stared,  and  expressed 
some  surprise  at  what  had  happened,  a  very  ragged  country- 
fellow  said,  with  a  facetious  grin,  that  he  '  always  under- 
stood, till  then,  that  the  good  people  of  England  very  well 
knew  that  none  but  asses  would  stand  still  to  be  branded.'  ' 
In  the  ominous  silence  which  followed  this  rustic  tauntj,  a 
gentlemanlike  person  who  stood  holding  by  the  bridle  a 
powerful  horse,  was  approached  by  one  of  the  branding- 
company,  who  requested  the  loan  of  the  horse  that  he 
might  ride  it  to  head  off  the  drove.  To  this  the  gentleman 
politely  assented,  but  at  the  same  time  advised  the  officer 
to  remove  his  spurs — as  the  horse  would  not  tolerate  any 
rider  so  equipped ;  informing  him  at  the  same  time,  while 
he  stooped  down  to  unbuckle  his  spurs,  that  the  drove  of 
horses  which  he  proposed  to  head  off,  would  probably  prove 
a  little  difficult  to  manage  in  that  way, — since  they  "  were 
all  of  the  English  breed,  and  the  far  greater  part  of  them  had 
for  their  sire  and  were  descended  from  a  very  remarkable 
horse,  known  by  the  name  of  Old  Noll,  who,  though  he  was 
not  a  showy  beast,  was  firm  a~nd  had  courage,  and  might 
have  been  of  great  use  but  that  his  master  fell  in  love  with 
a  huge  pair  of  French  spurs,  and,  contrary  to  all  good 


STEPHEN  HOPKINS  63 

advice,  must  needs  mount  Noll  with  them  upon  his  heels; 
but,  unhappily,  the  horse  no  sooner  felt  the  spurs  at  his 
sides,  but  he  gave  his  master  such  a  fall  as  broke  his  neck ; 
upon  which  the  breed  were  out  of  credit  for  a  while,  and 
being  sent  hither,  multiplied  exceedingly."  Upon  this  dis- 
couraging information,  the  officer  concluded  not  to  accept 
the  loan  of  the  gentleman's  horse ;  and,  after  various  other 
methods  of  procedure  had  been  discussed  without  avail,  the 
leading  man  of  the  town  ventured  to  give  to  the  branding- 
master  this  bit  of  gentle  counsel : — "  '  Have  you  never  heard 
that  branding  is  a  mark  of  property  ?  If  the  brand  was 
once  put  on,  I  should  not  wonder  if  your  next  errand  here 
was  for  the  beasts — or  their  hides.  Mutual  confidence  will 
give  our  master  a  better  and  more  durable  property  in  what 
we  have,  than  any  branding.  But  when  distrust  and  diffi- 
dence comes  in  its  stead,  no  good  can  ensue;  opportunities 
will  never  be  long  wanting  for  masters  to  oppress  their  ser- 
vants, or  for  servants  to their  masters. '  Here,  the  whole 

of  our  company  gave  three  huzzas,  in  approbation  of  our 
chief's  discourse;  in  which  I  joined  so  heartily,  that  the 
good  woman  at  my  side  gave  me  a  hunch  with  her  elbow, 
and  asked  me  if  I  had  the  colic  or  gripes, — and  so  ended 
my  Vision  !  " 


II. 


Not  many  weeks  after  the  publication  in  Rhode  Island  of 
this  droll  and  effective  statement  of  the  American  case  as 
against  the  mere  proposal  of  a  Stamp  Act,  there  was  pub- 
lished there  a  remarkable  pamphlet  dealing  with  the  same 
subject  but  in  a  very  different  manner, — "  The  Rights  of 
Colonies  Examined," — a  piece  of  political  statement  which 
should  be  of  uncommon  use  to  us  in  our  effort  to  trace  the 
earliest  movements  of  cultivated  and  filial  thought  in 
America,  over  the  issue  which  the  imperial  government 
seemed  to  be  bent  on  forcing  into  prominence.  This  pam- 
phlet was  first  issued  from  the  press  in  Providence,  on  the 


64  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

twenty-second  of  December,  1764;  it  bore  upon  its  front  the 
dignified  announcement,  "published  by  authority";  and 
although  the  name  of  the  author  was  not  there  given,  the 
little  book  was  at  once  known  as  the  work  of  no  less  a 
person  than  Stephen  Hopkins,  then  governor  of  the  colony 
of  Rhode  Island.1 

This  man,  scarcely  known  to  Americans  since  those  days, 
except  for  his  tremulous  autograph  written  beneath  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  deserves  remembrance  also 
for  services  among  the  most  precious  that  man  can  render 
to  man, — for  long  and  manifold  services  to  American  society 
in  all  its  great  interests  of  thrift,  enlightenment,  freedom, 
^and  order.  A  far-seeing  and  an  accomplished  statesman  of 
the  later  colonial  age,  Stephen  Hopkins,  of  the  colony  of 
Rhode  Island,  wrought  a  good  work  for  all  the  colonies  by 
helping  them  to  see  what  were  the  safe  limits  of  colonial 
submission ;  and  with  a  heart  that  never  trembled  even 
when  his  hand  shook,  he  stood  by  the  side  of  the  earliest 
and  sturdiest  statesmen  of  the  Revolution,  loyal  and  loving 
toward  England,  dreading  with  inexpressible  dread  a  dis- 
ruption of  the  colonial  tie,  but  dreading  still  more  any  sur- 
render to  a  doctrine  of  parliamentary  authority  which,  to 
him,  seemed  to  involve  the  decline  and  extinction  of  all 
manly  civic  life  in  this  part  of  the  world. 

He  was  born  one  year  after  Benjamin  Franklin;  he  died 
five  years  before  Franklin;  and  as  their  long  lives  were  thus 
nearly  coincident  in  time,  so  was  there  a  marked  resem- 
blance between  the  two  men  in  intellectual  traits,  in  studies, 

1  Under  charters  given  by  Charles  II.,  both  the  governor  of  Rhode  Island 
and  the  governor  of  Connecticut  were  elected  by  the  people ;  and  as  the  former 
now  entered  into  public  criticism  of  the  policy  of  the  home  government,  so  the 
latter,  who  at  that  time  was  Thomas  Fitch,  did  the  same,  in  a  pamphlet 
published  at  New  Haven,  October  n,  1764,  and  entitled  "  Reasons  why  the 
British  Colonies  in  America  should  not  be  charged  with  Internal  Taxes  by 
Authority  of  Parliament," — a  serious  presentation  of  the  argument,  not  without 
sundry  questionable  statements  both  of  fact  and  of  law.  He  admits  the  neces- 
sity and  propriety  of  external  taxation  by  parliament,  but  denies  that  of  internal 
taxation. 


STEPHEN  HOPKINS.  65 

in  practical   successes,  and  in  the  systematic   devotion  of 
their  great  powers  to  the  welfare  of  their  fellow-men.1 

The  intention  of  Hopkins's  pamphlet  is  happily  conveyed 
to  us  by  its  motto : 

"  'Mid  the  low  murmurs  of  submissive  fear 
And  mingled  rage,  my  Hampden  raised  his  voice, 
And  to  the  Laws  appeal'd."  " 

Like  so  many  other  political  writers  of  this  period,  he 
comes  to  the  problem  of  parliamentary  authority,  after  an 
investigation  into  the  origin  of  society,  the  nature  of  gov- 
ernment, and  the  basis  of  the  British  constitution  and  of 
those  political  rights  which  under  that  constitution  seemed 
to  be  the  inheritance  of  all  British  subjects. 

But  are  the  American  colonists  entitled  to  all  the  rights 
of  British  subjects?  Hopkins  contends  that  they  are;  and 
first,  on  general  grounds.  For,  as  he  asserts,  all  colonies,  in 
ancient  and  in  modern  times,  "  have  always  enjoyed  as 
much  freedom  as  the  mother  state  from  which  they  went 
out."  And,  in  the  second  place,  if  such  be  the  fact 
respecting  all  other  colonies  than  the  British,  "  will  any  one 
suppose  the  British  colonies  in  America  are  an  exception  to 
this  general  rule  ? — colonies  that  came  out  from  a  kingdom 

1  Until  within  recent  years,  there  has  been  no  better  account  of  Hopkins 
than  is  the  sketch  of  him  in  Sanderson,  "  Biog.  of  the  Signers,"  etc.,  vi.  223- 
260.  This  lack  has  now  been  admirably  supplied  by  William  Eaton  Foster's 
monograph  entitled  "  Stephen  Hopkins,  a  Rhode  Island  Statesman.  A  Study 
in  the  Political  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  Providence,  1884.  In 
two  parts,  constituting  Number  19  of  "  R.  I.  Historical  Tracts."  In  Part  i. 
199-208,  is  a  list  of  the  existing  writings  of  Hopkins,  consisting  of  pamphlets, 
official  papers,  letters,  etc. 

8  From  "  Liberty  :  A  Poem,  in  Five  Parts,"  by  James  Thomson.  The  motto 
is  from  Part  iv.  See  "The  Complete  Works  of  James  Thomson,"  ed.  by 
George  Gilfillan,  New  York  and  Edinburgh,  1854,  p.  248. 

3  "  The  Rights  of  Colonies  Examined,"  8.  The  copy  which  I  have  used  be- 
longs to  the  library  of  Harvard  University.  Hopkins's  pamphlet  was  reprinted 
by  Almon  in  London  in  1766,  under  this  title  :  "  The  Grievances  of  the  Ameri- 
can Colonies  Candidly  Examined."  This  English  alteration  in  the  title  was 
in  itself  a  tribute  to  the  author. 

5 


66  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

renowned  for  liberty,  from  a  constitution  founded  on  com- 
pact, from  a  people  of  all  the  sons  of  men  the  most  tena- 
cious of  freedom  ?  "  ' 

Without  dwelling  upon  the  claim  to  political  rights  as 
founded  on  the  original  charters — a  subject  which  had  been 
already  handled  by  Otis — Hopkins  argues  with  much  force 
that  the  parliament  had  "  always  understood  their  rights  in 
the  same  light.""  Moreover,  these  rights,  thus  resting 
upon  sanctions  so  august,  have  always  been  enjoyed  by  the 
British  colonies  even  until  now.  But  now  the  scene  is 
changing.  The  last  parliament  "  passed  an  act,  limiting, 
restricting,  and  burdening  the  trade  of  these  colonies  much 
more  than  had  ever  been  done  before ;  .  enlarging 

the  power  and  jurisdiction  of  the  courts  of  admiralty  in  the 
colonies  "  ;  and  resolving  upon  the  establishment  of  "  stamp 
duties  and  other  internal  taxes."  These  various  measures, 
enacted  and  impending,  "  have  caused  great  uneasiness  and 
consternation  among  the  British  subjects  on  the  continent 
of  America,"  3  and  for  very  good  reasons. 

As  to  the  proposed  Stamp  Act,  the  mere  announcement 
of  it  "  hath  much  more,  and  for  much  more  reason,  alarmed 
the  British  subjects  in  America,  than  anything  that  had 
ever  been  done  before  !  .  For  it  must  be  confessed 

by  all  men  that  they  who  are  taxed  at  pleasure  by  others, 
cannot  possibly  have  any  property;  .  .  .  they  who 
have  no  property,  can  have  no  freedom,  but  are  indeed 
reduced  to  the  most  abject  slavery, — are  in  a  condition  far 
worse  than  countries  conquered  and  made  tributary.  For 
these  have  only  a  fixed  sum  to  pay,  which  they  are  left  to 
raise  among  themselves,  in  the  way  that  they  may  think 
most  equal  and  easy;  and  having  paid  the  stipulated  sum, 
the  debt  is  discharged,  and  what  is  left  is  their  own.  This 
is  more  tolerable  than  to  be  taxed  at  the  mere  will  of  others, 
without  any  bounds,  without  any  stipulation  and  agree- 
ment, contrary  to  their  consent,  and  against  their  will." 

1  "  The  Rights,"  etc.,  8.  3  Ibid.  10 

» Ibid.  *  Ibid.  15-16. 


STEPHEN  HOPKINS.  67 

It  .does  not  help  the  case  to  say  that  "  those  who  lay 
these  taxes  upon  the  colonies,  are  men  of  the  highest  char- 
acter for  their  wisdom,  justice,  and  integrity;  ...  for 
one  who  is  bound  to  obey  the  will  of  another,  is  as  really 
a  slave,  though  he  may  have  a  good  master,  as  if  he  had  a 
bad  one. 

Nor  will  it  be  any  alleviation  of  the  hardship  of  such 
taxation,  that  the  money  thus  drawn  from  the  colonies  "  will 
be  laid  up  and  set  apart  for  their  future  defense.  This 
serves  only  the  more  strongly  to  mark  the  servile  state  of 
the  people.  Free  people  have  ever  thought,  and  always 
will  think,  that  the  money  necessary  for  their  own  defense, 
lies  safest  in  their  own  hands,  until  it  is  wanted  immediately 
for  that  purpose."  " 

Therefore,  it  is  unfair  to  denounce  as  unseemly  the  loud 
outcry  now  raised  in  the  colonies  against  such  attacks  as 
these;,  for,  as  Dean  Swift  says,  "  a  man  on  a  wreck  was 
never  denied  the  liberty  of  roaring  as  loud  as  he  could." 
And  "  is  the  defense  of  liberty  become  so  contemptible,  and 
pleading  for  just  rights  so  dangerous  ?  Can  the  guardians 
of  liberty  be  thus  ludicrous  ?  "  4 

But  it  is  said  that  England  has  gone  to  great  cost  on 
behalf  of  the  colonies,  and  now  deserves  some  return  from 
them  in  kind.  To  what  cost  has  England  gone  on  their 
behalf  ?  In  truth,  nearly  all  the  colonies  were  established 
without  the  cost  to  the  government  of  England  of  a  single 
penny ;  from  the  beginning  even  until  now,  they  have  them- 
selves been  at  the  chief  cost  of  their  own  defense ;  while  in 
all  England's  wars  in  America  against  the  power  of  France, 
the  Americans  have  always  contributed  in  enterprise,  treas- 
ure, and  human  life  far  more  than  their  full  proportion.6 

Nor  is  it  right  to  say  that  if  the  colonies  are  exempted 
from  taxation  by  parliament,  "  they  are  therefore  exempted 
from  bearing  their  proper  share  in  the  necessary  burdens  of 

144  The  Rights, "  etc.,  16.  4  Ibid. 

•Ibid.  17.  6Ibid.  20-21. 

albid.  19. 


68  THE  AMERICAN.  REVOLUTION. 

government.  This  by  no  means  follows.  Do  they  not 
support  a  regular  internal  government  in  each  colony,  as 
expensive  to  the  people  here,  as  the  internal  government  of 
Britain  is  to  the  people  there  ?  Have  not  the  colonies  here, 
at  all  times  when  called  upon  by  the  crown,  raised  money 
for  the  public  service,  doing  it  as  cheerfully  as  the  parlia- 
ment have  done  on  like  occasions  ?  Is  not  this  the  most 
easy,  the  most  natural,  and  most  constitutional  way  of  rais- 
ing money  in  the  colonies  ?  What  occasion,  then,  to  dis- 
trust the  colonies  ?  What  necessity  to  fall  on  an  invidious 
and  unconstitutional  method,  to  compel  them  to  do  what 
they  have  ever  done  freely  ?  Are  not  the  people  in  the  col- 
onies as  loyal  and  dutiful  subjects  as  any  age  or  nation  ever 
produced  ?  And  are  they  not  as  useful  to  the  kingdom,  in 
this  remote  quarter  of  the  world,  as  their  fellow  subjects  are 
who  dwell  in  Britain  ?  The  parliament,  it  is  confessed,  have 
power  to  regulate  the  trade  of  the  whole  empire ;  and  hath 
it  not  full  power,  by  this  means,  to  draw  all  the  wealth  of 
the  colonies  into  the  mother  country  at  pleasure  ?  What 
motive,  after  all  this,  can  remain  to  induce  the  parliament 
to  abridge  the  privileges  and  lessen  the  rights  of  the  most 
loyal  and  dutiful  subjects, — subjects  justly  entitled  to  ample 
freedom,  who  have  long  enjoyed,  and  not  abused  or  for- 
feited, their  liberties,  who  have  used  them  to  their  own 
advantage  in  dutiful  subserviency  to  the  orders  and  interests 
of  Great  Britain  ?  Why  should  the  gentle  current  of  tran- 
quillity, that  has  so  long  run  with  peace  through  all  the 
British  states,  and  flowed  with  joy  and  happiness  in  all  her 
countries,  be  at  last  obstructed,  be  turned  out  of  its  true 
course  into  unusual  and  winding  channels,  by  which  many 
of  those  states  must  be  ruined,  but  none  of  them  can  pos- 
sibly be  made  more  rich  or  more  happy  ?  " 

"  We  finally  beg  leave  to  assert,"  pleads  this  gallant  and 

dexterous  champion,  "  that  the  first  planters  of  these  colonies 

were  pious  Christians,  were  faithful  subjects,  who,  with  a 

fortitude  and  perseverance  little  known  and  less  considered, 

1  "  The  Rights,"  etc.,  21-22. 


STEPHEN  HOPKINS.  69 

settled  these  wild  countries  by  God's  goodness  and  their 
own  amazing  labors ;  thereby  added  a  most  valuable  depend-^ 
ence  to  the  crown  of  Great  Britain ;  were  ever  dutifully  sub- 
servient to  her  interests ;  so  taught  their  children,  that  not 
one  has  been  disaffected  to  this  day,  but  all  have  honestly 
obeyed  every  royal  command  and  cheerfully  submitted  to 
every  constitutional  law ;  have  as  little  inclination  as  they 
have  ability  to  throw  off  their  dependency ;  have  carefully 
avoided  every  offensive  measure,  and  every  interdicted  man- 
ufacture; have  risked  their  lives  as  they  have  been  ordered, 
and  furnished  their  money  when  it  has  been  called  for;  have 
never  been  troublesome  or  expensive  to  the  mother  coun- 
try ;  have  kept  due  order,  and  supported  a  regular  govern- 
ment ;  have  maintained  peace  and  practised  Christianity, 
-and  in  all  conditions,  and  in  every  relation,  have  demeaned 
themselves  as  loyal,  as  dutiful,  and  as  faithful  subjects 
ought;  and  that  no  kingdom  or  state  hath,  or  ever  had, 
colonies  more  quiet,  more  obedient,  or  more  profitable, 
than  these  have  ever  been. 

"  May  the  same  Divine  Goodness  that  guided  the  first 
planters,  protected  the  settlements,  inspired  kings  to  be 
gracious,  parliaments  to  be  tender,  ever  preserve,  ever  sup- 
port, our  most  gracious  king ;  give  great  wisdom  to  his  minis- 
ters, and  much  understanding  to  his  parliaments ;  perpetuate 
the  sovereignty  of  the  British  constitution,  and  the  filial 
dependency  and  happiness  of  all  the  colonies." 

The  impression  made  by  this  strong  and  sober-minded 
pamphlet  was  very  great  throughout  the  colonies,  in  nearly 
every  one  of  which  it  was  reprinted."  Moreover,  its  tone 
was  so  temperate  and  so  conciliatory  that  both  in  England 
and  in  America,  it  made  its  way  and  carried  conviction  to 
many  minds  that  would  have  been  repelled  by  the  brusque- 
ness  and  asperity  of  Otis. 

1  "  The  Rights,"  etc.,  24. 

'W.  E.  Foster,  "Stephen  Hopkins,"  ii.  57-58,  59,  gives  facts  to  indicate 
the  wide  influence  of  this  pamphlet. 


70  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

III. 

Thus  far,  the  whole  current  of  American  opinion  seemed 
to  be  setting  in  one  direction — that  of  dissent  from  the  new 
colonial  policy  of  the  government;  and  had  these  criticisms 
been  confined  to  the  usual  limits  of  political  opposition — to 
arguments,  for  example,  against  mere  details  of  the  policy  in 
question — it  is  doubtful  if  the  current  of  American  opinion, 
thus  vigorously  running  in  the  channel  of  dissent,  would 
have  ever  encountered  any  serious  resistance  either  in 
America  or  in  England.  In  all  these  discussions,  however,"  " 
though  pervaded  by  ardent  and  honest  avowals  of  love  for 
England  and  of  delight  in  membership  of  the  British  empire, 
was  to  be  discovered  the  germ  of  a  doctrine  which,  under 
every  valid  form  of  government,  has  been  deemed  inadmis-" 
sible, — a  doctrine  which,  under  our  present  form  of  govern- 
ment, has  been  sternly  condemned,  in  battle  and  blood,  as 
a  pestilent  political  heresy, — the  doctrine  of  Nullification  ! 
It  was  in  opposition  to  just  this  heresy,  in  its  incipient 
stage, — a  heresy  which  tainted  the  argument  of  Stephen 
Hopkins,  as  it  had  already  done  that  of  Thacher  and  of 
Otis, — that  our  first  Loyalist  writer  took  up  his  pen.  More- 
over, it  is  a  token  of  the  unequal  conditions  under  which 
the  debate  was  thenceforward  to  be  conducted  by  the  two 
opposite  parties,  that  this  first  Loyalist  writer  thought  it 
needful  to  hide  himself  under  the  double  concealment  of  a 
pseudonym  and  of  an  alibi. 

Hopkins's  pamphlet,  as  will  be  remembered,  had  first 
appeared  in  December,  1764,  in  Providence;  and  it  was  in 
February,  1765,  that  there  was  published  at  Newport  a  pam- 
phlet in  reply,  entitled  "  A  Letter  from  a  Gentleman  at 
Halifax,  To  His  Friend  in  Rhode  Island."  This  enigmatic 
gentleman  at  Halifax  writes  to  his  apocryphal  friend  in 
Rhode  Island  that  he  has  been  reading  Hopkins's  pamphlet, 
wjiich  he  finds  "  a  labored  ostentatious  piece,"  and  quite 
inferior  to  that  of  Otis,  "  who,  though  unhappily  misled  by 
popular  ideas,  and  at  the  head  of  the  tribunitian  veto,  yet 


THE  HALIFAX  GENTLEMAN.  71 

appears  to  be  a  man  of  knowledge  and  parts."  The  writer 
hopes  that  Hopkins's  pamphlet  does  not  accurately  repre- 
sent the  prevailing  temper  of  the  colonists,  whom  he 
advises  by  all  means  to  meditate  on  the  seriousness  of  the 
act  of  affronting  a  power  like  that  of  England ;  and  then, 
without  more  ado,  he  proceeds  to  attack  the  central  doc- 
trine, which  is  also  the  central  fallacy,  of  Hopkins's  pam- 
phlet,— "  that  the  colonies  have  rights  independent  of,  and 
not  controlled  by,  the  authority  of  parliament. ' ' a  This  doc- 
trine— this  fallacy — is  itself  founded  on  two  propositions, 
both  of  them  fallacious:  first,  that  the  American  colonists 
have  under  their  charters  all  the  political  rights  of  English- 
men at  home;  and,  secondly,  that  they  may  not  be  taxed 
by  parliament  unless  they  themselves  send  members  to 
parliament. 

Against  the  first  of  these  propositions  he  argues  that,  as 
the  colonies  are  in  law  mere  corporations  created  by  the 
crown,  their  privileges  are  precisely  those  which  are  fixed 
and  ascertained  by  their  charters.  "  I  fancy,"  he  goes  on 
to  say,  "  when  we  speak  or  think  of  the  rights  of  freeborn 
Englishmen,  we  confound  those  rights  which  are  personal 
with  those  which  are  political.  .  .  .  Our  personal  rights, 
comprehending  those  of  life,  liberty,  and  estate,  are  secured 
to  us  by  the  common  law,  which  is  every  subject's  birth- 
right, whether  born  in  Great  Britain,  on  the  ocean,  or  in  the 
colonies ;  and  it  is  in  this  sense  we  are  said  to  enjoy  all  the 
rights  and  privileges  of  Englishmen.  The  political  rights  of 
the  colonies,  or  the  powers  of  government  communicated  to 
them,  are  more  limited  ;  and  their  nature,  quality,  and 
extent  depend  altogether  upon  the  patent  or  charter  which 
first  created  and  instituted  them.  As  individuals,  the  colo- 
nists participate  of  every  blessing  the  English  constitution 
can  give  them ;  as  corporations  created  by  the  crown,  they 
are  confined  within  the  primitive  views  of  their  institution. 
Whether,  therefore,  their  indulgence  is  scanty  or  liberal, 
can  be  no  cause  of  complaint ;  for  when  they  accepted  of 
1  "A  Letter,"  etc.,  4.  *  Ibid.  6. 


72  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

their  charters,  they  tacitly  submitted  to  the  terms  and  con- 
ditions of  them."  l 

Against  the  second  of  these  propositions,  that  because 
the  colonists  do  not  elect  members  to  parliament,  therefore 
they  cannot  be  taxed  by  parliament,  he  argues  that,  by 
every  sound  view  of  the  constitution,  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
British  parliament  must  be  supreme  throughout  the  whole 
extent  of  the  British  empire ;  that  the  American  colonies 
have  received  from  their  charters  "  no  exemption  from  the 
jurisdiction  of  parliament  ";  indeed,  that  "  no  grant  of  the 
king  could  exempt  them  from  this  jurisdiction,  because  the 
common  law  .  .  .  confessedly  reaches  the  colonies,  and 
brings  with  it  that  jurisdiction,  and  announces  its  force  and 
operation  over  them  ' ' ;  finally,  that  the  members  of  the 
house  of  commons,  by  whomsoever  elected,  are  from  that 
moment  the  "  representatives  of  every  British  subject  wher- 
ever he  be,  and  therefore,  to  every  useful  and  beneficial 
purpose,  the  interests  of  the  colonists  are  as  well  secured 
and  managed  by  such  a  house,  as  though  they  had  a  share 
in  electing  them."  *  "  Let  me  ask,"  he  continues,  "  is  the 
Isle  of  Man,  Jersey,  or  Guernsey  represented  ?  What  is 
the  value  or  amount  of  each  man's  representation  in  the 
kingdom  of  Scotland,  which  contains  near  two  millions  of 
people,  and  yet  not  more  than  three  thousand  have  votes 
in  the  election  of  members  of  parliament  ?  .  .  .  Let  us 
take  into  the  argument  the  moneyed  interest  of  Britain, 
which,  though  immensely  great,  has  no  share  in  this  repre- 
sentation. A  worthless  freeholder  of  forty  shillings  per 
annum  can  vote  for  a  member  of  parliament,  whereas  a 
merchant,  though  worth  one  hundred  thousand  pounds 
sterling,  if  it  consists  in  personal  effects  has  no  vote  at  all. 
But  yet  let  no  one  suppose  that  the  interest  of  the  latter  is 
not  equally  the  object  of  parliamentary  attention  with  the 

1  "A  Letter,"  etc.,  8-g. 

5  The  clauses  quoted  in  the  above  sentence  are  from  a  summary  of  his  own 
argument  in  this  pamphlet,  but  given  by  the  author  himself  in  his  later 
pamphlet,  "A  Defence,"  etc.,  13. 


THE  HALIFAX  GENTLEMAN.  73 

former.  Let  me  add  one  example  more.  Copyholders  in 
England  of  one  thousand  pounds  sterling  per  annum  .  .  . 
cannot  by  law  vote  for  members  of  parliament  ;  yet  we 
never  hear  that  these  people  '  murmur  with  submissive  fear 
and  mingled  rage. "...  In  truth,  my  friend,  the  mat- 
ter lies  here :  the  freedom  and  happiness  of  every  British 
subject  depends,  not.  upon  his  share  in  elections,  but  upon 
the  sense  and  virtue  of  the  whole  British  parliament  ;  and 
these  depend  reciprocally  upon  the  sense  and  virtue  of  the 
whole  nation."  1 

As  to  the  ancient  constitutional  formula — "  No  taxation 
without  representation  " — of  course  it  is  true  in  the  sense 
intended  by  the  men  who  originated  it  and  who  have 
handed  it  down  to  us;  but  it  is  not  true  when  "  taken  in  a 
literal  sense,"  as  it  is  now  taken  by  so  many  Americans; 
and  being  by  them  thus  "  ill  understood  "  and  falsely 
applied,  it  "  has  made  all  the  mischief  in  the  colonies," 
where  its  perpetual  incantation  has  had  effects  only  to  be 
compared  to  those  once  produced  by  "  the  song  of  Lilli- 
bullero."' 

As  to  the  dispute  now  arising  between  the  colonies  and 
the  mother  country,  it  has  two  issues :  first,  concerning  the 
jurisdiction  of  parliament,  and,  secondly,  concerning  the 
merits  of  the  particular  measures  now  undertaken  by  parlia- 
ment in  the  exercise  of  its  jurisdiction.  If  the  colonies  are 
wise,  they  will  abandon  the  former  issue,  and  concentrate 
themselves  upon  the  latter.  Let  them  object  to  any  act  of 
parliament,  if  they  will, — but  never  because  it  is  an  act  of 
parliament,  and  only  because  it  is  not  a  wise  or  good  act  of 
parliament.  Therefore,  the  colonists  "  are  at  full  liberty  to 
remonstrate,  petition,  write  pamphlets  and  newspapers  with- 
out number,  to  prevent  any  improper  or  unreasonable  legis- 
lation. Nay,  I  would  have  them  do  all  this,  with  that  spirit 
of  freedom  which  Englishmen  "  have  always  carried  into 
their  political  discussions.3  All  serious  difficulties  may  be 
overcome,  all  real  wrongs  may  be  righted,  if  only  the  agita- 

1 "  A  Letter,"  etc.,  12-13.  * Ibid-  "•  3  Jbid.  21. 


74  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

tion  be  conducted  with  patience  and  good  humor,  or  at  any 
rate  within  the  old  lines  of  the  constitution.  In  response 
to  demands  presented  in  this  spirit,  "  the  supreme  legisla- 
ture of  the  nation  "  may  be  expected  in  due  time  "  to 
frame  some  code  of  laws,  and  therein  adjust  the  rights  of 
the  colonies  with  precision  and  certainty." 

In  conclusion,  though  the  writer  has  no  ambition  to 
appear  in  print,  he  yet  permits  the  publication  of  his  letter, 
should  its  publication  seem  likely  to  be  of  use;  and  this 
permission  he  gives  all  the  more  cheerfully  for  the  reason 
that,  "  notwithstanding  the  frequent  abuse  poured  forth  in 
pamphlets  and  newspapers  against  the  mother  country,  not 
one  filial  pen  in  America  hath  as  yet  been  drawn  .  .  . 
in  her  vindication."  * 

Upon  the  whole,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  Loyalists 
of  the  American  Revolution  here  make  their  entrance  into 
American  literature  in  a  form  not  at  all  discreditable  either 
to  their  intelligence,  or  to  their  character,  or  to  their  man- 
ners. This  "  Letter  from  a  Gentleman  at  Halifax  to  his 
Friend  in  Rhode  Island  "  is  an  able  and  an  impressive  polit- 
ical statement.  Temperate  in  thought  and  in  personal 
allusion,  not  lacking  in  sarcasm,  and  yet  never  abusive  or 
unparliamentary,  it  rests  upon  a  clear  and  a  strong  basis 
both  in  constitutional  law  and  in  sound  policy.  It  indi- 
cates, moreover,  no  little  familiarity  with  literature,  and 
especially  with  English  poetry.  Of  course,  it  is  in  no  sense 
a  work  of  genius;  but  in  thought  and  in  form  it  is  quite 
above  the  ordinary  level  of  political  controversy.  It  was 
evidently  the  work  of  an  able  lawyer,  of  a  man  of  sense  and 
a  man  of  affairs;  and  being  in  its  tone  at  once  firm,  patriotic, 
moderate,  and  gentlemanlike,  it  would  be  apt  to  carry  along 
with  it  a  considerable  number  of  the  class  of  fair-minded 
men — unless  already  otherwise  committed.  Its  genuine 
power  was  shown  in  the  instant  and  angry  rebound  against  it. 
1  "  A  Letter,"  etc.,  22.  *Ibid. 


JAMES  OTIS.  75 

IV. 

So  instant  and  so  angry  was  the  rebound  against  the 
"  Letter  from  a  Gentleman  at  Halifax,"  that  before  it  had 
been  many  days  in  the  hands  of  the  public,  the  deputy- 
governor  of  Rhode  Island  went  before  the  lower  house  of 
the  general  assembly,  asking  them  to  take  the  offensive 
pamphlet  into  their  consideration,  and  to  proceed  either 
against  the  printer  of  the  pamphlet  or  against  the  pamphlet 
itself.  This  proposition  was  supported  by  "  some  warm 
members  "  of  the  house,  who  denounced  the  pamphlet  as 
a  libel,  and  demanded  that  the  printer  should  be  sent  for, 
and  that  the  pamphlet  should  be  burned  by  the  common 
hangman.1 

Then,  for  some  time,  over  this  first  literary  manifesto  of 
the  Loyalist  party,  raged  a  war  of  words, — witty  or  witless, 
— here  hard-hitting  arguments,  there  only  coarse  noises  as 
of  coarse  men  falling  upon  one  another  in  a  brutal  fray. 
Stephen  Hopkins  himself,  whose  pamphlet  had  given  imme- 
diate occasion  for  the  onslaught  of  the  Halifaxian,  now  deals 
with  his  assailant,  after  his  own  reasonable  and  dignified 
fashion,  in  sundry  articles  published  in  "  The  Providence 
Gazette."8  James  Otis,  too,  takes  a  hand  in  the  me!6e, 
partly  because  it  was  never  easy  for  him  to  keep  out  of  any 
good  fight  that  might  be  going  on  in  his  neighborhood,  and 
partly  because  he  had  himself  been  a  target  for  the  fleering 
compliments  of  the  foe.  The  peculiar  vivacity  which  he 
thus  contributes  to  the  quarrel,  by  his  "  Vindication  of  the 
British  Colonies  against  the  Aspersions  of  the  Halifax  Gen- 
tleman," may  be  inferred  from  a  single  sentence  of  his  pam- 
phlet, wherein,  after  the  classic  manner  of  controversy  in 
those  days,  he  describes  the  tractate  of  his  opponent  as 
containing  "  the  quintessence  of  a  mere  martial  legislator, 
the  insolence  of  a  haughty  and  imperious  minister,  the  indo- 
lence and  half-thought  of  a  petit  maitre,  the  flutter  of  a 

1  "A  Defence,"  etc.,  28. 

*  For  February  23,  March  2,  March  9,  and  April  8,  1765.  Also  W.  E.  Foster, 
"  Stephen  Hopkins,"  ii.  61. 


76  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

coxcomb,  the  pedantry  of  a  quack,  and  the  nonsense  of  a 
pettifogger."  '  Of  course,  a  debater  so  competent  as  Otis, 
though  lapsing  thus  into  occasional  vituperation,  could 
never  need  to  rest  his  cause  on  mere  spiteful  balderdash. 
Accordingly,  taking  up  one  by  one  the  chief  arguments  of 
the  Halifax  Gentleman,  he  confers  upon  that  still  visored 
combatant  many  a  neat  and  telling  stroke ;  as  when,  reply- 
ing to  his  claim  that  since  but  few  people  in  Great  Britain 
could  vote  for  members  of  parliament,  therefore  the  Ameri- 
cans need  not  murmur  because  none  of  them  could  do  so, 
he  says: — "  Many  great  and  good  men  have  complained  of 
the  inequality  of  the  representation  in  Great  Britain.  This 
inequality  can  never  be  a  reason  for  making  it  more  so."  2 

This  screed  of  James  Otis  against  the  Halifax  Gentleman 
was  delivered  to  the  public,  probably,  in  March,  1765;  and 
in  April,  probably,  the  Halifax  Gentleman  made  his  second 
and  his  final  appearance  in  the  lists,  retorting  both  upon 
.Otis  and  upon  Hopkins.  This  he  did  in  a  pamphlet  pub- 
lished at  Newport,  and  entitled  "  A  Defence  of  the  Letter 
from  a  Gentleman  at  Halifax  to  His  Friend  in  Rhode 
Island."  Like  the  former  production  of  this  writer,  it  bears 
not  a  few  marks  of  literary  cultivation ;  and  compared  with 
most  controversial  writing  in  that  period,  whether  in 
America  or  abroad,  it  seems  rather  notable  for  its  urbanity. 
As  though  holding  some  vantage  of  superiority  to  partisan 
passion  and  tumult,  and  constantly  chaffing  his  adversaries 
with  a  contemptuous  humor  all  the  more  insufferable 
because  so  cool  and  so  effortless,  he  proceeds  to  trace  the 
origin  and  development  of  the  American  idea  of  nullifying 
the  legislative  authority  of  parliament ;  he  cites  passages 
from  American  newspapers  to  illustrate  the  new  spirit  of 
colonial  disregard  for  the  mother  country, — that  "  unfilial 
disposition  "  against  which,  in  his  former  pamphlet,  he  had 
directed  his  censures.  For  this  service,  he  had  been  cov- 
ered with  "  illiberal  opposition  and  multiplied  abuse  .  .  . 

1  "A  Vindication  of  the  British  Colonies,"  etc.,  46. 
2  Ibid.  20. 


JAMES  OTIS.  77 

from  various  quarters/'  *  especially  from  "  two  very  distin- 
guished personages,"  *  "  the  exactest  models  of  politeness, 
urbanity,  and  softness  of  manners,  perhaps,  in  America."  * 

One  of  these,  "  the  Providence  writer,"  he  teases  for  a 
time  in  his  nonchalant  fashion,  charging  him,  also,  with 
being  a  politician  who  had  lately  turned  his  coat.  As  to 
"  the  Boston  writer,"  he  declines  to  take  that  gentleman 
seriously,  although  he  admits  that  the  reading  of  Otis's 
latest  pamphlet  is  a  very  serious  business.  He  had,  indeed, 

with  great  travail  and  perseverance,  waded  through  this 
dreary  waste  of  thirty-two  pages.  In  attempting  to  explore 
it,  chaos  seemed  to  be  come  again.  The  patience  he  exer- 
cised on  that  dark  and  gloomy  occasion,  has  fitted  him  for 
any  misfortune  or  disappointment  in  life.  Pain  he  will  no 
more  consider  as  an  evil.  Nay,  should  he  be  forced  to  pass 
the  Sty(gian  river,  and  drink  its  poisonous  vapors,  it  would 
be  more  than  Elysian  compared  with  the  misery  of  reading 
through  this  pamphlet."  At  the  conclusion  of  his  paper, 
he  announces  that  whatever  treatment  he  may  now  receive, 
he  will  not  further  engage  in  "  a  controversy  which  his 
antagonists  have  already  made  personal,  and  therefore  can 
answer  no  end  but  to  sour  and  provoke  one  against  another. 
Recrimination  throws  no  light  upon  the  enquiry,  and  the 
subject  becomes  lost  in  a  torrent  of  abuse.  .  .  .  He 
will  give  no  occasion  for  the  further  production  of  human 
depravity  and  baseness,  lest  he  should  lose  that  philan- 
thropy which  at  present  administers  to  him  the  greatest 
contentment,  next  to  that  he  derives  from  the  esteem  and 
friendship  of  good  and  virtuous  men."  4 


V. 

It  was  not  in  the  nature  of  James  Otis  to  permit  an  an- 
tagonist thus  to  fold  his  robes  about  him  and  in  haughty 
composure  to  retire  from  the  field,  without  at  least  having 
his  garments  ruffled  by  a  farewell  shot  from  himself.  This 

1  "A  Defence  of  the  Letter,"  etc.,  3.        *  Ibid.  4.       'Ibid.  14.       4  Ibid.  29 


78  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

farewell  shot,  accordingly,  Otis  sent  with  his  usual  prompti- 
tude, in  the  shape  of  a  pamphlet  of  about  forty  pages, 
entitled  "  Brief  Remarks  on  the  Defence  of  the  Halifax 
Libel  on  the  British  American  Colonies"1:  a  piece  of 
writing  the  least  worthy  of  respect,  probably,  of  all  that 
ever  fell  from  that  unsteady  hand, — a  confused  mixture  of 
controversial  ingredients,  with  which  the  impetuous  patriot, 
quite  out  of  temper,  ostentatiously  carries  the  dispute  down 
to  the  level  of  a  street-fight.  Pointing  out  his  antagonist 
as  a  citizen,  not  of  Halifax,  but  of  Newport, — then  the 
seat  of  a  great  maritime  commerce  and  of  the  most  cosmo- 
politan community  in  America, — he  bespatters  him  as  one 
of  a  motley  crowd  of  political  desperadoes  in  that  town,  who, 
having  not  long  before  been  deep  in  treason  as  conspirators 
for  the  Pretender,  are  now  posing  as  the  peculiar  cham- 
pions of  the  House  of  Hanover:  "  a  set  of  gentry  who  are 
in  combination  to  vilify  the  colonies,  and  depreciate  every 
service  they  have  rendered  the  crown.  .  .  .  Such  is 
the  little,  dirty,  drinking,  drabbing,  contaminated  knot  of 
thieves,  beggars,  and  transports  .  .  .  collected  from 
the  four  winds  of  the  earth,  and  made  up  of  Turks,  Jews, 
and  other  infidels,  with  a  few  renegado  Christians  and 
Catholics,  and  altogether  formed  into  a  club  of  scarce  a 
dozen  at  Newport.8  From  hence  proceed  Halifax  letters, 
petitions  to  alter  the  colony  forms  of  government,  libels 
upon  all  good  colonists  and  subjects,  and  every  evil  work 
that  can  enter  into  the  heart  of  man.  These  are  some  of 
the  gentry  who,  all  of  a  sudden,  have  become  the  most 

1  Of  this  pamphlet,  but  nine  copies  are  known  to  be  in  existence.  The  copy 
used  by  me,  now  belonging  to  the  library  of  Cornell  University,  formerly  be- 
longed to  E.  B.  O'Callaghan.  There  need  be  no  doubt  that  Otis  was  the  author 
of  it.  By  some  mistake,  possibly  a  mere  slip  of  the  pen,  William  Tudor,  on 
the  i88th  page  of  his  "  Life  of  Otis,"  published  in  1823,  spoke  of  the  pamphlet 
as  the  work  of  Stephen  Hopkins  ;  and  from  this  misleading  statement,  ap- 
parently, the  pamphlet  has  been  often  since  then  attributed  to  Hopkins,  rather 
than  to  Otis.  A  perfectly  satisfactory  account  of  the  whole  matter  has  been 
given  by  W.  E.  Foster,  in  his  "Stephen  Hopkins,"  ii.  227-230,  Appendix  I., 
"A  Question  of  Authorship." 

9  The  text  reads,  N— p— t. 


MARTIN  HOWARD.  79 

loyal  subjects  in  America,  and  have  had  the  impudence  to 
attempt  to  persuade  all  England  that  the  rest  of  the  colo- 
nists are  as  great  rebels  as  ever  appeared  in  arms  for  the 
Pretender."  ' 

VI. 

At  the  time  when  Otis  was  preparing  this  parting  salute 
for  the  clever  pamphleteer  who  had  so  much  irritated  him, 
it  had  become  pretty  well  known  that  the  "  Gentleman  at 
Halifax  "  was,  in  reality,  none  other  than  a  very  eminent 
gentleman  of  Newport,  Martin  Howard  by  name,  an  accom- 
plished lawyer,  and  a  politician  of  such  note  that  so  eariy  as 
the  year  1754  he  had  been  associated  with  Stephen  Hopkins 
as  a  delegate  from  Rhode  Island  in  the  Albany  Congress. 
Roughly  as  Martin  Howard  was  now  handled  by  Otis  for 
the  offense  of  disagreeing  with  the  new  doctrine  and  the 
new  party  of  colonial  Nullification,  he  was  soon  to  experi- 
ence far  rougher  treatment,  and  for  the  same  offense,  at  the 
hands  of  his  own  fellow-townsmen,  who,  in  contending  for 
"  the  cause  of  liberty,"  did  not  understand  by  that  term 
the  liberty  to  hold,  upon  the  question  then  in  dispute,  any 
opinions  other  than  those  which  they  themselves  held. 
Accordingly,  on  Tuesday,  the  27th  of  the  following  August, 
at  about  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning,  an  angry  crowd  of 
people  in  Newport  "  brought  forth  the  effigies  of  three 
persons,  in  a  cart,  with  halters  about  their  necks,  to  a  gal- 
lows twenty  feet  high,  placed  near  the  town-house,  where 
they  were  hung  to  public  view  till  near  night,  when  they  were 
cut  down,  and  burnt  under  the  gallows,  amidst  the  acclama- 
tions of  thousands."  Of  these  three  effigies,  one  was 
meant  to  personate  Martin  Howard.  On  the  next  evening, 
also,  the  same  mob  assembled  once  more,  and  beset  the 
house  of  Martin  Howard,  which  they  did  not  leave  until 
they  had  thoroughly  gutted  it,  had  burned  or  smashed  his 
furniture,  and  had  injured  his  person;  whereupon  he  him- 

1  "  Brief  Remarks,"  etc.,  5. 


80  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

self,  being  at  last  houseless  and  well-nigh  friendless,  and 
fearing  for  his  life  •  even  there  in  the  place  of  his  kindly 
engendrure,  "  took  shelter  in  the  Signet  man-of-war,  and 
soon  after  departed  for  Great  Britain."1 

1  My  account  of  the  mobbing  of  Howard  is  derived  chiefly  from  a  contempo- 
rary narrative  in  Alinon,  "  Prior  Documents,"  14.  In  the  "  Records  of  the 
Colony  of  R.  I.,"  vii.  216,  217,  is  given  Howard's  own  claim  against  the  gov- 
ernment of  Rhode  Island  for  damages  sustained  by  him  in  this  riot,  followed  by 
the  grimly  humorous  award  thereon  as  made  by  the  legislative  committee  in  1773. 
For  the  single  item  as  to  the  injury  then  done  to  his  person,  I  depend  on  the 
modern  narrative  of  Sabine,  in  his  "  Loyalists  of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  i.  547.  The 
plan  of  Sabine's  book  is  praiseworthy  as  calling  for  a  treatment  of  the  American 
Revolution  in  a  spirit  of  historic  disinterestedness  far  in  advance  of  his  own  time  ; 
but  the  execution  of  the  work  is  slovenly  and  inaccurate.  At  the  page  above 
cited,  the  reader  may  find  a  brief  sketch  of  Howard's  subsequent  career  as  a 
magistrate  in  North  Carolina  down  to  1778,  when  he  finally  made  his  escape  to 
England,  where  he  died  in  1781  or  1782.  I  have  been  unable  to  meet  with  any 
evidence  to  confirm  Sabine's  statement  as  to  the  bad  personal  character  of 
Howard.  The  loose  remark  that  "careful  pens  speak  of  his  profligate  charac- 
ter and  of  his  corrupt  and  wicked  designs,"  leaves  us  still  regretting  that  we  have 
not  the  advantage  of  knowing  just  who  held  these  "  careful  pens,"  or  just  how 
much  their  testimony  might  happen  to  be  worth. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE    AMERICAN    DEBATE    AS     ENLIVENED    BY    A    BRITISH 
PAMPHLETEER:    1765. 

1. — The  literary  character  of  Soame  Jenyns — His  lively  pamphlet  entitled 
"  The  Objections  to  the  Taxation  of  Our  American  Colonies,  Briefly  Con- 
sidered " — An  example  of  ease  and  gayety  in  the  solution  of  difficult  prob- 
lems— His  discussion  of  the  maxim,  "  No  taxation  without  representation  " 
— Admiration  of  this  pamphlet  in  England — Its  great  immediate  success  as 
a  political  irritant. 

II. — Otis's  reply  to  Soame  Jenyns,  in  "  Considerations  on  Behalf  of  the 
Colonies,  in  a  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,"  September,  1765 — The  controver- 
sial method  of  this  pamphlet — Otis  ridicules  the  doctrine  of  virtual  repre- 
sentation— Scoffs  at  the  pretense  that  the  colonies  need  protection — His 
serious  discussion  of  constitutional  questions — Advises  the  British  govern- 
ment to  be  careful  of  the  affections  of  the  American  colonists. 

I. 

EARLY  in  the  year  1765,  not  far  from  the  time  when  the 
new  political  heresy  of  colonial  Nullification  was  receiving 
at  the  hands  of  Martin  Howard  its  first  literary  attack  in 
America,  it  received  in  England  a  literary  attack  still  more 
effective  at  the  hands  of  the  noted  wit,  politician,  and  man 
of  letters,  Soame  Jenyns,  then  for  more  than  twenty  years 
a  member  of  parliament,  and  for  about  ten  years  one  of  the 
commissioners  of  the  board  of  trade :  a  writer  of  whom  Dr. 
Johnson  said  that,  even  in  the  discussion  of  a  subject  the 
most  difficult  and  the  most  solemn,  he  seemed  to  have  "  an 
affectation  of  ease  and  carelessness,  as  if  it  were  not  suitable 
to  his  character  to  be  very  serious  about  the  matter." 

1  Boswell,  "  Life  of  Johnson."  ed.  by  Birkbeck  Hill,  iii.  288.  Gerard 
Hamilton  told  Malone  that  Jenyns  could  not  readily  be  made  "  to  comprehend 
an  argument.  If,  however,  there  was  anything  weak  or  defective  or  ridiculous 
in  what  another  said;  he  always  laid  hold  of  it  and  played  upon  it  with  success. 
He  looked  at  everything  with  a  view  to  pleasantry  alone."  Prior,  "  Life  of 
Malone,"  375. 

81 


82  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Precisely  this  was  his  tone  in  dealing  with  the  American 
question.  All  the  complexities  of  that  sombre  problem 
which  was  then  lowering  over  the  English-speaking  race, 
he  dispatches  in  a  nimble-footed  pamphlet  of  about  twenty 
pages  of  coarse  print,  entitled  "  The  Objections  to  the 
Taxation  of  Our  American  Colonies  by  the  Legislature  of 
Great  Britain,  Briefly  Considered,"  '  wherein  he  touches,  as 
was  his  wont,  the  tips  and  fringes  of  the  subject,  doing  so 
in  that  style  of  argumentative  banter,  and  of  jocular  facility 
in  disposing  of  other  people's  difficulties,  which  had  already 
procured  for  him  among  his  contemporaries  extraordinary 
admiration  as  being  a  man  of  fashion  who  also  knew  how  to 
transact  the  business  of  Grub  Street  with  the  high-bred 
ease,  the  sparkle,  and  the  persiflage  of  the  court.  To 
some,  indeed,  the  subject  of  American  taxation  might  have 
seemed  too  technical  and  too  dry  to  be  capable  of  lending 
itself  to  the  purposes  of  a  mere  purveyor  of  literary  confec- 
tionery and  of  philosophical  small-talk ;  yet  even  upon  this 
unpromising  theme,  such  was  his  lightness  of  touch,  his 
gayety,  his  shrewdness,  his  air  of  social  superiority,  and  his 
apparent  proffer  to  his  readers  of  the  ripe  fruits  of  political 
wisdom  without  any  cost  or  toil  to  them,  that  his  little 
book  leaped  at  once  into  considerable  vogue,  as  furnishing 
out  the  fashionable  world  with  a  complete  stock  of  replies — 
of  short,  sharp,  conclusive,  and  not  too  serious  replies — to 
all  possible  objections  against  the  taxation  of  America  by 
parliament. 

The  right  of  parliament  to  tax  America,  and  the  expedi- 
ency of  its  doing  so,  are,  according  to  Soame  Jenyns,  prop- 
ositions so  perfectly  plain,  that  no  one  would  dare  to 
undertake  their  defense,  "  had  not  many  arguments  been 

1  Two  editions  of  this  pamphlet  appeared  in  London  in  1765.  My  references 
are  to  the  second  ed.,  which  differs  from  the  first  only  in  a  slightly  different  pa- 
ging. See,  also,  the  "  Works  of  Soame  Jenyns,"  ii.  189-204.  It  is  no  part  of  my 
plan,in  the  present  work  to  include  English  writings  on  the  American  dispute, 
excepting  when,  as  in  the  present  case,  such  writings  need  to  be  briefly  described 
in  order  to  indicate  the  occasion  and  character  of  the  American  comments  upon 
them. 


SO  A  ME  JENYNS.  83 

lately  flung  out,  both  in  papers  and  conversation,  which, 
with  insolence  equal  to  their  absurdity,  deny  them  both." 
Moreover,  these  arguments  "  are  usually  mixed  up  with 
several  patriotic  and  favorite  words,  such  as  liberty,  prop- 
erty, Englishmen,  and  so  forth,  which  are  apt  to  make  strong 
impressions  on  that  more  numerous  part  of  mankind,  who 
have  ears  but  no  understanding." 

In  looking  over  this  rabble  of  arguments  against  the 
taxation  of  the  colonies  by  parliament,  he  finds  one  which 
appears  to  him  to  be  "  the  great  capital  argument,"  and 
which,  "  like  an  elephant  at  the  head  of  a  nabob's  army, 
being  once  overthrown,  must  put  the  whole  to  confusion."  * 
This  argument  may  be  stated  thus:  "  No  Englishman  is  or 
can  be  taxed,  without  the  consent  of  the  majority  of  those 
who  are  elected  by  himself  and  others  of  his  fellow-subjects, 
to  represent  them."  Now,  this  statement  is  simply  not 
true;  "  for,  every  Englishman  is  taxed,  and  not  one  in 
twenty  is  represented.  Copyholders,  leaseholders,  and  all 
men  possessed  of  personal  property  only,  choose  no  repre- 
sentatives. Manchester,  Birmingham,  and  many  more  of 
our  richest  and  most  flourishing  trading  towns  send  no 
members  to  parliament;  consequently,  cannot  consent 'by 
their  representatives,  because  they  choose  none  to  represent 
them.  Yet  are  they  not  Englishmen,  or  are  they  not 
taxed  ?"  Well,  then,  "  if  the  towns  of  Manchester  and 
Birmingham,  sending  no  representatives  to  parliament,  are 
notwithstanding  there  represented,  why  are  not  the  cities  of 
Albany  and  Boston  equally  represented  in  that  assembly  ? 
Are  they  not  alike  British  subjects  ?  Are  they  not  English- 
men ?  Or,  are  they  only  Englishmen  when  they  solicit  for 
protection,  but  not  Englishmen  when  taxes  are  required  to 
enable  this  country  to  protect  them  ?  "  4 

But  the  Americans,  not  being  tyros  in  debate,  nor  ever 
without  resource  in  any  logical  stress  or  emergency  whatso- 
ever, are  here  ready  with  a  reply:  "  that  the  colonies  are  by 
their  charters  placed  under  distinct  governments,  each  of 
»"  The  Objections,  "etc.,  3-4.  *  Ibid.  4-5.  *  Ibid.  7.  4  Ibid.  9. 


84  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

which  has  a  legislative  power  within  itself,  by  which  alone  it 
ought  to  be  taxed ;  that  if  this  privilege  is  once  given  up, 
that  liberty  which  every  Englishman  has  a  right  to,  is  torn 
from  them, — they  are  all  slaves,  and  all  is  lost !  "  '  A 
most  plausible  plea,  to  be  sure!  And  yet  how  much  of 
truth  does  it  hold  ?  In  the  first  place,  "  '  The  liberty  of  an 
Englishman  '  is  a  phrase  of  so  various  a  signification — hav- 
ing within  these  few  years  been  used  as  a  synonymous  term 
for  blasphemy,  bawdry,  treason,  libels,  strong  beer,  and 
cider — that  I  shall  not  here  presume  to  define  its  meaning ; 
but  I  shall  venture  to  assert  what  it  cannot  mean, — that  is, 
an  exemption  from  taxes  imposed  by  the  authority  of  the 
parliament  of  Great  Britain."  "  Nor,"  in  the  second  place, 
"  is  there  any  charter  that  ever  pretended  to  grant  such  a 
privilege  to  any  colony  in  America ;  and  had  they  granted 
it,  it  could  have  had  no  force, — their  charters  being  derived 
from  the  crown,  and  no  charter  from  the  crown  can  possibly 
supersede  the  right  of  the  whole  legislature.  Their  charters 
are  undoubtedly  no  more  than  those  of  all  corporations, 
which  impower  them  to  make  by-laws  and  raise  duties  for 
the  purposes  of  their  own  police,  forever  subject  to  the 
superior  authority  of  parliament.  And,  in  some  of  their 
charters,  the  manner  of  exercising  these  powers  is  specified 
in  these  express  words — '  according  to  the  course  of  other 
corporations  in  Great  Britain.'  And,  therefore,  they  can 
have  no  more  pretense  to  plead  exemption  from  this  parlia- 
mentary authority,  than  any  other  corporation  in  England. ' ' a 
Finally,  as  regards  the  question  of  right,  it  has  been  sug- 
gested that  the  whole  difficulty  might  be  solved  by  a  very 
simple  process — that  of  introducing  into  parliament  mem- 
bers elected  from  the  several  colonies.  "  I  shall  not  here 
consider  the  impracticability  of  this  method,  nor  the  effects 
of  it,  if  it  could  be  practised,  but  only  say5,  that  I  have 
lately  seen  so  many  specimens  of  the  great  powers  of  speech 
of  which  these  American  gentlemen  are  possessed,  that  I 
should  be  much  afraid  that  the  sudden  importation  of  so 
1  "  The  Objections,"  etc.,  9-10.  9  Ibid.  10-11. 


SO  A  ME  JENYNS.  8$ 

much  eloquence  at  once,  would  greatly  endanger  the  safety 
and  government  of  this  country.  .  .  .  If  we  can  avail 
ourselves  of  these  taxes  on  no  other  condition,  I  shall  never 
look  upon  it  as  a  measure  of  frugality,  being  perfectly  satis- 
fied that  in  the  end  it  would  be  much  cheaper  for  us  to  pay 
their  army,  than  their  orators."  ' 

The  literary  and  especially  the  polemic  cleverness  of  this 
pamphlet  cannot  be  justly  estimated  without  some  com- 
parison of  it  with  the  mass  of  pamphlets,  English  and 
American,  which  were  produced  at  about  the  same  time, 
and  upon  the  same  subject.  A  recent  English  historian 
has  spoken  of  it  as  containing  "  the  most  powerful  reason- 
ing in  favor  of  American  taxation  "  that  he  has  ever  met 
with."  Most  writers  of  that  period,  however,  if  upon  the 
opposite  side  of  the  question,  seem  to  have  been  impressed 
rather  by  its  exasperating  qualities — the  very  qualities, 
probably,  which  its  author  most  desired  it  to  have — particu- 
larly, its  deft  unscrupulousness  in  fastening  upon  a  few 
available  points  of  the  case,  and  in  stating  these  so  adroitly, 
with  such  derisive  humor,  with  such  an  air  of  easy  infalli- 
bility, as  to  seem  to  settle  the  whole  question  off-hand  and 
as  a  matter  of  course,  for  all  but  dunces  and  scoundrels.  It 
could  hardly  be  expected  that  American  writers  in  opposi- 
tion, being  themselves  very  much  in  earnest,  and  profoundly 
convinced  of  the  strength  and  the  importance  of  their 
cause,  should  be  able  to  read  with  entire  patience  a  writer 
who  insisted  on  dealing  with  them  as  the  perpetrators  of  a 
sort  of  political  joke  which  had  the  disadvantage  of  being 
both  stupid  and  impudent.  The  irritation  which  they 
betrayed  in  their  replies  to  Soame  Jenyns  may  perhaps 
have  given  him  the  very  evidence  he  most  coveted  of  his 
own  success. 

1  "  The  Objections,"  etc.,  17-18. 

8  Sir  Edward  Creasy,  "  The  Imperial  and  Colonial  Constitutions  of  the 
Britannic  Empire,"  149  n. 


86  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

II. 

One  of  the  most  notable  of  these  replies  was  by  James 
Otis,  and  was,  in  fact,  his  last  service  in  this  form  of  writ- 
ing,— "  Considerations  on  Behalf  of  the  Colonies,  in  a  Let- 
ter to  a  Noble  Lord  "  ':  a  capital  specimen  of  the  jaunty, 
slashing,  controversial  pamphlet  of  the  period  ;  without 
urbanity  or  dignity;  catching  at  all  occasions  for  personal 
retort  upon  his  opponent,  and  anon  flinging  at  him  some 
blunt  epithet,  just  as  one  would  fling  a  brick;  at  the  same 
time,  having  abundant  dialectic  skill,  legal  sense,  political 
sagacity,  flashes  of  noble  sentiment,  and  the  sort  of  popular 
effectiveness  which  comes  of  a  Gothic  mixture  of  keenness, 
bitterness,  and  buffoonery. 

Upon  the  very  title-page  of  Soame  Jenyns's  tract  occurs 
a  phrase  which  seems  to  have  had  a  peculiarly  rasping  effect 
on  his  American  critic — the  phrase,  "  our  American  colo- 
nies." "  Whose  colonies,"  exclaims  Otis,  "  can  the  crea- 
ture mean  ?  The  minister's  colonies  ?  No,  surely.  Whose 
then, — his  own  ?  I  never  heard  he  had  any  colonies:  '  Nee 
gladio,  nee  arcu,  nee  astu  vicerunt.'  He  must  mean  his 
majesty's  American  colonies.  His  majesty's  colonies  they 
are,  and  I  hope  and  trust  ever  will  be.  .  .  .  Every 
garreteer,  from  the  environs  of  Grub  Street,  to  the  purlieus 
of  St.  James's,  has  lately  talked  of  '  his,'  and  '  my,'  and 
'  our'  colonies,  and  of  the  '  rascally  colonists.'  ...  I 
cannot  see  why  the  American  peasants  may  not  with  as 
much  propriety  speak  of  their  cities  of  London  and  West- 
minster, of  their  isles  of  Britain,  Iceland,  Jersey,  Guernsey, 
Sark,  and  the  Orcades,  and  of  the  '  rivulets  and  runlets 
thereof,'  and  consider  them  all  but  as  appendages  to  their 
sheepcotes  and  goose-pens."  ' 

Perhaps  the  most  effective  thing  in  Soame  Jenyns's  pam- 
phlet was  its  well-handled  attempt  to  put  out  of  court  the 

1  Originally  printed  in  "  The  Boston  Gazette,"  over  the  signature  "  F.  A.,' 
and  dated  4  Sep.,  1765.  Reprinted  by  Almon  in  London  in  1765,  where  it 
passed  through  two  editions  within  that  year. 

*  "  Considerations,"  etc.,  13-14. 


JAMES  OTIS.  g/ 

colonial  plea  against  parliamentary  taxation,  by  showing 
that  there  were  in  England  itself  vast  unrepresented  popula- 
tions which  could  as  justly  go  into  court  with  the  same  plea. 
"  To  what  purpose  is  it,"  retorts  Otis,  "  to  ring  everlasting 
changes  to  the  colonists  on  the  cases  of  Manchester,  Bir- 
mingham, and  Sheffield,  who  return  no  members  ?  If  these 
now  so  considerable  places  are  not  represented,  they  ought 
to  be!  Besides,  the  counties  in  which  those  respectable 
abodes  of  tinkers,  tinmen,  and  pedlars  lie,  return  members; 
so  do  all  the  neighboring  cities  and  boroughs.  In  the 
choice  of  the  former,  if  they  have  no  vote,  they  must  natu- 
rally and  necessarily  have  a  great  influence.  I  believe  every 
gentleman  of  a  landed  estate,  near  a  flourishing  manufac- 
tory, will  be  careful  enough  of  its  interests.  Though  the 
great  India  Company  as  such  returns  no  members,  yet  many 
of  the  company  are  returned,  and  their  interests  have  been 
ever  very  carefully  attended  to.  Mr.  Jenyns  '  says,  '  by  far 
the  major  part  of  the  inhabitants  of  Great  Britain  are  non 
electors.'  The  more  is  the  pity!  '  Every  Englishman,'  he 
tells  us,  '  is  taxed;  and  yet  not  one  in  twenty  is  repre- 
sented.' .  .  .  So,  a  small  minority  rules  and  governs 
the  majority  !  .  What  '  ab  initio  '  could  give  an 

absolute  unlimited  right  to  one  twentieth  of  a  community, 
to  govern  the  other  nineteen  by  their  sovereign  will  and 
pleasure  ?  .  His  way  of  reasoning  would  as  well 

prove  that  the  British  house  of  commons,  in  fact,  represent 
all  the  people  on  the  globe,  as  those  in  America. 
Should  the  British  empire  one  day  be  extended  round  the 
whole  world,  would  it  be  reasonable  that  all  mankind  should 
have  their  concerns  managed  by  the  electors  of  Old  Sarum 
and  the  occupants  of  the  Cornish  barns  and  ale-houses  ?  " 
"It  is  in  my  humble  opinion  as  good  law,  and  as  good 
sense  too,  to  affirm  that  all  the  plebeians  of  Great  Britain 
are  in  fact  or  virtually  represented  in  the  assembly  of  the 
Tuscaroras,  as  that  all  the  colonists  are  in  fact  or  virtually 
represented  in  the  honorable  house  of  commons  of  Great 

1  The  text  reads.  J s. 


88  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Britain,  separately  considered  as  one  branch  of  the  supreme 
and  universal  legislature  of  the  whole  empire."  ' 

Then,  too,  James  Otis,  like  many  another  American,  had 
winced  under  the  taunt  which  Soame  Jenyns  flung  at 
them  when  he  asked,  if  the  colonists  are  "  only  Englishmen 
when  they  solicit  for  protection,  but  not  Englishmen  when 
taxes  are  required  to  enable  this  country  to  protect  them  ?  " 
"  I  ask  in  my  turn,"  replies  Otis,  "  when  did  the  colonies 
solicit  for  protection  ?  They  have  had  no  occasion  to  solicit 
for  protection,  since  the  happy  accession  of  our  gracious 
sovereign's  illustrious  family  to  the  British  diadem.  His 
majesty,  the  father  of  all  his  people,  protects  all  his  loyal 
subjects  of  every  complexion  and  language,  without  any 
particular  solicitation.  But,  before  the  ever  memorable 
Revolution,  the  northern  colonies  were  so  far  from  receiving 
protection  from  Britain,  that  every  thing  was  done,  from 
the  throne  to  the  footstool,  to  cramp,  betray,  and  ruin 
them.  Yet,  against  the  combined  power  of  France,  Indian 
savages,  and  the  corrupt  administration  of  those  times,  they 
carried  on  their  settlements,  and  under  a  mild  government 
for  these  eighty  years  past,  have  made  them  the  wonder 
and  envy  of  the  world."  *  And,  then,  as  to  protection,  now 
and  in  the  future,  against  whom  are  we  to  be  protected  ? 
"  Against  whom  ?  Why,  a  few  ragged  Indians,  thousands, 
and  ten  thousands  of  whose  fathers,  without  European  aid 
when  we  most  wanted  it,  were  sent  to  the  infernal 
shades  !  "8 

But  the  real  strength  of  Otis's  pamphlet  lies,  not  in  its 
repartees,  but  in  its  direct  presentments  of  policy — of  sound 
and  statesmanlike  policy — touching  all  those  questions  then 
inflaming  the  relations  of  the  American  colonies  with  the 
mother  country.  First,  as  a  good  constitutional  lawyer, 
Otis  admits  and  proclaims  the  principle  of  the  supremacy  of 
parliament  throughout  the  entire  extent  of  the  British  em- 
pire: "  True  it  is,  that  from  the  nature  of  the  British  consti- 
tution, and  also  from  the  idea  and  nature  of  a  supreme 
1  "  Considerations,"  etc.,  6-10,  51.  2  Ibid.  11-12.  3Ibid.  29. 


JAMES  OTIS.  89 

legislature,  the  parliament  represent  the  whole  community 
or  empire,  and  have  an  undoubted  power,  authority,  and 
jurisdiction  over  the  whole;  and  to  their  final  decisions  the 
whole  must  and  ought  peaceably  to  submit."  But,  sec- 
ondly, having  conceded  this,  he  demands  that  parliament, 
in  the  exercise  of  its  supremacy  over  all,  should  be  lenient 
toward  the  American  colonies,  and,  as  a  matter  of  equitable 
and  politic  forbearance,  should  refrain  from  imposing  heavy 
taxes  on  them,  especially  "  while  their  trade  and  commerce 
are  every  day  more  than  ever  restricted."2  To  be  thus 
indulgent  is,  indeed,  to  exercise  a  wise  discrimination  which 
parliament  has  been  wont  to  exercise  upon  many  occasions. 
For  example,  "  great  tenderness  has  been  shown  to  the  cus- 
toms of  particular  cities  and  boroughs;  and,  surely,  as  much 
indulgence  might  be  reasonably  expected  towards  large 
provinces,  the  inhabitants  of  which  have  been  born  and 
[have]  grown  up  under  the  modes  and  customs  of  a  sub- 
ordinate jurisdiction."  '  And,  finally,  who  and  what  are 
these  American  provinces  on  behalf  of  which  such  considera- 
tion is  demanded  ?  "I  affirm,  and  that  on  the  best  infor- 
mation, the  sun  rises  and  sets  every  day  in  the  sight  of  five 
millions  of  his  majesty's  American  subjects,  white,  brown, 
and  black.  .  .  .  Five  millions  of  as  true  and  loyal  sub- 
jects as  ever  existed,  with  their  good  affections  to  the  best 
civil  constitution  in  the  world,  descending  to  unborn  myri- 
ads, is  no  small  object.  God  grant  it  may  be  well  attended 
to!  Had  I  the  honor  to  be  minister  to  the  first,  the  best, 
monarch  in  the  universe,  and  trustee  for  the  bravest  people, 
except  perhaps  one,  that  ever  existed,  I  might  reason  in 
this  manner:  '  The  Roman  Eagle  is  dead.  The  British 
Lion  lives.  Strange  revolutions  !  The  savage  roving 
Britons,  who  fled  before  Julius  Caesar,  who  were  vanquished 
by  his  successors,  Hengist  and  Horsa,  who  cut  the  throats 
of  the  Lurdanes,4  and  fell  under  the  Norman  bondage,  are, 

1  "  Considerations,"  etc.,  9.  *  Ibid.   to.  3  Ibid.  9-10. 

4  "Spenser's Scholiast  says,  '  loord  '  was  wont,  among  the  old  Britons,  to  signify 
a  lord  ;  therefore  the  Danes  that  usurped  their  tyranny  here  in  Britain,  were 
called,  for  more  dread  than  dignity,  '  lurdanes,'  i.  e.,  Lord  Danes." — Johnson's 
Dictionary,  sub.  Loord. 


90  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

•'"'  after  all,  the  masters  of  the  sea,  the  lords  of  the  ocean,  the 
terror  of  Europe,  and  the  envy  of  the  universe!  Can  Briton 
rise  higher  ?  Yes.  How  ?  Revolutions  have 

been.  They  may  be  again.  Nay,  in  the  course  of  time, 
they  must  be.  Provinces  have  not  been  ever  kept  in  sub- 
jection. What,  then,  is  to  be  done  ?  Why,  it  is  of  little 
importance  to  my  master,  whether  a  thousand  years  hence 
the  colonies  remain  dependent  on  Britain  or  not ;  my  busi- 
ness is  to  fall  on  the  only  means  to  keep  them  ours  for  the 
longest  term  possible.  How  can  that  be  done  ?  Why,  in 
one  word,  it  must  be  by  nourishing  and  cherishing  them,  as 
the  apple  of  your  eye.  All  history  will  prove  that  prov- 
inces have  never  been  disposed  to  independency,  while  well 
treated.  Well  treated,  then,  they  shall  be  !  '  "  ' 


1  "  Considerations,"  etc.,  30-32. 


y 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  STAMP  ACT  AS  A   STIMULANT   TO   POLITICAL  DISCUS- 
SION:    AUGUST,   1765- JANUARY,   1/66. 

I. — The  Stamp  Act  finds  the  Americans  already  alarmed  on  account  of  their 
political  dangers — Johnson's  lines  in  Goldsmith's  "  Traveller  " — His  un- 
consciousness of  the  gravity  of  pending  legislation. 

II. — John  Adams — His  literary  response  to  the  news  of  the  passage  of  the 
Stamp  Act,  August,  1765 — His  range  and  boldness  as  a  political  thinker — 
His  literary  vivacity. 

/III. — John  Adams  regards  the  Anglo-American  dispute  as  but  one  chapter  in  a 
world-wide  dispute  between  individualism  and^corporate  authority — Such 
authority  he  finds  embodied  in  the  canon  and  feudal  law — The  old  con- 
federacy of  kings  and  priests — This  confederacy  partly  broken  up  by  the 
Reformation. 

IV. — John  Adams  deems  the  Reformation  as  the  true  cause  of  English  settle- 
ments in  North  America — Hence  American  antagonism  to  all  civil  and 
ecclesiastical  tyranny — The  Stamp  Act  is  but  another  effort  of  aggression 
on  behalf  of  such  tyranny — To  resist  it  is  to  do  battle  for  human  nature 
everywhere — The  Americans  as  heirs  of  the  ancient  spirit  of  English  liberty 
— The  publication  of  John  Adams's  essays  in  Boston  and  in  London. 

V. — The  political  essays  of  a  Connecticut  pastor,  Stephen  Johnson,  September 
and  October,  1765 — Their  clear  warning  of  danger  to  the  American  connec- 
tion with  Great  Britain. 

VI. — Daniel  Dulany's  "Considerations,"  October,  1765 — His  personal  history 
— His  high  standing  as  a  lawyer  in  the  Middle  and  Southern  Colonies. 

VII. — Dulany's  great  argument  against  the  doctrine  of  virtual  representation. 

VIII. — Dulany  denies  that  his  disproof  of  virtual  representation  involves  the 
denial  of  the  legislative  authority  of  parliament — He  advises  his  country- 
men to  be  loyal  and  orderly,  but  to  make  parliamentary  taxation  unprofit- 
able to  Great  Britain — Let  America  produce  all  she  consumes. 

IX. — Dulany  remains  faithful  to  his  doctrine  of  orderly  and  legal  opposition — 
In  later  years  is  persecuted  as  a  Tory — His  argument  makes  a  deep  im- 
pression both  in  America  and  in  England — His  influence  seen  in  the 
speeches  of  Pitt  on  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  January  and  February, 
1766. 

X. — The  public  papers  of  the  Stamp  Act  Congress,  October,  1765 — Their  great 
political  and  personal  significance. 


92  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

•  XI. — "The  Late  Regulations  respecting  the  British  Colonies,"  by  John  Dickin- 
son, December,  1765 — The  doctrine  of  Nullification  boldly  advocated  in 
"  Considerations  upon  the  Rights  of  the  Colonists,"  early  in  1766. 

*  XII. — American  political  anxiety  and  indignation  passionately  expressed  by  an 
American  verse-writer  in  London — His  Satire  of  "Oppression,"  1765 — 
Outline  of  the  poem. 

I. 

ALL  students  of  the  American  Revolution,  who  have  been 
accustomed  to  view  the  passage  of  the  Stamp  Act,  in 
March,  1765,  as  the  initial  event  in  a  famous  series  that 
became  sufficiently  long  and  tragic,  are  likely  to  find  some 
difficulty  in  accounting  for  the  seeming  suddenness  with 
which  the  American  people  then  sprang  up,  from  what  is 
thereby  assumed  to  have  been  a  previous  condition  of  pro- 
found colonial  content,  into-  one  of  universal  alarm  and 
anger,  as  well  as  of  clearly-defined  and  highly-matured  con- 
stitutional opposition.  In  truth,  however,  there  never  was 
in  America  that  previous  condition  of  profound  colonial 
content,  although,  until  the  removal,  through  the  Peace  of 
Paris  in  1763,  of  the  greater  danger  from  France,  the 
American  colonists  had  submitted  with  as  much  reticence 
as  possible  to  the  lesser  danger  from  England.  Ever  since 
their  earliest  settlements  here,  which  began  in  the  reigns  of 
the  first  James  and  the  first  Charles,  these  Englishmen  in 
America  had  retained  and  exercised  their  hereditary  race- 
qualities:  they  had  always  been  sensitive  to  the  encroach- 
ments of  prerogative,  and  they  had  always  been  political 
grumblers.  Moreover,  the  specimens  of  American  political 
literature  which  have  thus  far  received  our  attention,  all 
show  the  peculiar  alertness  of  political  suspicion  which  had 
been  awakened  among  them  for  at  least  two  years  before 
the  passage  of  the  Stamp  Act,  as  well  as  the  clear  develop- 
ment of  their  political  philosophy  and  political  purpose 
touching  those  extraordinary  constitutional  dangers  which, 
during  the  same  two  years,  had  been  steadily  gathering 
head. 


JOHN  ADAMS.  93 

Within  the  last  few  weeks  of  the  year  1764 — that  year  of 
premonition  to  the  American  colonies — was  first  published, 
in  London,  Goldsmith's  poem  of  "  The  Traveller";  and 
among  the  ten  closing  lines  of  it,  written,  as  is  well  known, 
by  Dr.  Johnson,  are  these  two: — 

"  How  small,  of  all  that  human  hearts  endure, 
That  part  which  laws  or  kings  can  cause  or  cure  ! "  ' 

The   events   which   occurred    both    in    England   and   in  • 
America,  during  the  subsequent  twelve  months,  furnish  a 
rather  derisive  comment  on  the  limited  range  of  the  poet's 
vision  when  he  wrote  this  sonorous  couplet,  and  especially 
on  his  entire  unconsciousness  of  the  vast  and  bitter  burdens, 
for  millions  of  human  hearts,  actually  to  be  created  by  laws 
just  then  under  consideration  in  London, — an  unconscious- 
ness in  which,  probably,  Samuel  Johnson  was  surpassed  by 
no  other  great  man  in  England,  excepting  always  his  good ^ 
friend,  the  King. 

II. 

Among  the  most  striking  of  the  literary  responses  to  the 
news  that,  in  disregard  of  all  appeals  from  America,  the 
Stamp  Act  had  become  a  law,  was  one  by  a  writer  of  extra- 
ordinary vigor  in  argument,  of  extraordinary  affluence  in 
invective,  who  chose  to  view  the  whole  problem  as  having 
logical  and  historical  relations  far  more  extensive  than  had 
then  been  commonly  supposed, — relations  far  more  serious 
to  mankind  in  general,  than  would  attach  to  a  mere  dispute 
in  Anglo-American  politics.  This  writer  was  John  Adams, 
then  but  thirty  years  old,  a  rising  member  of  the  bar  of 
Massachusetts,  already  known  in  that  neighborhood  for  his 
acuteness,  fearlessness,  and  restless  energy  as  a  thinker,  and 
for  a  certain  truculent  and  sarcastic  splendor  in  his  style  of 
speech.  To  the  very  end  of  his  long  life,  even  his  most  off- 
hand writings,  such  as  diaries  and  domestic  letters,  reveal  in 

'  "  The  Works  of  Oliver  Goldsmith,"  i.  21. 


94  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

him  a  trait  of  speculative  activity  and  boldness :  they  show 
that  his  mind  teemed  and  bubbled  and  sparkled  with  ideas; 
that  he  was  all  the  time  building  theories  of  society,  govern- 
ment, religion,  literature,  education,  conduct;  that  he  was 
for  ever  piercing  with  his  virile  and  dauntless  intelligence 
the  past,  present,  and  future,  the  qualities  and  relationships 
of  all  beings  in  time  and  eternity,  in  heaven,  and  earth,  and 
hell.  Moreover,  his  ideas  are  never  cool,  never  colorless. 
His  brain  was  not  insulated  from  his  heart ;  nay  his  heart, 
and  even  his  conscience,  poured  their  warm  streams  through 
his  brain,  and  gave  to  his  words  a  moral  and  emotional 
thoughtfulness  which  is  at  least  stimulating,  often  whole- 
some and  refreshing.  This  quality  makes  John  Adams's 
writings  interesting, — which,  of  course,  is  not  always  a  test 
of  value,  or  of  real  impressiveness.  With  the  exception  of 
Jjefferson,  he  is  the  most  readable  of  the  statesmen  of  the 
iRevolutionary  period.  While  his  intellect  was  ever  alert, 
active,  and  coruscating,  it  was  not  high  enough  or  calm 
enough  to  look  all  around  any  subject,  and  to  take  in  the 
whole  case  as  a  serious  quest  for  truth.  Never  could  he 
have  been  a  great  judge,  or  a  great  historian,  or  a  supreme 
statesman,  or  a  supreme  thinker.  He  was  by  nature  an 
orator  and  an  advocate;  his  frankest  discussions  of  a  subject 
always  have  the  note  of  partisanship  and  sophistication. 

III. 

What,  then,  to  John  Adams  was  the  meaning  of  this 
incipient  rupture  between  England  and  America  in  1765, 
over  the  imposition  of  the  Stamp  Act  ?  To  him  it  seemed 
but  one  passage  in  that  ancient,  world-wide,  inappeasable 
feud  which  ever  rages  among  men  between  corporate  author- 
ity on  the  one  hand,  and  individualism  on  the  other.  Par- 
ticularly since  the  advent  of  Christianity,  corporate  authority 
has,  according  to  John  Adams,  found  its  most  perfect  devel- 
opment in  the  canon  and  the  feudal  law, — words  which  he 
uses  as  synonyms  for  "^ecclesiastical  and  civil  tyranny." 
111  Works,"  iii.  451. 


JOHN  AD  A  SIS.  95 

"  By  the  former  of  these,  the  most  refined,  sublime,  exten- 
sive, and  astonishing  constitution  of  policy  that  ever  was 
conceived  by  the  mind  of  man,  was  framed  by  the  Romish 
clergy  for  the  aggrandizement  of  their  own  order."  '  "In 
the  latter,  we  find  another  system,  similar  in  many  respects 
to  the  former;  which,  although  it  was  originally  formed, 
perhaps,  for  the  necessary  defense  of  a  barbarous  people 
against  the  inroads  and  invasions  of  her  neighboring  nations, 
yet  for  the  same  purposes  of  tyranny,  cruelty;  and  lust 
which  had  dictated  the  canon  law,  it  was  soon  adopted  by 
almost  all  the  princes  of  Europe,  and  wrought  into  the  con- 
stitutions of  their  government."  *  The  climax  of  misfortune 
to  mankind  was  reached  when,  between  the  two  systems  of 
tyranny  above  described,  a  confederacy  was  established. 
"  It  seems  to  have  been  even  stipulated  between  them,  that 
the  temporal  grandees  should  contribute  everything  in  their 
power  to  maintain  the  ascendency  of  the  priesthood,  and 
that  the  spiritual  grandees  in  their  turn  should  employ  their 
ascendency  over  the  consciences  of  the  people,  in  impress- 
ing on  their  minds  a  blind,  implicit  obedience  to  civil 
magistracy.  Thus,  as  long  as  this  confederacy  lasted  and 
the  people  were  held  in  ignorance,  liberty,  and  with  her, 
knowledge  and  virtue  too,  seem  to  have  deserted  the  earth, 
and  one  age  of  darkness  succeeded  another,  till  God  in  his 
benign  providence  raised  up  the  champions  who  began  and 
conducted  the  Reformation." 

IV. 

It  was,  then,  the  uprising  of  individualism  against  corpo- 
rate authority  which  gave  us  the  Reformation,  even  as  it 
was  the  Reformation  which  peopled  North  America  with 
Englishmen — with  Englishmen,  that  is,  who  were  cham- 
pions of  individualism.  "  I  always  consider  the  settlement 
of  America  with  reverence  and  wonder,  as  the  opening  of  a 
grand  scene  and  design  in  Providence  for  the  illumination  of 

1  "  Works,"  iii.  449.  »  Ibid.  450.  8Ibid.  450-451. 


96  .  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

the  ignorant,  and  the  emancipation  of  the  slavish  part  of 
mankind  all  over  the  earth."  These  Englishmen  in 
America  "  formed  their  plan  both  of  ecclesiastical  and  civil 
government,  in  direct  opposition  to  the  canon  and  the  feudal 
systems."  *  "  Tyranny  in  every  form,  shape,  and  appear- 
ance was  their  disdain  and  abhorrence."  "They  saw 
clearly  that  popular  powers  must  be  placed  as  a  guard,  a 
control,  a  balance,  to  the  powers  of  the  monarch  and  the 
priest,  in  every  government,  or  else  it  would  soon  become 
the  man  of  sin,  the  whore  of  Babylon,  the  mystery  of 
iniquity,  a  great  and  detestable  system  of  fraud,  violence, 
and  usurpation.  ,  .  .  They  saw  clearly,  that  of  all  the 
nonsense  and  delusion  which  had  ever  passed  through  the 
mind  of  man,  none  had  ever  been  more  extravagant  than 
the  notions  of  absolutions,  indelible  characters,  uninter- 
rupted successions,  and  the  rest  of  those  fantastical  ideas 
derived  from  the  canon  law,  which  had  thrown  a  glare  of 
mystery,  sanctity,  reverence,  and  right  reverend  eminence 
and  holiness,  around  the  idea  of  a  priest,  as  no  mortal  could 
deserve,  and  as  always  must,  from  the  constitution  of 
human  nature,  be  dangerous  in  society.  For  this  reason, 
they  demolished  the  whole  system  of  diocesan  episcopacy; 
and,  deriding,  as  all  reasonable  and  impartial  men  must  do, 
the  ridiculous  fancies  of  sanctified  effluvia  from  episcopal 
fingers,  they  established  sacerdotal  ordination  on  the  foun- 
dation of  the  Bible  and  common  sense."  4  In  like  manner, 
they  organized  their  governments  in  disdain  of  the  feudal 
law.  They  "  had  an  utter  contempt  of  all  that  dark  ribaldry 
of  hereditary,  indefeasible  right, — the  Lord's  anointed, — 
and  the  divine,  miraculous  original  of  government,  with 
which  the  priesthood  had  enveloped  the  feudal  monarch 
in  clouds  and  mysteries,  and  from  whence  they  had  de- 
duced the  most  mischievous  of  all  doctrines — that  of  passive 
obedience  and  non-resistance.  They  knew  that  government 
was  a  plain,  simple,  intelligible  thing,  founded  in  nature 

1  "  Works,"  iii.  452  n.  *  Ibid.  452. 

5  Ibid.  451.  4  Ibid.  452-454. 


JOHN  ADAMS.  97 

and  reason,  and  quite  comprehensible  by  common  sense."  ' 
They  knew  that  "nothing  could  preserve  their  posterity  from 
the  encroachments  of  the  two  systems  of  tyranny  . 
but  knowledge  diffused  generally  through  the  whole  body  of 
the  people."8  And  the  Stamp  Act — what  is  it  but  a 
master  stroke  on  behalf  of  ecclesiastical  and  civil  tyranny, 
another  effort  of  aggression  on  the  part  of  the  confederated 
enemies  of  mankind,  a  device  expressly  framed  "  to  strip 
us  in  a  great  measure  of  the  means  of  knowledge,  by  load- 
ing the  press,  the  colleges,  and  even  an  almanac  and  a 
newspaper,  with  restraints  and  duties;  and  to  introduce  the 
inequalities  and  dependencies  of  the  feudal  system,  by  tak- 
ing from  the  poorer  sort  of  people  all  their  little  subsistence, 
and  conferring  it  on  a  set  of  stamp  officers,  distributors,  and 
their  deputies." 

Therefore,  in  taking  our  stand  against  the  enforcement  of 
the  Stamp  Act,  we  are  but  placing  ourselves  in  that  mighty 
line  of  heroes  and  confessors  and  martyrs  who  since  the 
beginning  of  history  have  done  battle  for  the  dignity  and 
happiness  of  human  nature  against  the  leagued  assailants  of 
both.  Herein,  let  no  one  dare  to  accuse  us  of  being  over- 
bold. Nay,  "  the  true  source  of  our  sufferings  has  been  our 
timidity.  We  have  been  afraid  to  think.  We  have  felt  a 
reluctance  to  examining  into  the  grounds  of  our  privileges, 
and  the  extent  in  which  we  have  an  indisputable  right  to 
demand  them,  against  all  the  power  and  authority  on 
earth."4  Nor  may  we  be  told  that  this  attitude  of  ours 
toward  Great  Britain  is  unbecoming  the  children  of  a  fond 
mother:  "  Is  there  not  something  exceedingly  fallacious  in 
the  commonplace  images  of  mother  country  and  children 
colonies  ?  Are  we  the  children  of  Great  Britain,  any  more 
than  the  cities  of  London,  Exeter,  and  Bath  ?  Are  we  not 
brethren  and  fellow  subjects  with  those  in  Britain,  only 
under  a  somewhat  different  method  of  legislation,  and  a 
totally  different  method  of  taxation  ?  But,  admitting  we 

1  "  Works,"  iii.  452-454.  •  Ibid.  464. 

1 1 hid.  455-  4 Ibid.  458-459. 


98  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

are  children,  have  not  children  a  right  to  complain  when 
their  parents  are  attempting  to  break  their  limbs,  to  admin- 
ister poison,  or  to  sell  them  to  enemies  for  slaves  ?  Let  me 
entreat  you  to  consider,  will  the  mother  be  pleased  when 
you  represent  her  as  deaf  to  the  cries  of  her  children, — 
when  you  compare  her  to  the  infamous  miscreant  who  lately 
stood  on  the  gallows  for  starving  her  child, — when  you 
resemble  her  to  Lady  Macbeth  in  Shakespeare  (I  cannot 
think  of  it  without  horror)  who 

'  Had  given  suck,  and  knew 
How  tender  't  was  to  love  the  babe  that  milked  her,' 

but  yet  who  could, 

'  even  while  't  was  smiling  in  her  face, 
Have  plucked  her  nipple  from  the  boneless  gums, 
And  dashed  the  brains  out.' 

"  Let  us  banish  for  ever  from  our  minds,  my  countrymen, 
all  such  unworthy  ideas  of  the  king,  his  ministry,  and  par- 
liament. .  .  .  Let  us  presume,  what  is  in  fact  true, 
that  the  spirit  of  liberty  is  as  ardent  as  ever  among  the  body 
of  the  nation,  though  a  few  individuals  may  be  corrupted. 
Let  us  take  it  for  granted,  that  the  same  great  spirit  which 
once  gave  Caesar  so  warm  a  reception,  which  denounced 
hostilities  against  John  till  Magna  Charta  was  signed,  which 
severed  the  head  of  Charles  the  First  from  his  body,  and 
drove  James  the  Second  from  his  kingdom,  the  same  great 
spirit  (may  Heaven  preserve  it  till  the  earth  shall  be  no 
more)  which  first  seated  the  great-grandfather  of  his  present 
most  gracious  majesty  on  the  throne  of  Britain,  is  still 
alive  and  active  and  warm  in  England ;  and  that  the  same 
spirit  in  America,  instead  of  provoking  the  inhabitants  of 
that  country,  will  endear  us  to  them  for  ever,  and  secure 
their  good-will."  ' 

1  "  Works,"  iii.  461-462. 


STEPHEN  JOHNSON.  99 

Such  was  the  teaching,  and  such  the  temper,  of  a  series 
of  four  essays  by  John  Adams,  which  were  first  published, 
though  without  his  name  and  without  any  descriptive  title, 
in  the  "  Boston  Gazette,"  in  August,  1765.  By  their  wide 
range  of  allusion,  their  novelty,  audacity,  eloquence,  by  the 
jocular  savagery  of  their  sarcasms  on  things  sacred,  they 
easily  and  quickly  produced  a  stir,  and  won  for  themselves 
considerable  notoriety.  At  the  instigation  of  Thomas  Hol- 
lis,  they  were  almost  immediately  reproduced  in  the  "  Lon- 
don Chronicle  "  ;  and  in  1768,  also  by  Hollis's  act,  they  were 
welded  together  into  a  single  document,  and  as  such  were 
published  in  London  under  the  somewhat  misleading  title 
of  "  A  Dissertation  on  the  Canon  and  the  Feudal  Law."  ' 


V. 


On  the  sixth  of  September,  1765,  there  appeared  in  a 
newspaper  published  in  New  London  the  first  of  a  series  of 
five  essays  addressed  "  To  the  Freemen  of  the  Colony  of 
Connecticut,"  and  traversing  in  grave  tone  and  with  master- 
ful intelligence  the  troublesome  matters  thrust  upon  public 
attention  by  the  Stamp  Act.  "It  is  the  most  critical 
season,"  said  the  writer,  "that  ever  this  colony  of  America 
saw, — a  time  when  everything  dear  to  us  in  this  world  is  at 
stake. ' ' a  Certainly,  if  parliament  may  now  begin  to  encroach 
upon  those  ancient  rights  which  were  secured  to  us  by  royal 
grants  and  charters, — these  being  in  reality  compacts  entered 
into  for  a  valid  consideration, — at  what  point  can  the 
encroachments  of  parliament  be  expected  to  end  ?  If  they 
"  have  a  right  to  impose  a  stamp  tax,  they  have  a  right  to 
lay  on  us  a  poll  tax,  a  land  tax,  a  malt  tax,  a  cider  tax,  a 
window  tax,  a  smoke  tax;  and  why  not  tax  us  for  the  light 


1  It  thus  formed  the  last  article  in  a  collection  of  American  political  writings 
entitled  "  The  True  Sentiments  of  America"  ;  but  is  now  most  easily  accessible 
in  "  The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  iii.  445-464. 

J  "  The  New  London  Gazette,"  6  Sept.,  1765. 


100  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

of  the  sun,  the  air  we  breathe,  and  the  ground  we  are  buried 
in  ?l  If  they  have  a  right  to  deny  us  the  privilege  of  trial 
by  juries,  they  have  as  good  a  right  to  deny  us  any  trials  at 
all,  and  to  vote  away  our  estates  and  lives  at  pleasure."8 
Thus,  in  plain,  pungent  fashion,  level  to  the  common  mind, 
this  writer  argues  against  the  constitutionality  of  the  Stamp 
Act  as  well  as  of  every  other  form  of  colonial  taxation  by  the 
British  parliament,  exposing  at  every  turn  the  enormous 
menace  it  involves  to  the  most  valued  rights  of  Americans 
— to  their  very  existence,  in  fact,  in  any  civil  rank  higher 
than  that  of  slaves. 

Though  the  authorship  of  these  trenchant  essays  was  at 
first  carefully  concealed,3  they  were  soon  known  as  the  work 
of  a  Congregational  pastor  in  Connecticut,  Stephen  Johnson, 
sprung  from  the  oldest  and  best  stock  in  that  colony,  a 
graduate  of  Yale  in  the  class  of  1743,  a  man  of  pure  life, 
of  humane  and  active  sympathy,  a  sturdy  thinker,  a  strong 
writer,  and  of  a  patriotism  so  rugged  as  to  show  itself  on 
the  battlefields  of  the  Revolution  as  well  as  in  those  intel- 
lectual combats  which  led  to  them.  With  a  boldness  which 
perhaps  no  other  American  writer  had  then  equalled,  twice 
in  that  year,  1765,  this  Connecticut  pastor  gave  sharp  warii- 
ing  to  the  mother  country  that  if  the  policy  then  in  vogUe 
should  be  persisted  in,  a  bloody  revolution  would  follow, 
and  England  would  suffer  "  the  loss  of  two  millions  of  t 
best  affected  subjects."  "  We  cannot  think  it  within  air 
power  to  make  our  rights  no  rights."  '  The  Americ; 


1  A  similar  thrust  at  taxation,  even  at  the  hands  of  the  colonial  legislature, 
been  made  in  Massachusetts  by  Samuel  Cooper  in  1754.  Both  passages  in  these 
American  writings  mildly  anticipate,  by  half  a  century  or  more,  the  point  of 
Sydney  Smith's  celebrated  witticism  on  the  all-pervasiveness  of  British  taxation. 
"  Works  of  Sydney  Smith,"  ii.  117. 

*•"  The  New  London  Gazette,"  6  Sept.,  1765. 

3  W.  Gordon,  "  History  of  the    .    .    .    Independence    .    .    .    of  the  U.S.," 
i.   129. 

*  "  The  New  London  Gazette,"  4  Oct.,  1765  ;  also  "  Some  Important  Ob- 
servations," etc.,  19-20. 

*  "  The  New  London  Gazette,"  n  Oct.,  1765. 


DANIEL  DULAXY.  IOI 

colonies  can't  be  enslaved  and  ruined  but  by  their  own  folly, 
consent,  or  inactivity." 

VI. 

On  the  fourteenth  of  October,  1765,  while  the  members 
of  the  Stamp  Act  Congress  were  in  the  midst  of  their  labors 
upon  the  great  problem  of  the  hour,  there  came  from  a 
printing  office  in  Annapolis  a  pamphlet,  of  portly  dimen- 
sions, dealing  with  the  same  problem,  and  doing  so  with  a 
degree  of  legal  learning,  of  acumen,  and  of  literary  power, 
which  gave  to  it,  both  in  America  and  in  England,  the  highest 
celebrity  among  the  political  writings  of  this  period.  It  was 
entitled  "  Considerations  on  the  Propriety  of  Imposing 
Taxes  in  the  British  Colonies,  for  the  Purpose  of  Raising  a 
Revenue  by  Act  of  Parliament."  The  pamphlet  was  with- 
out the  author's  name;  and,  still  further  to  obscure  its 
origin,  it  bore  on  the  title-page,  for  the  place  of  publica- 
tion, merely  the  words  "  North  America."  Moreover,  the 
preface  was  dated  "  Virginia," — another  device  for  throw- 
ing the  reader  off  the  true  scent ;  for,  in  reality,  Maryland 
was  the  colony  to  which  its  author  belonged,  and  in  which, 
undoubtedly,  his  pamphlet  was  written.* 

All  this  machinery  for  self-occultation  failed  to  accomplish 
its  purpose.  The  marks  which  the  pamphlet  bore  of  its 
author's  individuality,  were  too  definite  and  too  unusual  to 

'"The  New  London  Gazette,"  i  Nov.,  1765.  For  manuscript  copies  of 
these  five  essays  as  published  in  the  New  London  paper,  I  am  indebted  to  the 
courtesy  of  Professor  E.  E.  Salisbury  of  Yale  University.  Other  writings  of 
Johnson  which  I  have  met  with  are  :  "  Some  Important  Observations  Occa- 
sioned by  and  Adapted  to  the  Public  Fast,"  December  18,  1765,  published  at 
Newport  in  the  following  year  ;  the  Election  Sermon  before  the  General  As- 
sembly of  Connecticut,  1770;  and  "The  Everlasting  Punishment  of  the  Un- 
godly," New  London,  1786, — an  able  theological  treatise  of  nearly  four  hundred 
pages,  written  in  a  spirit  of  candor  and  moderation. 

2  The  copy  used  by  me  is  a  London  reprint  of  1766,  calling  itself  "Second 
edition."  I  have  seen  at  the  Lenox  Library  a  copy  bearing  the  imprint 
"  Annapolis,  1765,"  and  likewise  calling  itself  "  Second  edition."  In  the  same 
library,  is  a  copy  of  a  New  York  reprint  of  the  year  1765. 


IO2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

permit  him  to  remain  long  undiscovered.  The  men  then 
living  in  the  colonies  who  were  capable  of  handling  such  a 
problem  in  such  a  manner,  were  not  many  and  could  not  be 
obscure;  and,  before  very  long,  it  was  everywhere  known  as 
the  work  of  Daniel  Dulany,  then  the  foremost  lawyer  of 
Maryland,  for  many  years  the  secretary  of  the  province,  and 
one  of  its  most  accomplished  and  influential  citizens.  Born 
in  Maryland  in  1721,  Daniel  Dulany  had  been  sent  to  Eng- 
land for  his  education,  which  he  received  at  Eton  College, 
at  Clare  Hall,  Cambridge,  and  at  the  Temple.  Returning 
in  due  time  to  his  native  colony,  he  was  admitted  to  the  bar 
in  1747,  his  own  father  being  at  that  time  one  of  its  most 
eminent  members.  It  was  not  many  years  before  his  own 
extraordinary  abilities  and  his  lofty  personal  character  raised 
him  to  the  very  head  of  his  profession  not  only  in  Maryland 
but  in  the  middle  colonies.  His  authority  was  so  great 
that  the  courts  of  his  own  province  were  accustomed  to 
submit  to  him  the  most  difficult  questions  which  came 
before  them ;  his  opinion  was  also  sought  from  England 
upon  abstruse  matters  of  law;  while  in  some  parts  of  Vir- 
ginia it  was  no  unusual  thing  for  cases  to  be  withdrawn 
from  their  own  courts,  and  even  from  the  hands  of  the 
Lord  Chancellor  in  England,  in  order  to  leave  them  to  him 
for  settlement.1  Finally,  his  great  gifts  for  the  understand- 
ing of  the  law,  were  accompanied  by  those  which  contribute 
to  its  persuasive  exposition, — powerful  oratory,  felicity  of 
literary  allusion,  and  a  fine  and  gracious  personality.  Will- 
iam Pinkney,  who  could  have  known  Dulany  only  in  his 
later  years  and  who  had  a  familiar  acquaintance  also  with 
the  great  orators  of  England  near  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  is  said  to  have  been  of  the  opinion  "  that  even 
amongst  such  men  as  Fox,  Pitt,  and  Sheridan,"  was  no  one 
superior  to  this  barrister  in  an 'American  province." 

1  McMahon,  "An  Hist.  View  of  the  Government  of  Maryland,"  i.  356  n. 

9  Ibid.  356-357  n.  Some  additional  facts  relating  to  Dulany  may  be  found 
in  Scharf,  "  History  of  Maryland,"  i.  544-546  ;  and  especially  in  a  monograph 
by  John  H.  B.  Latrobe,  entitled  "  Biographical  Sketch  of  Daniel  Dulany," 
published  in  "  The  Pa.  Mag.  of  History  and  Biography,"  iii.  i-io. 


DANIEL  DULANY.  1 03 

VII. 

The  logical  expertness  of  Dulany  as  a  debater  is  apparent 
in  the  skill  with  which,  at  the  beginning  of  his  pamphlet, 
he  fixes  the  true  issue.  For,  in  the  very  preamble  of  the 
Stamp  Act,  he  finds  an  assumption  which  seems  to  him  to 
lie  at  the  bottom  of  every  question  in  dispute  between 
the  colonies  and  the  mother  country :  it  is  the  assumption 
whereon  parliament  undertakes  to  "  give  and  grant  "  certain 
portions  of  the  property  of  the  people  of  America.  "  What 
right  had  the  commons  of  Great  Britain  to  be  thus  munifi- 
cent at  the  expense  of  the  commons  of  America  ? " 
Upon  one  point,  at  least,  all  parties  are  agreed,  namely, 
that  nowhere  can  British  subjects  be  taxed  except  "  with 
their  own  consent  given  by  their  representatives.  "*  Are, 
then,  the  commons  of  Great  Britain  the  representatives  of 
the  people  of  America  ?  It  is  not  pretended  that  we  have 
ever  elected  any  members  of  the  house  of  commons. 
How,  then,  can  the  members  of  that  house  be  our  repre- 
sentatives ?  The  answer  is,  that  this  is  a  case  of  virtual 
representation, — precisely  such  representation  as  subsists 
between  the  house  of  commons  and  the  vast  majority  of 
the  people  of  Great  Britain  itself,  who  likewise  have  no 
votes  for  members  of  that  body.  Now,  this  non-voting 
majorityrof  the  people  of  Great  Britain,  though  not  actually 
represented  in  the  house  of  commons,  are  understood  to 
be  virtually  represented  by  that  house;  and  they  accept 
the  relation  as  a  valid,  even  if  imperfect,  compliance  with 
the  old  constitutional  maxim,  and  submit  themselves, 
accordingly,  to  such  taxes  as  are  imposed  upon  them  by 
parliament.  But,  as  regards  the  privilege  of  voting  for 
members  of  parliament,  the  situation  of  those  British  sub- 
jects in  Great  Britain  is  the  same  as  that  of  all  British  sub- 
jects in  America;  and,  consequently,  though  the  latter  are 
not  actually,  they  are  virtually,  represented  by  the  house 
of  commons;  hence,  they  also  should  accept  this  virtual 

1  "  Considerations  on  the  Propriety,"  etc.,  1-2.  *  Ibid.  2. 


IO4  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUJ^ION. 

representation  as  a  valid  compliance  with  the  old  constitu- 
tional maxim,  and  should  submit  themselves  to  the  taxes 
that  may  be  laid  upon  them  by  the  imperial  legislature, 
which  represents  them  and  their  interests  as  truly  as  it  does 
the  vast  non-voting  population  of  the  mother  country. 

This  imposing  analogy  between  the  situation,  and  there- 
fore between  the  obligations,  of  the  non-voting  people  of 
Great  Britain  and  the  non-voting  people  of  America,  it  is 
the  chief  purpose  of  Dulany's  pamphlet  to  break  down  and 
destroy, — as  resting  on  an  argument  which,  in  his  opinion, 
"  is  totally  defective,"  since  "  it  consists  of  facts  not  true, 
and  of  conclusions  inadmissible."  '  "I  shall,"  he  says, 
"  undertake  to  disprove  the  supposed  similarity  of  situa- 
tion^whence  the  same  kind  of  representation  is  deduced  of 
the  inhabitants  of  the  colonies,  and  of  the  British  non- 
electors  ;  and  if  I  succeed,  the  notion  of  a  virtual  represen- 
tation of  the  colonies  must  fail, — which,  in  truth,  is  a  mere 
cobweb  spread  to  catch  the  unwary,  and  to  entangle  the 
weak."  Accordingly,  he  goes  on  to  point  out  a  number  of 
particulars  in  which  the  situation  of  the  America  non-electors 
is  radically  different  from  that  of  the  British  non-electors. 
Thus,  in  Great  Britain,  the  interests  "  of  the  non-electors, 
the  electors,  and  the  representatives,  are  individually  the 
same^to  say  nothing  of  the  connection  among  neighbors, 
friends,  and  relations.  The  security  of  -ihe  non,-electors 
against  oppression  is  that  their  oppression  will  fall  also 
upon  the  electors  and  the  representatives.  The  one  can't 
be  injured,  and  the  other  indemnified.  Further,  if  the  non- 
electors  should  not  be  taxed  by  the  British  parliament,  they 
would  not  be  taxed  at  all ;  and  it  would  be  iniquitous,  as  well 
as  a  solecism  in  the  political  system,  that  they  should  partake 
of  all  the  benefits  resulting  from  the  imposition  and  applica- 
tion of  taxes,  and  derive  an  immunity  from  the  circumstance 
of  not  being  qualified  to  vote.  Under  this  constitution,  then, 
a  double  or  virtual  representation  may  be  reasonably  sup- 
posed. The  electors,  who  are  inseparably  connected  in  their 

1  "  Considerations  on  the  Propriety,"  etc.,  3. 


DANIEL   DULANY.  10$ 

interests  with  the  non-electors,  may  be  justly  deemed  to  be 
the  representatives  of  the  non-electors,  at  the  same  time 
they  exercise  their  personal  privilege  in  their  right  of  elec- 
tion, and  the  members  chosen,  therefore,  the  representatives 
of  both."  '  On  the  other  hand,  "  the  inhabitants  of  the 
colonies  are,  as  such,  incapable  of  being  electors,  the  priv- 
ilege of  election  being  exercisable  only  in  person  ;  and, 
therefore,  if  every  inhabitant  of  America  had  the  requisite 
freehold,  not  one  could  vote,  but  upon  the  supposition  of 
his  ceasing  to  be  an  inhabitant  of  America  and  becoming  a 
resident  in  Great  Britain, — a  supposition  which  would  be 
impertinent,  because  it  shifts  the  question."8  Further- 
more, "  should  the  colonies  not  be  taxed  by  parliamentary 
impositions,  their  respective  legislatures  have  a  regular, 
adequate,  and  constitutional  authority  to  tax  them ;  and, 
therefore,  there  would  not  necessarily  be  an  iniquitous  and 
absurd  exemption,  from  their  not  being  represented  by  the 
house  of  commons."  3  Finally,  "  there  is  not  that  intimate 
and  inseparable  relation  between  the  electors  of  Great 
Britain  and  the  inhabitants  of  the  colonies,  which  must 
inevitably  involve  both  in  the  same  taxation.  On  the  con- 
trary, not  a  single  actual  elector  in  England  might  be  imme- 
diately affected  by  a  taxation  in  America,  imposed  by  a 
statute  which  would  have  a  general  operation  and  effect 
upon  the  properties  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  colonies.  The 
latter  might  be  oppressed  in  a  thousand  shapes,  without  any 
sympathy,  or  exciting  any  alarm  in  the  former.  Moreover, 
even  acts  oppressive  and  injurious  to  the  colonies  in  an 
extreme  degree,  might  become  popular  in  England,  from 
the  promise  or  expectation  that  the  very  measures  which 
depressed  the  colonies,  would  give  ease  to  the  inhabitants 
of  Great  Britain.  It  is,  indeed,  true  that  the  interests  of 
England  and  the  colonies  are  allied,  and  an  injury  to  the 
colonies,  produced  into  all  its  consequences,  will  eventually 
affect  the  mother  country.  Yet,  these  consequences,  being 
generally  remote,  are  not  at  once  foreseen ;  they  do  not 

1  "  Considerations  on  the  Propriety,"  etc.,  4-5.  *  Ibid.  9.  3  Ibid. 


106  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

immediately  alarm  the  fears  and  engage  the  passions  of  the 
English  electors, — the  connection  between  a  freeholder  of 
Great  Britain  and  a  British  American  being  deducible  only 
through  a  train  of  reasoning  which  few  will  take  the  trou- 
ble, or  can  have  an  opportunity,  if  they  have  capacity,  to 
investigate.  Wherefore,  the  relation  between  the  British 
Americans  and  the  English  electors  is  a  knot  too  infirm  to 
be  relied  on  as  a  competent  security,  especially  against  the 
force  of  a  present,  counteracting  expectation  of  relief."  In 
conclusion,  then,  "  if  the  commons  of  Great  Britain  have 
no  right  by  the  constitution  to  '  give  and  grant  '  property 
not  belonging  to  themselves  but  to  others,  without  their 
consent  actually  or  virtually  given ;  .  .  .  if  it  appears 
that  the  colonies  are  not  actually  represented  by  the  com- 
mons of  Great  Britain,  and  that  the  notion  of  a  double  or 
virtual  representation  doth  not  with  any  propriety  apply  to 
the  people  of  America;  then  the  principle  of  the  Stamp  Act 
must  be  given  up  as  indefensible  on  the  point  of  representa- 
tion, and  the  validity  of  it  rested  upon  the  power  which 
they  who  framed  it,  have  to  carry  it  into  execution."  ' 

VIII. 

Having,  by  this  brilliant  stroke  of  debating  ability,  broken 
the  very  centre  of  the  enemy's  line — their  famous  doctrine 
of  virtual  representation — Dulany  finds  himself  for  a  mo- 
ment embarrassed  by  the  very  extent  of  his  own  success. 
Has  he  not  proved  too  much  ?  For,  if  the  colonies  may 
not  be  taxed  without  being  either  actually  or  virtually  rep- 
resented, and  if,  indeed,  they  are  represented  neither  actu- 
ally nor  virtually,  then  the  alarming  inference  seems  to 
follow,  that  "  the  subordination  or  dependence  of  the  colo- 
nies, and  the  superintendence  of  the  British  parliament, 
cannot  be  consistently  established."2  If,  indeed,  he  has 
proved  all  that,  he  has  proved  far  more  than  either  he  or  his 
fellow  colonists  had  then  desired  to  prove,  and  far  more,  of 

1  "  Considerations  on  the  Propriety,"  etc.,  9-11.  2  Ibid.  15. 


DANIEL   DULANY.  IO/ 

course,  than  their  fellow  subjects  in  Great  Britain  can  hear 
of  without  abhorrence  and  dismay.  To  meet  this  embar- 
rassment, is  his  next  important  step.  Does,  then,  the 
denial  of  the  right  of  parliament  to  tax  unrepresented  colo- 
nies, involve  the  denial  of  the  general  authority  of  parlia- 
ment over  them  ?  By  no  means.  The  real  question  at  issue 
is  not  one  of  all  power  or  none,  but  merely  of  power  suffi- 
cient for  the  unity  and  welfare  of  the  whole  empire.  Surely, 
the  general  authority  of  parliament  may  be  exerted  to  every 
useful  purpose  required  for  the  due  subordination  of  the 
unrepresented  colonies,  without  proceeding  to  the  extent  of 
laying  taxes  upon  them.  Who  does  not  see  that  parliament 
may  leave  to  the  colonies  their  ancient  privilege  of  taxing 
themselves  for  the  general  support  of  the  empire,  without 
by  that  act  dissolving  the  connection  of  those  colonies  with 
the  empire,  or  their  due  allegiance  to  the  empire?  "  May 
not,  then,  the  line  be  distinctly  and  justly  drawn  between 
such  acts  as  are  necessary  or  proper  for  preserving  or  secur- 
ing the  dependence  of  the  colonies,  and  such  as  are  not 
necessary  or  proper  for  that  very  important  purpose  ?  " 
41  Because  the  parliament  may,  when  the  relation  between 
Great  Britain  and  her  colonies  calls  for  an  exertion  of  her 
superintendence,  bind  the  colonies  by  statute,  therefore  a 
parliamentary  interposition  in  every  other  instance  is  jus- 
tifiable,— is  an  inference  that  may  be  denied."7  "If, 
moreover,  Great  Britain  hath  an  equitable  claim  to  the 
contribution  of  the  colonies,  it  ought  to  be  proportioned  to 
their  circumstances;  and  they  might,  surely,  be  indulged 
with  discharging  it  in  the  most  easy  and  satisfactory  manner 
to  themselves.  If  ways  and  means  convenient  and  con- 
ciliating would  produce  their  contribution,  as  well  as  oppres- 
sive and  disgusting  exactions,  it  is  neither  consistent  with 
humanity  nor  policy  to  pursue  the  latter.  A  power  may 
even  exist  without  an  actual  exercise  of  it ;  and  it  indicates 
as  little  good  sense  as  good  nature  to  exercise  it,  only  that 
the  subjects  of  it  may  feel  the  rod  that  rules  them." 

1  "  Considerations  on  the  Propriety,"  etc.,  17.         *  Ibid.  18.         *  Ibid.  24. 


IO8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

But  what,  finally,  is  the  practical  use  which  this  powerful 
debater  would  make  of  his  apparent  victory  over  the  advo- 
cates of  parliamentary  taxation  ?  He  seems  to  have  shown 
that  the  theory  of  a  virtual  representation  of  the  colonies  is 
untenable.  What  then  ?  In  case  parliament  should  still 
persist  in  taxing  those  colonies,  what  course  of  action  does 
Daniel  Dulany  recommend  to  them  ?  A  nullification  of 
such  acts  of  parliament  ?  A  total  rejection  of  the  authority 
of  parliament  ?  Armed  resistance  ?  Revolution  ?  Inde- 
pendence ?  Heaven  forbid  !  "I  would  be  understood.  I 
am  upon  a  question  of  propriety,  not  of  power;  and  though 
some  may  be  inclined  to  think  it  is  to  little  purpose  to  dis- 
cuss the  one,  when  the  other  is  irresistible,  yet  are  they 
different  considerations;  and,  at  the  same  time  that  I  in- 
validate the  claim  upon  which  it  is  founded,  I  may  very 
consistently  recommend  a  submission  to  the  law — whilst  it 
endures."  ' 

And  is  this  all  ?  Nay,  but  while  we  make  no  unlawful 
resistance  to  the  authority  of  parliament,  we  should  so 
shape  our  affairs  as  to  render  such  an  exertion  of  its  author- 
ity quite  unprofitable  to  those  who  have  advised  it.  "  If  in 
consequence  of  ...  the  imposition  of  taxes  upon  their 
properties,  the  colonies  should  only  be  driven  to  observe 
the  strictest  maxims  of  frugality,  ...  to  use  new 
methods  of  industry,  and  to  have  recourse  to  arts  for  a  sup- 
ply of  necessaries,  the  difficulty  in  succeeding  would  prove 
less  than  the  apprehension  of  miscarrying,  and  the  benefit 
greater  than  the  hope  of  it."8  "  For  food,  thank  God, 
they  do  not,  and  for  raiment  they  need  not,  depend  upon 
Great  Britain."  3  "  Let  the  manufacture  of  America  be  the 
symbol  of  dignity,  the  badge  of  virtue,  and  it  will  soon 
break  the  fetters  of  distress.  A  garment  of  linsey-woolsey, 
when  made  the  distinction  of  real  patriotism,  is  more  honor- 
able and  attractive  of  respect  and  veneration,  than  all  the 
pageantry,  and  the  robes,  and  the  plumes,  and  the  diadem 

1  "Considerations  on  the  Propriety,"  etc.,  4. 
2  Ibid.  63-64.  " Ibid.  64-65. 


DAXIEL   DULANY.  \ 09 

of  an  emperor  without  it.  Let  the  emulation  be  not  in 
the  richness  and  variety  of  foreign  productions,  but  in  the 
improvement  and  perfection  of  our  own.  Let  it  be  demon- 
strated that  the  subjects  of  the  British  empire  in  Europe 
and  America  are  the  same — that  the  hardships  of  the  latter 
will  ever  recoil  upon  the  former. 

"  In  theory  it  is  supposed  that  each  is  equally  important 
to  the  other, — that  all  partake  of  the  adversity  and  depres- 
sion of  any.  The  theory  is  just,  and  time  will  certainly 
establish  it.  But  if  another  principle  should  be  ever  here- 
after adopted  in  practice,  and  a  violation,  deliberate,  cruel, 
ungrateful,  and  attended  with  every  circumstance  of  provo- 
cation, be  offered  to  our  fundamental  rights,  why  should  we 
leave  it  to  the  slow  advances  of  time  ...  to  prove 
what  might  be  demonstrated  immediately  ?  Instead  of 
moping,  and  puling,  and  whining,  to  excite  compassion,  in 
such  a  situation  we  ought  with  spirit,  and  vigor,  and  alac- 
rity, to  bid  defiance  to  tyranny,  by  exposing  its  impotence, 
by  making  it  as  contemptible  as  it  would  be  detestable.  By 
a  vigorous  application  to  manufactures,  the  consequence  of 
oppression  in  the  colonies,  to  the  inhabitants  of  Great 
Britain,  would  strike  home,  and  immediately,  and  none 
would  mistake  it.  Craft  and  subtlety  would  not  be  able  to 
impose  on  the  most  ignorant  and  credulous  ;  for,  if  any 
should  be  so  weak  of  sight  as  not  to  see,  they  would  not  be 
so  callous  as  not  to  feel  it.  Such  conduct  would  be  the 
most  dutiful  and  beneficial  to  the  mother  country.  It 
would  point  out  the  distemper  when  the  remedy  might  be 
easy,  and  a  cure  at  once  effected  by  a  simple  alteration  of 
regimen."1  "In  common  life,  a  tameness  in  bearing  a 
deprivation  of  part  of  a  man's  property,  encourages  rapacity 
to  seize  the  rest."8  "Any  oppression  of  the  colonies 
would  intimate  an  opinion  of  them  I  am  persuaded  they  do 
not  deserve,  and  their  security,  as  well  as  honor,  ought  to 
engage  them  to  confute."  *  "If  the  case  supposed  should 

1  "  Considerations  on  the  Propriety,"  etc.,  66-67. 
8  Ibid,  68.  3  Ibid. 


IIO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

really  happen,  the  resentment  I  should  recommend  would 
be  a  legal,  orderly,  and  prudent  resentment,  to  be  expressed 
in  a  zealous  and  vigorous  industry,  in  an  immediate  use  and 
unabating  application  of  the  advantages  we  derive  from  our 
situation." 

IX. 

To  the  -plan  of  American  opposition  thus  outlined  by 
Daniel  Dulany — that  of  denying  the  propriety  of  parlia- 
mentary taxation,  while  resorting  to  all  manly  and  lawful 
measures  for  convincing  parliament  of  the  impolicy  of  such 
taxation — to  this  plan,  he  himself  remained  faithful  through 
the  remainder  of  the  conflict.  When,  however,  his  fellow 
colonists  passed  the  bounds  of  constitutional  opposition  and 
resorted  to  measures  which  were  seditious  and  revolution- 
ary, he  declined,  with  perfect  consistency,  to  take  any  fur- 
ther part  in  the  movement;  and  for  this  he  was  bitterly 
denounced  as  a  Tory,  his  property  was  confiscated,  and  the 
safety  of  his  person  imperilled.  Though  he  could  not  join 
with  those  of  his  fellow  colonists  who  had  resolved  upon 
measures  which  seemed  to  him  to  be  unwise  and  unjus'tifi- 
able,  neither  could  he  bring  himself  to  take  up  arms  against 
them.  He  therefore  went  into  complete  seclusion,  from 
which  he  never  afterward  emerged. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  tine  of  colonial  policy 
thus  advocated  by  Daniel  Dulany,  with  so  much  legal  abil- 
ity and  with  so  much  literary  skill,  made  a  deep  impression 
upon  a  vast  number  of  his  fellow  colonists,  whom  it  con- 
vinced of  the  duty  and  the  wisdom  of  making  a  fearless 
stand  against  the  measures  of  the  ministry,  but  without 
any  rupture  of  allegiance.  It  is  apparent,  also,  that  the 
learning,  the  logical  force,  the  boldness,  and  the  fair- 
mindedness  of  Dulany's  pamphlet  had  no  small  effect  upon 
the  leaders  of  liberal  politics  in  England,  and  especially 
upon  William  Pitt,  all  of  whom  it  seems  to  have  aided  in 

1  "  Considerations  on  the  Propriety,"  etc.,  68-69. 


DULANY  AND  WILLIAM  PITT.  Ill 

defining  and  justifying  the  policy  which  they  themselves 
should  advocate  in  parliament  with  respect  to  the  American 
colonies.  For  example,  on  the  fourteenth  of  January, 
1766,  just  three  months  after  the  publication  of  Dulany's 
pamphlet,  Pitt  appeared  in  the  house  of  commons  for  the 
first  time  after  a  long  absence,  and  spoke  with  tremendous 
power  in  favor  both  of  an  immediate  repeal  of  the  Stamp 
Act,  and  of  the  final  abandonment  of  all  measures  looking 
towards  the  taxation  of  the  colonies  by  parliament.  In  one 
of  the  speeches  which  he  made  in  the  course  of  that  debate, 
he  held  up  Dulany's  pamphlet  to  the  approval  and  the 
admiration  of  the  imperial  legislature;  and  though  but  a. 
meagre  outline  of  his  speech  is  now  in  existence,  even  from 
such  outline  it  is  made  clear  that  in  all  but  one  of  the  great 
features  of  his  argument  as  to  the  constitutional  relations  of 
Great  Britain  to  her  colonies,  he  followed  the  very  line  of 
reasoning  set  forth  by  Daniel  Dulany, — an  old  Eton  boy 
like  himself.1 

1  This  may  be  sufficiently  shown  by  the  following  passages  from  Dulany's 
pamphlet  on  the  one  hand,  and  from  the  outline  of  Pitt's  speeches  on  the 
other : — 

DULANY. 

"  In  the  constitution  of  England,  the  three  principal  forms  of  government, 
monarchy,  aristocracy,  and  democracy,  are  blended  together  in  certain  propor- 
tions ;  but  each  of  these  orders,  in  the  exercise  of  the  legislative  authority,  hath 
its  peculiar  department,  from  which  the  others  are  excluded.  In  this  division, 
the  granting  of  supplies,  or  laying  taxes,  is  deemed  to  be  the  province  of  the 
house  of  commons,  as  the  representative  of  the  people.  All  supplies  are  sup- 
posed to  flow  from  their  gift ;  and  the  other  orders  are  permitted  only  to  assent 
or  reject  generally,  not  to  propose  any  modification,  amendment,  or  partial  altera- 
tion of  it."  i. 

PITT. 

"  In  legislation,  the  three  estates  of  the  realm  are  alike  concerned,  but  the 
concurrence  of  the  peers  and  the  crown  to  a  tax  is  only  necessary  to  close  with 
the  form  of  a  law.  The  gift  and  grant  is  of  the  commons  alone."  Hansard, 
"  Parl.  Hist.,"  xvi.  99. 

DULANY. 

"  For  the  preamble  sets  forth,  that  the  commons  of  Great  Britain  had  re- 
solved  to  '  give  and  grant '  the  several  rates  and  duties  imposed  by  the  act.  But 


112  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

X. 

No  other  American  writings,  in  immediate  response  to 
the  passage  of  the  Stamp  Act,  are  stronger  in  thought,  or 
nobler  in  form,  or  more  precious  to  us  now  as  authentic 
utterances  of  the  very  mind  and  conscience  and  heart  of  the 
American  people  in  that  awful  crisis  of  their  affairs,  than  are 
the  several  papers  put  forth  by  the  Stamp  Act  Congress, — 
a  renowned  assemblage,  which  was  convened  in  the  city  of 
New  York,  and  which  transacted  its  entire  work  within  the 
space  of  seventeen  days  of  the  month  of  October,  1765.  Its 
public  papers  consist,  in  the  first  place,  of  fourteen  formal 
declarations  of  rights  and  grievances ;  and,  in  the  second 

what  right  had  the  commons  of  Great  Britain  to  be  thus  munificent  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  commons  of  America?  "  1-2. 

PITT. 

"When,  therefore,  in  this  house  we  'give  and  grant,'  we  'give  and  grant' 
what  is  our  own.  But  in  an  American  tax,  what  do  we  do  ?  We,  your  majesty's 
commons  of  Great  Britain,  '  give  and  grant'  to  your  majesty — what?  Our  own 
property  ?  No.  We  '  give  and  grant '  to  your  majesty  the  property  of  your 
majesty's  commons  of  America.  It  is  an  absurdity  in  terms."  Hansard, 
xvi.  99-100. 


DULANY. 

"  The  notion  of  a  virtual  representation  of  the  colonies  ...  is  a  mere 
cobweb,  spread  to  catch  the  unwary,  and  entangle  the  weak."  4. 

PITT. 

"  The  idea  of  a  virtual  representation  of  America  in  this  house,  is  the  most 
contemptible  idea  that  ever  entered  into  the  head  of  a  man  :  it  does  not  deserve 
a  serious  refutation."  Hansard,  xvi.  100. 


DULANY. 

"  By  their  constitutions  of  government,  the  colonies  are  empowered  to  impose 
internal  taxes."  17.  "The  right  of  exemption  from  all  taxes  without  their 
consent,  the  colonies  claim  as  British  subjects.  They  derive  this  right  from 
the  common  law,  which  their  charters  have  declared  and  confirmed  ;  and  they 
conceive  that  when  stripped  of  this  right,  .  .  .  they  are  at  the  same  time 
deprived  of  every  privilege  distinguishing  free  men  from  slaves.  On  the  other 
hand,  they  acknowledge  themselves  to  be  subordinate  to  the  mother  country, 


STAMP  ACT  CONGRESS.  113 

place,  of  three  elaborate  addresses,  one  to  the  king,  one  to 
the  house  of  lords,  and  one  to  the  house  of  commons.1 

He  who  would  truly  estimate  the  moral  as  well  as  the 
intellectual  quality  of  American  resistance  to  the  claims  of 
the  British  parliament,  at  the  moment  when  the  issue  was 
first  squarely  made  and  met,  will  find  it  needful  to  read 
these  official  announcements  of  political  faith  touching 
imperial  problems,  the  first  ever  issued  by  an  inter-colonial 
body  of  American-Englishmen,  then  for  the  first  time  united 
against  a  common  danger,  and  standing  up,  as  their  ances- 
tors in  the  old  home  had  often  done  before  them,  against 
dangerous  encroachments  upon  their  rights.  Expressed  in 
legal  and  constitutional  language,  and  employing  many  of 
those  aphorisms  of  justice  and  of  civic  courage  which  had 
been  freely  used  by  Englishmen  ever  since  Magna  Charta — 
exactly  five  hundred  and  fifty  years  before — they  constitute 
the  first  group  in  that  wonderful  series  of  state-papers  which 
the  American  colonists,  speaking  through  their  official 
representatives,  sent  forth  to  the  world  during  the  period 
of  their  Revolution.  In  whatever  light  we  may  view  them, 

and  that  the  authority  vested  in  the  supreme  council  of  the  nation  may  be  justly 
exercised  to  support  and  preserve  that  subordination."  37.  "  But  though 
the  right  of  the  superior  to  use  the  proper  means  for  preserving  the  subordina- 
tion of  his  inferior  is  admitted,  yet  it  does  not  necessarily  follow,  that  he  has  a 
right  to  seize  the  property  of  his  inferior  when  he  pleases."  16.  "  May  not, 
then,  the  line  be  distinctly  and  justly  drawn  between  such  acts  as  are  necessary 
or  proper  for  preserving  or  securing  the  dependence  of  the  colonies,  and  such  as 
are  not  necessary  or  proper  for  that  very  important  purpose  ?  "  17. 

PITT. 

"  The  commons  of  America,  represented  in  their  several  assemblies,  have 
ever  been  in  possession  of  the  exercise  of  this,  their  constitutional  right,  of 
'  giving  and  granting '  their  own  money.  They  would  have  been  slaves  if  they 
had  not  enjoyed  it.  At  the  same  time,  this  kingdom,  as  the  supreme  governing 
and  legislative  power,  has  always  bound  the  colonies  by  her  laws,  by  her  regula- 
tions and  restrictions  in  trade,  in  navigation,  in  manufactures,  in  everything 
— except  that  of  taking  their  money  out  of  their  pockets  without  their  consent. 
Here  I  would  draw  the  line.  '  Quam  ultra  citraque  nequit  consitere  rectum.'" 
Hansard,  xvi.  100. 

1  All  reprinted  in  Niles,  "  Principles  and  Acts  of  the  Revolution,"  457-460. 
8 


114  TUE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

these  papers  of  the  Stamp  Act  Congress  are  masterly  and 
impressive  pieces  of  political  statement, — learned,  wise, 
firm,  temperate,  conservative,  even  reverent,  —  as  far 
removed  from  truculence  as  from  fear.  As  mere  indices  of 
personal  character,  as  materials  on  which  to  frame  a  wise 
and  safe  imperial  policy,  they  should  have  been  invaluable 
to  the  leaders  of  English  statesmanship  at  that  time.  Obvi- 
ously, a  people  capable  of  such  political  statements  were  of 
stuff  unfit  to  make  slaves  of.  Had  the  king  of  England 
been  equal  to  his  great  opportunity,  he  would  have  recog- 
nized these  men  as  politicians  too  clear-headed  to  be  caught 
by  any  sophisms  of  prerogative,  as  subjects  too  self-respect- 
ing to  lie  down  in  quiet  under  the  violation  of  their  ancient 
rights ;  and,  instead  of  trying  to  trample  them  into  any  sort 
of  political  subordination,  he  would  have  made  haste  to 
welcome  them,  for  the  loftiness  and  efficiency  of  their 
characters,  to  the  fullest  privileges  of  the  empire. 

XI. 

In  December,  1765,  in  the  midst  of  the  ferment  occa- 
sioned by  the  fact  that  the  Stamp  Act,  which  was  then 
nominally  in  force  in  all  the  American  colonies,  was  practi- 
cally nullified  in  thirteen  of  them,  there  appeared  in  Phila- 
delphia, in  opposition  to  the  policy  out  of  which  that  Act 
had  sprung,  a  notable  pamphlet,  the  peculiar  strength  of 
which  lay  in  its  good  sense  united  with  good  humor  and 
expressed  in  goo.d  English.  It  was  entitled  "  The  Late 
Regulations  respecting  the  British  Colonies  on  the  Conti- 
nent of  America,  Considered  in  a  Letter  from  a  Gentleman 
in  Philadelphia  to  his  Friend  in  London."  It  was  immedi- 
ately republished  in  London;  and  "  though,"  as  a  contem- 
porary observer  wrote,  "  the  town  has  been  in  a  manner 
glutted  with  pamphlets  on  America,  yet  its  sale  has  been 
rapid.  It  ...  has  gained  the  author  much  reputa- 
tion." l  The  author,  whose  reputation  as  a  political  writer 

1  Quoted  in  Dickinson's  "  Political  Writings,"  Ford  ed.,  i.  210. 


JOHN  DICKINSON.  \  \  5 

was  thus  breaking  upon  the  world,  was  John  Dickinson, 
who,  as  a  member  of  the  Stamp  Act  Congress,  had  drafted 
at  least  two  of  its  public  papers,  and  whose  later  literary 
services  on  behalf  of  the  Revolution  were  so  brilliant  as  to 
win  for  him  the  title  of  its  "  Penman." 

Early  in  the  year  1766,  and  before  the  hope  of  a  speedy 
repeal  of  the  offensive  Stamp  Act  had  reached  these  shores, 
there  was  published  in  New  York  another  striking  pamphlet 
on  the  same  side  of  the  question,  bearing  some  of  the  ear- 
marks of  John  Dickinson,  though  perhaps  bolder  in  thought 
and  more  trenchant  in  phrase:  "  Considerations  upon  the 
Rights  of  the  Colonists  to  the  Privileges  of  British  Subjects, 
introduced  by  a  Brief  Review  of  the  Rise  and  Progress  of 
English  Liberty,  and  concluded  with  some  Remarks  upon 
our  Present  Alarming  Situation."  The  real  aim  of  this 
writer  comes  out  in  his  open  avowal  of  that  doctrine  of 
Nullification  which  was  already  going  into  practice  there 
amid  multitudinous  curses  and  groans:  "  Let  us  at  once 
boldly  plead  to  the  jurisdiction  of  parliament.  Let  us 
totally  disallow  the  force  of  that  Act  so  evidently  calculated 
to  enslave  us." 

XII. 

While  the  Americans  in  America  were  thus  pondering  the 
anxious  problems  thrust  upon  them  by  the  new  taxing- 
policy  of  the  mother  country,  it  happened  that  an  Ameri- 
can man  of  letters,  just  then  in  London,  was  moved  by  the 
same  cause  to  give  utterance  to  his  own  indignant  emotion, 
in  the  form  of  a  somewhat  pugnacious  satire  in  verse,  enti- 
tled "Oppression."*  This  poem,  which  bears  on  every 

1  "  Considerations,"  etc.,  25-26. 

2  A  copy  of  the  original  London  edition  is  in  the  Harvard  library,  where  I 
first  read  it  ;  but  it  happens  that  my  quotations  are  from  the  Boston  reprint  of 
the  same  year,  now  in  the  library  of  the  Mass.  Hist.  Society,  where  I  read  it 
the  second  time.     Sabin  speaks  of  a  New  York  reprint,  also  of  the  year  1765  ; 
but  of  this  edition  I  have  seen  no  copy.     Hildeburn  gives  the  title,  and  suggests 
a  Philadelphia  reprint. 


Il6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

page  the  note  of  Charles  Churchill,  was  probably  written  in 
the  latter  part  of  1764.  It  made  its  first  appearance  in 
London  in  1765.  The  author,  not  revealing  his  name,  but 
describing  himself  as 

"  An  uncouth  genius  from  a  western  wood, 
Who  've  neither  wealth,  election  votes  to  bribe, 
Nor  will  to  hackney  falsehood  for  a  tribe,"  ' 

has  been  watching  with  alarm  and  indignation  the  arbitrary 
measures  and  the  corrupt  methods  of  the  court  and  parlia- 
ment, all  under  the  malefic  leadership  of  Lord  Bute.  As  a 
British  subject,  he  feels  the  disaster  which  all  this  threatens 
to  public  and  private  life  in  the  mother  land, — to  the  very 
integrity  and  benignity  of  the  imperial  constitution  itself; 
but  as  a  British  subject  of  American  birth  and  connections, 
he  is  simply  enraged  to  see  with  what  frivolity,  in  what  a 
riot  of  wantonness  and  scorn,  the  most  sacred  rights,  the 
dearest  interests,  of  his  far-off  and  unvoiced  fellow  colonists 
are  here  bartered  away.  This,  then,  is  the  broad  ground 
and  justification  of  his  satiric  wrath: — 

"  When  gathering  murmurs  spread  throughout  the  realm, 
And  favorite  pilots  bungle  at  the  helm  ; 
When  tyrants  skulk  behind  a  gracious  throne, 
And  practice — what  their  courage  dare  not  own  ; 
When  ministers  like  screening  Grenville  rule, — 
A  pendant  talker  and  a  Butean  tool  ; 
When  law  is  chained,  when  Mansfield  holds  the  rod, 
And  justice  trembles  at  his  partial  nod  ; 
When  naught  but  fawning,  flattery  and  lies 
Are  the  just  emblems  of  our  brave  and  wise  ; 

When  countries  groan  beneath  Oppression's  hand, 
And  pensioned  blockheads  riot  through  the  land  ; 
When  colonies  a  savage  excise  pay, 
To  feed  the  creatures  of  a  motley  day  ; 


"  Oppresion,"  4-5. 


OPPRESSION,  A    SATIRE.  \IJ 

When  dunce  on  dunce  successive  rules  our  state, 
Who  can't  love  Pitt,  and  who  a  Grenville  hate  ? 
When  all  these  ills,  and  thousands  yet  untold, 
Destroy  our  liberty,  and  rob  our  gold, 
Should  not  then  Satire  bite  with  all  its  rage, 
And  just  resentment  glow  through  every  page  ? 
Who  can  indignant. bear  to  hear  such  crimes, 
And  not  commence  an  author  of  the  times  ?  "  ' 

But,  in  the  very  sordidness  and  hypocrisy  of  politics  about 
the  court,  and  in  the  facility  with  which  the  claims  of 
America  have  been  betrayed  there  even  by  her  own  sons, 
there  seems  to  him  to  be  the  added  and  most  impressive 
reason  why  he,  an  American  in  England,  should  not  suc- 
cumb to  influences  that  would  either  keep  him  silent,  or 
make  him  false : 

"  And  shall  I  mingle  with  the  courtly  throng, 
When  truth  and  reason  tell  me  they  are  wrong? 
Or,  if  poetic  madness  seize  my  brain, 
Shall  I  not  rhyme,  when  conscience  guides  my  strain  ? 
Shall  I  subscribe  to  every  dunce's  nod, 
Call  Pitt  a  villain,  or  Lord  Bute  a  god  ? 

Shall  I  extol  the  late  severe  excise, 

Call  it  mere  naught,  and  damn  myself  by  lies  ? 

Shall  I  my  country,  at  thy  distant  call, 

Not  mark  vile  H  .    .    . "    that  first  proposed  thy  fall  ? 

1  "  Oppression,"  1-2. 

s  The  person  thus  bitterly  referred  to  as  a  renegade  American,  would  be 
easily  identified  at  the  time  as  John  Huske,  a  native  of  New  Hampshire,  then  a 
merchant  in  London,  a  member  of  parliament  from  Maiden,  and  for  his  sup- 
posed activity  in  bringing  about  the  Stamp  Act  greatly  detested  in  America. 
His  effigy,  with  that  of  Grenville,  was  hung  upon  the  Tree  of  Liberty  in  Boston 
in  1765.  Hutchinson,  "  History  of  Massachusetts,  iii.  135.  These  suspicions 
against  him  may  have  been  unfounded.  At  any  rate,  he  was  active  in  bringing 
about  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act.  During  Franklin's  examination  before  the 
house  of  commons,  Huske  was  one  of  the  members  who  by  their  questions 
tried  to  aid  in  developing  the  testimony  so  as  to  tell  in  favor  of  the  American 
cause.  Franklin  described  him  as  a  "  friend."  "  Works  of  Franklin,"  Bigelow 
ed.,  iii.  451. 


Il8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Or  shall  I  turn  a  traitor  to  my  clime, 
And  be,  like  him,  accursed  to  latest  time  ? 

I  want  no  places  at  a  servile  court, 

To  be  the  dupe  of  ministerial  sport  ; 

Where  honesty  sincere  but  seldom  dwells  ; 

Where  every  tongue  with  adulation  swells  ; 

Where  great  fools  smile,  though  greater  fools  may  laugh  ; 

Where  fawns  our  H    ...    at  best  a  mere  state  calf ; 

Where  miscreants  in  every  scene  of  strife, 

Get  bread,  for  bastards  and  themselves,  for  life  ; 

Where  favorite  falsehood  only  seems  to  charm, 

And  statesmen  promise  never  to  perform  ; 

Where  public  virtue  meets  with  abject  hate, 

Gives  way  to  pleasure  and  intrigues  of  state  ; 

Where  men  devoid  of  decency  as  grace, 

Get  titles,  pensions,  perquisites,  and  place  ; 

Where  every  ill  that  now  annoys  our  state, 

Have  their  fell  source — from  thence  their  baleful  date." ' 

Following  the  precedent  then  abundantly  established 
among  English  writers  in  opposition,  this  American  satirist 
proceeds  to  single  out  and  to  imprecate  Lord  Bute  as  the 
author  and  the  arch  manipulator  of  all  these  political  woes, 
particularly  of  the  vexations  and  calamities  now  brought 
upon  America  : 

"  Do  not  our  shores  now  swarm  by  your  command, 
With  licensed  officers  by  sea  and  land  ? — 
A  crew  more  dreadful  than  our  savage  foes, 
A  locust  tribe  that  feed  on  others'  woes  ?  "' 

And  this  execrable  colonial  policy  that 

"  half  the  Western  World  annoys, 
That  mars  their  trade,  their  liberty  destroys, 
That  makes  them  slaves,  or  mere  mechanic  tools 
To  work  for  nought,  as  fools  do  work  for  fools,"  * 


l"  Oppression,"  3-5.  *  Ibid.  13-14.  3Ibid.  10. 


OPPRESSION,    A    SATIRE.  1 19 

is  in  no  way  redeemed  by  the  method  of  its  administration 
in  America  at  the  hands  of  Lord  Bute's  hirelings,  who, 
indeed,  contrive  by  their  insolence  to  crown  the  whole 
system  with  the  last  refinements  of  vexation : — 

"  Must  it  not  fill  all  men  of  sense  with  scorn, 
To  see  a  muckworm  of  the  earth  low  born, — 
A  creature  but  at  best  a  custom  clerk, 
The  chance  production  of  some  amorous  spark, 
In  ignorance  supreme,  profoundly  dark, — 
To  see  him  seat  his  mighty  self  in  state, 
With  asms  akimbo  deal  to  each  his  fate  ; 
To  see  the  horned  scribbler  force  along 
And  elbow  here  and  there  the  busy  throng  ? 
What  awful  consequence  transforms  his  face, 
To  show  the  importance  of  his  mighty  place, 
As  if  in  him  all  excise  solely  hung, 
And  fates  of  kingdoms  balanced  on  his  tongue  !  "  ' 

But,  now,  these  wrongs,  great  or  petty,  inflicted  upon 
the  colonies  by  the  hard  policy  of  Lord  Bute, — all  these 
stings  and  stabs  of  oppression, — how  long  can  America  be 
expected  to  endure  them  ?  The  poet's  answer  to  that 
question  takes  the  form  of  a  prophecy  which  to  us  may 
seem  almost  droll  in  its  mbderation,  but  which  may  also 
have  an  interest  for  us  as  being  a  very  early  example  of 
those  numerous  hypothetical  Declarations  of  Independence 
which  were  pronounced  during  the  ten  or  twelve  years  pre- 
ceding the  real  one,  and  which  unconsciously  heralded  its 
advent : — 

"  Ere  five  score  years  have  run  their  tedious  rounds, — 
If  yet  Oppression  breaks  o'er  human  bounds, 
As  it  has  done  the  last  sad  passing  year, 
Made  the  New  World  in  anger  shed  the  tear, — 
Unmindful  of  their  native,  once-loved  isle, 
They  '11  bid  Allegiance  cease  her  peaceful  smile, 
While  from  their  arms  they  tear  Oppression's  chain, 
And  make  lost  Liberty  once  more  to  reign."  * 
1  "  Oppression,"  15-16.  8  Ibid.  21. 


120  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Yet  not  with  such  a  menace  could  even  this  fierce  lover  of 
liberty  permit  his  satire  to  close ;  and  in  a  relenting  strain 
which  has  in  it  the  very  pathos  of  filial  supplication,  he 
affirms  the  affectionate  fidelity  of  the  colonies  to  the  empire 
of  which  they  would  gladly  remain  a  part : — 

"  But  let  them  live,  as  they  would  choose  to  be, 
Loyal  to  king,  and  as  true  Britons  free, 
They  '11  ne'er  by  fell  revolt  oppose  that  crown 
Which  first  has  raised  them,  though  now  pulls  them  down  ; 
If  but  the  rights  of  subjects  they  receive, 
'T  is  all  they  ask — or  all  a  crown  can  give."  '  •*" 

1  Ibid.  22.  Excepting  the  citation  of  the  title  of  this  notable  poem,  as  given 
by  Sabin  and  by  Hildeburn,  I  do  not  remember  to  have  seen  any  allusion  to  it 
by  any  writer.  I  first  stumbled  upon  it  at  the  Harvard  library,  and  could  not 
fail  to  observe  its  political  and  literary  significance  in  relation  to  the  subject  of 
this  book.  Neither  Hildeburn  nor  Sabin  has  anything  to  suggest  as  to  its 
author.  I  am  inclined,  from  internal  evidence,  to  attribute  it  to  the  once  cele- 
brated Arthur  Lee,  who  was  born  in  Virginia  in  1740,  was  educated  at  Eton 
College  and  at  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  and  having  settled  as  a  physician 
in  his  native  colony,  went  back  to  England  at  the  outbreak  of  the  great  dispute 
intending  to  become  a  lawyer  and  a  politician.  His  biographer  writes  very 
loosely  as  to  dates,  and  mentions  this  event  as  occurring  "  about  the  year  1766." 
"  Life  of  Arthur  Lee,"  by  Richard  Henry  Lee,  i.  15.  He  had  a  knack  both 
for  rhyme  and  for  vituperation  ;  and  m%y  have  tried,  in  1765,  to  imitate  the 
satire  of  Churchill,  as,  a  few  years  later,  he  tried  to  imitate  the  invective  of 
Junius. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

AN  EARLY  PULPIT-CHAMPION  OF  COLONIAL  RIGHTS :    1/66. 

I. — Death  of  Jonathan  Mayhew  shortly  after  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act — His 
gifts  for  intellectual  and  moral  leadership — His  special  influence  on  the 
young  radical  of  the  Revolutionary  period. 

II. — Outline  of  his  career — His  early  break  with  New  England  ecclesiasticism 
— His  activity  as  a  writer — His  published  writings. 

III. — A  champion  of  individualism — His  traits  as  a  sermon-writer — His  rational- 
ism— His  defiance  of  authority — His  demand  that  religious  thinking  be 
practical — His  rancorous  denunciation  of  theological  rancor. 

IV. — His  use  of  the  pulpit  for  the  discussion  of  all  topics  of  the  time — The 
avowed  sources  of  his  political  opinions — His  statesmanlike  view  of  public 
questions — His  political  foresight. 

V. — His  particular  antagonism,  on  behalf  of  civil  liberty,  to  the  Roman  and 
Anglican  Churches — A  leader  in  the  American  crusade  against  Anglican 
bishops — Important  connection  of  that  excitement  with  the  popular  sus- 
picions as  to  the  political  purposes  of  the  English  government — Mayhew's 
invective  against  the  Church  of  England,  and  especially  against  bishops. 

VI. — His  "  Discourse  concerning  Unlimited  Submission" — Reflects  the  influ- 
ence of  Milton's  political  tracts — Mayhew's  ridicule  of  the  saintship  and 
martyrdom  of  Charles  the  First — The  right  of  the  people  to  disown  and 
resist  bad  rulers. 

VII. — Immediate  effects  of  Mayhew's  preaching  on  the  Stamp  Act  riots  in 
Boston— His  last  political  discourse,  "  The  Snare  Broken,"  celebrates  the 
repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act— His  last  message  to  James  Otis  pleads  for  a  per- 
manent union  of  the  colonies  as  a  defense  against  evils  to  come. 

I. 

ON  the  ninth  day  of  July,  1766, — in  the  first  lull  of  a 
political  storm  which  he  had  done  almost  as  much  as  any 
man  to  raise, — there  died  in  Boston,  in  his  forty-sixth  year, 
Jonathan  Mayhew,  minister  of  the  West  Church  in  that 
town;  a  great  master  of  the  art  of  rational  and  passionate 
speech,  and  for  the  previous  twenty  years,  from  his  coigne 


122  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

of  vantage  in  the  pulpit,  a  robust  and  fiery  antagonist  of 
almost  every  form  of  arbitrary  authority  in  church  or  state ; 
a  man  of  such  boldness  of  character,  splendor  of  diction, 
wit,  sarcasm,  invective,  of  such  enthusiasm  for  all  spacious 
and  breezy  views  of  freedom  and  duty,  that  he  had  become 
a  sort  of  tribune  of  the  people,  — particularly,  the  companion 
and  inspirer  of  many  of  those  young  radicals  in  politics 
who,  long  before  the  final  onset  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion, were  unconsciously  beating  out  a  path  for  it.  More 
than  half  a  century  afterward,  one  of  those  young  radicals 
— still  young  at  eighty-three — in  a  review  of  the  beginnings 
of  the  Revolutionary  movement,  fixed  upon  the  years  1760 
and  1761  as  the  time  when  was  produced  "  an  awakening 
and  a  revival  of  American  principles  and  feelings,  with  an 
enthusiasm  which  went  on  increasing  till,  in  1775,  it  burst 
out  in  open  violence,  hostility,  and  fury.  The  characters 
the  most  conspicuous,  the  most  ardent  and  influential,  in 
this  revival,  from  1760  to  1766,  were,  first  and  foremost, 
before  all  and  above  all,  James  Otis  ;  next  to  him  was 
Oxenbridge  Thacher,  next  to  him,  Samuel  Adams;  next  to 
him  John  Hancock;  then,  Dr.  Mayhew. "  '  Another  of 
these  young  radicals,  Robert  Treat  Paine,  carried  with  him 
through  life  such  an  impression  of  the  greatness  of  Mayhew 
as  a  dauntless  pioneer  of  mental  and  political  emancipation, 
that,  even  from  a  distant  retrospect,  he  named  him  as  "  the 
father  of  civil  and  religious  liberty  in  Massachusetts  and 
America."8  Ninety  years  after  the  death  of  Mayhew,  his 
last  successor  in  the  pulpit  of  the  West  Church — himself  a 
man  of  fine  genius — described  a  certain  sermon  of  Mayhew's 
preached  in  1750,  as  "  the  first  peal  on  the  trumpet  of  free- 
dom in  this  western  land,  blown  clear  and  loud  enough  to 
be  heard  over  land  and  water  far  and  wide."  "He  had  a 
truly  public  soul,  an  ability  in  action,  a  genius  for  affairs, 
which  made  him  the  worthy  compeer  of  all  the  civil  authors 

1  John  Adams,  "  Works,"  x.  284. 

2  Alden   Bradford,    "  Memoir  of  the   Life  and  Writings  of  Rev.  Jonathan 
Mayhew,  D.D.,"  118  n. 

4 Cyrus  Augustus  Bartol,  "  The  West  Church  and  its  Ministers,"  104. 


JON  A  THAN  MA  YHE  W.  1 23 

of  our  national  freedom  and  fundamental  institutions;  nor 
does  the  figure  of  the  elder  Samuel  Adams  or  Otis  . 
stand  out  in  more  distinct  relief  on  the  canvas  that  shows 
the  sublime  forms  of  our  political  sires,  than  does  that  of 
this  religious  preacher  of  the  gospel."  "  I  must,  for  gran- 
deur of  aim,  and  mighty  will  to  bring  to  pass  his  purposes, 
put  him  in  the  first  rank  of  human  spirits."  ' 

And  while  these  tributes  bespeak  for  Mayhew  the  recog- 
nition of  posterity  for  his  strong  and  lofty  character — for 
his  purity,  nobility,  sagacity,  and  force  in  practical  leader- 
ship— they  who  in  his  lifetime  yielded  to  his  spell,  could 
not  refrain  from  testifying,  likewise,  to  the  brilliance  of 
those  literary  gifts  which  gave  instant  splendor  and  renown 
to  all  he  did.  The  writer  of  a  sketch  of  Mayhew,  published 
just  after  his  death,  mentions  that  he  was  then  generally 
esteemed  "  to  be  as  brilliant  a  genius  as  ever  this  country 
produced."  The  biographer,  John  Eliot,  a  contemporary 
of  Mayhew,  speaks  of  his  unsurpassed  literary  eminence : 

No  American  author  ever  obtained  higher  reputation." 
John  Adams,  who  was  not  wont  either  to  bless  or  to  curse 
by  halves,  does  not  stick  at  speaking  of  Mayhew  as  a 
''transcendent  genius"5;  of  his  writings  as  sure  to  be 
esteemed  as  long  as  "  wit,  spirit,  humor,  reason,  and  knowl- 
edge "  are  admired  in  this  part  of  the  world8;  and  of  the 
41  wit  and  satire  "  that  seasoned  Mayhew's  famous  sermon 
on  the  saintship  and  martyrdom  of  King  Charles  the  First, 
as  "  superior  to  any  in  Swift  or  Franklin." 

As  if  conscious  that  his  life  was  to  be  a  short  one,  he 
began  to  shed  its  literary  fruitage  early ;  and  the  tone  and 
manner  in  which  he  did  this,  help  us  to  mark  some  traits  of 
him  which  his  eulogists  have  not  deemed  it  needful  to  men- 
tion. Never,  in  his  lifetime  or  since,  could  he  have  been 

1  Cyrus  Augustus  Bartol,  "  The  West  Church  and  its  Ministers,"  86. 
'Ibid.  84. 

3  In   appendix   to   Ebenezer   Gay's  two  sermons  on  the  death  of  Mayhew, 
Boston,  1766. 

4  "  Biographical  Dictionary,"  323. 

5  "  Works,"  x.  288.  « Ibid.  iv.  29.  '  Ibid.  x.  287-288. 


124  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

spoken  of  as  a  representative  of  any  known  species  of  humil- 
ity, either  intellectual  or  spiritual, — humility  being,  appa- 
rently, one  of  those  Christian  graces  which  he  had  to 
content  himself  with  eloquently  commending  to  the  practice 
of  others.  The  special  work  he  had  to  do  in  the  world, 
could  have  been  done,  perhaps,  only  by  a  man  unembar- 
rassed by  self-distrust  or  by  too  much  deference  for  others. 
From  first  to  last,  as  we  read  what  he  wrote  and  spoke  and 
printed,  we  are  made  aware  of  a  man  born  with  so  sumptu- 
ous a  supply  of  self-reliance,  as  to  have  little  room  left  in 
him  for  such  qualities  as  caution,  diffidence,  hesitation, 
reverence ;  a  man  quite  incapable  of  suspecting  that  his 
own  illumination  on  any  subject  was  not  a  match  for  that 
of  all  other  men  and  of  all  past  ages ;  his  humor,  wit,  sharp- 
ness, severity,  affluence,  arrogance,  and  love  of  applause, 
finding  their  opportunity  in  the  large,  uncontrolled  freedom 
of  a  rationalistic  pulpit,  before  which,  in  that  age  of  uni- 
versal rupture  with  the  past,  there  ascended  the  ceaseless 
incense  of  admiration  from  disciples  most  grateful  to  him 
for  his  aid  in  enabling  them  to  form  so  good  an  opinion  of 
their  own  times,  and  of  themselves.  In  the  case  of  com- 
mon men,  this  uncommon  self-esteem  is  apt  to  be  described 
by  words  that  do  not  veil  its  offensiveness.  Even  in  the 
case  of  so  privileged  a  person  as  Mayhew,  there  were  some 
onlookers  who  made  bold  to  apply  such  words  to  him, — as 
John  Adams's  friend,  Veasy,  who  in  1760  ventured  the 
opinion  that  Dr.  Mayhew  had  "  haughty  spirits  and  van- 
ity "  ' ;  or,  as  the  author  of  some  verses  published  in  1763, 
who  thus  frankly  apostrophized  that  much  belauded  man : 

"  By  nature  vain,  by  art  made  worse, 

And  greedy  of  false  fame  ; 
Through  truth  disguised,  and  mobs  deceived, 
Thou  fain  would'st  get  a  name."  " 

1  J.  Adams,  "Works,"  ii.  86. 

*  "  Verses  on  Doctor  Mayhew's  Book  of  Observations,"  etc.,  16.  The  author 
of  these  verses  is  called  "  a  gentleman  of  Rhode  Island,"  and  is  said  by  E.  F. 
Slafter  to  have  been  John  Alpin. 


JON  A  THA  Ar  MA  YHE  W.  12$ 

II. 

He  was  born  on  the  eighth  of  October,  1720,  on  the  island 
of  Martha's  Vineyard,  of  a  line  of  saintly  men  who,  for 
three  generations  before  him,  had  tilled  the  soil  and  preached 
the  gospel  in  that  lovely  place.  He  was  graduated  at  Har- 
vard College  in  1744,  highly  distinguished  for  the  ease  and 
elegance  with  which  he  wrote  Latin,  and  for  his  skill  in  dia- 
lectics. Three  years  after  his  graduation,  he  was  settled  as 
pastor  of  the  prominent  church  in  Boston,  in  the  service  of 
which  he  spent  his  brief  life.  At  his  ordination  there,  the 
leading  clergymen  of  the  neighborhood  were  conspicuous  by 
their  absence, — this  being  on  account  of  an  odor  of  hetero- 
doxy already  perceptible  about  his  person,  and  in  no  way 
lessened  as  the  years  went  on.  He  is  said  to  have  been  the 
first  minister  among  the  New  England  churches  openly  to 
attack  and  spurn  the  five  great  buttresses  of  the  system  of 
John  Calvin,  and  openly  to  deny  the  doctrines  of  the  Trin- 
ity, and  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ;  while  the  church  of 
which  he  was  pastor,  was  the  first  one  in  that  region  to 
avow  itself  as  Unitarian.1  Standing  up  thus  alone  as  an 
incipient  heretic  in  a  town  then  prodigiously  devoted  both 
to  orthodoxy  and  to  church-going,  young  Mayhew  made 
from  the  first  a  gallant  and  a  winning  fight  for  recognition 
and  influence.  He  had  an  eye  for  the  strategic  uses  of  the 
printing-press  as  an  ally  of  the  pulpit  ;  and  while  the 
thoughtfulness,  force,  and  vivacity  of  his  spoken  sermons 
soon  made  his  meeting-house  a  resort  for  men  and  women 
of  advanced  ideas — a  mart  for  the  exhibition  and  inter- 
change of  many  sorts  of  theological  and  political  novelties 
— those  same  sermons,  being  frequently  flung  into  print 
and  scattered  hither  and  yon  in  this  country  and  in  Eng- 
land, soon  lifted  his  name  into  a  distinction  unrivalled, 
probably,  by  any  of  his  contemporaries  in  the  American 
pulpit.  Of  the  industry  and  fearlessness  with  which  he  thus 
prosecuted  his  trade  of  authorship,  the  reader  may  judge 

1  Bradford,  "  Life  of  Mayhew,"  24,  464. 


126  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

by  a  mere  glance  at  the  long  list  of  his  published  writings: 
In  1749, — "  Seven  Sermons  .  .  .  Preached  as  a  Lec- 
ture in  the  West  Meeting  House"1;  in  1750, — "A  Dis- 
course concerning  Unlimited  Submission  and  Non-Resistance 
to  the  Higher  Powers;  With  some  Reflections  on  the  Re- 
sistance made  to  King  Charles  the  First,  and  on  the  Anni- 
versary of  his  Death, — in  which  the  Mysterious  Doctrine  of 
that  Prince's  Saintship  and  Martyrdom  is  unriddled  "  *;  in 
1751, — "  Sermon  ...  on  the  Death  of  Frederick, 
Prince  of  Wales";  in  1754, — the  Massachusetts  election 
sermon;  in  1755, — "  Two  Sermons,  .  .  .  November 
23,  .  .  .  Occasioned  by  the  Earthquakes  ...  on 
the  Tuesday  Morning  and  Saturday  Evening  preceding"; 
"  A  Discourse  .  .  .  Occasioned  by  the  Earthquakes  in 
November,  .  .  .  delivered  December  18  following"; 
and  a  volume  of  fourteen  sermons  on  subjects  of  speculative 
and  practical  importance8;  in  1758, — "Two  Discourses 
delivered  November  23,  .  .  .  being  a  Day  of  Public 
Thanksgiving,  relating  more  especially  to  the  Success  of  his 
Majesty's  Arms  and  those  of  the  King  of  Prussia  the  last 
year";  in  1759,—"  Two  Discourses  delivered  October 
25,  .  .  .  being  ...  a  Day  of  Public  Thanksgiv- 
ing for  the  Success  of  his  Majesty's  Arms,  more  particularly 
in  the  Reduction  of  Quebec";  in  1760, — "A  Sermon 
occasioned  by  the  Great  Fire  in  Boston,"  "  Two  Discourses 
delivered  October  9,  ...  being  a  Day  of  Public 
Thanksgiving  for  the  Success  of  his  Majesty's  Arms,  more 
especially  in  the  entire  Reduction  of  Canada,"  "  A  Dis- 
course occasioned  by  the  Death  of  the  Honorable  Stephen 
Sewall,"  and  a  volume  of  thirteen  "  Practical  Discourses 
delivered  on  Occasion  of  the  Earthquakes  in  November, 
1755  "  ';  in  1761, — "A  Discourse  occasioned  by  the  Death 

1  Reprinted  in  London,  1750. 
8  Reprinted  in  Boston,  1818. 
8  Reprinted  in  London,  1756. 

4  In  an  advertisement  for  April  i,  1760,  at  the  end  of  his  sermon  on  the 
"  Great  Fire,"  this  volume  is  announced  as  then  first  published. 


JON  A  THAN  MA  YHE  W.  \  27 

of  King  George  the  Second,  and  the  Happy  Accession  of 
his  Majesty  King  George  the  Third,"  and  two  sermons  on 
"  Striving  to  Enter  in  at  the  Strait  Gate"  ;  in  1763, — "  Two 
Sermons  on  the  Nature,  Extent,  and  Perfection  of  the 
Divine  Goodness";  a  volume  of  eight  sermons,  to  young 
men,  on  "  Christian  Sobriety,"  and  a  pamphlet  entitled 
"  Observations  on  the  Charter  and  Conduct  of  the  Society 
1  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in  Foreign  Parts";  in 
1764, —two  pamphlets  in  defense  of  the  one  just  mentioned 
and  in  reply  to  the  criticisms  of  Archbishop  Seeker  and 
others,  and  "  A  Letter  of  Reproof  to  Mr.  John  Cleaveland 
of  Ipswich,  occasioned  by  a  Defamatory  Libel  published 
under  his  Name";  in  1765, — the  Dudleian  lecture,  on 
"  Popish  Idolatry";  in  1766, — "The  Snare  Broken:  A 
Thanksgiving  Discourse  preached  .  .  .  Friday,  May 
23,  1766,  occasioned  by  the  Repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,"- 
this  sermon  having  been  delivered  less  than  seven  weeks 
before  its  author's  death.1 


III. 


Whoever  glances  through  this  long  series  of  publications, 
will  be  likely  to  note  the  early  and  persistent  action  of 
Mayhew's  mind  in  the  direction  of  individualism,  on  behalf 
of  which  he  proves  himself  from  first  to  last  a  staunch  and 
dashing  fighter — a  scornful  and  a  merciless  one : 

"  A  latter  Luther,  and  a  soldier-priest ; 

no  Sabbath-drawler  of  old  saws 

Distill'd  from  some  worm-canker'd  homily  ; 
But  spurred  at  heart  with  fiercest  energy." 

1  The  foregoing  list  was  made  by  me  from  the  documents  themselves,  either 
in  my  own  possession,  or  in  the  libraries  of  Harvard  University,  the  Massa- 
chusetts Historical  Society,  and  the  Congregational  House,  Boston.  A  list 
is  given  in  Sprague,  "Annals,"  etc.,  viii.  26;  and  in  Bradford,  "Life  of 
May  hew,"  29  n. 


128  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

As  to  method  and  form,  his  sermons  have  never  the 
quality  of  mere  essays — placid  and  disinterested  statements 
of  thought :  they  are  essentially  orations,  not  to  say,  ful- 
minations, — their  sentences  being  framed,  or  rather  born, 
for  strong  and  passionate  utterance,  and  swelling  into  cli- 
maxes of  argument  and  emotion.  He  has  a  towering  and 
soaring  sort  of  eloquence.  He  nobly  wields  majestic  Biblical 
language.  He  compacts  his  pages  with  edged  and  pointed 
diction,  concentrated  sayings,  epigrams.  Even  in  the  most 
serious  moods,  his  discourse  is  in  danger  of  crackling  into 
caustic  humor  and  satire;  so  that  a  sentence  begun  in 
solemnity  and  even  pathos  may  end  in  a  jocular  detonation, 
— the  height  and  triumph  of  his  argument  being  celebrated 
at  times  by  flashes  and  coruscations  of  intellectual  fire,  even 
as  the  rocket  bursts  into  a  shower  of  sparkling  jets  at  the 
summit  of  its  flight.  As  is  apt  to  be  the  case  with  such 
men,  he  was  at  times  the  victim  of  his  own  cleverness, — his 
gift  for  satire  tempting  him  to  indulge  it  at  the  expense  both 
of  charity  and  of  reverence.1 

The  distinctive  trait  of  Mayhew's  work  is  intellectuality, 
Avith  fervor  and  force.  For  fervor  and  force  without  intel- 
lectuality, he  expresses  uncontrollable  contempt, — as  when 
in  his  early  ministry,  he  went  one  day  to  hear  Whitefield, 
and  then,  writing  to  his  father,  said  of  the  sermon:  "  It 
was  as  low,  confused,  puerile,  conceited,  ill-natured,  enthu- 
siastic a  performance  as  I  ever  heard."1  Everywhere  he 
insists  on  the  dignity  and  worth  of  the  intellect  in  all  mat- 
ters of  faith  and  sentiment.  He  declares  himself  to  be  a 
rationalist  in  religion,  and  Christianity  a  consummate  sys- 

1  Instances  of  the  former  may  be  found  in  nearly  all  of  his  allusions  to  the 
Roman  and  Anglican  Churches  ;  and  in  many  of  his  comments  upon  his  own 
Protestant  antagonists  in  New  England — especially  in  his  "  Letter  of  Reproof  " 
to  the  Rev.  John  Cleaveland.  Notable  examples  of  the  latter  are  to  be  met 
with  in  his  note  professing  to  explain  why  the  "  Song  of  Solomon  "  was  admitted 
into  the  sacred  canon  ("Sermons  upon  the  Following  Subjects,"  etc.,  349); 
and  in  his  parody  on  the  Athanasian  creed,  for  the  purpose  of  ridiculing  the 
alleged  deification  of  the  Virgin  Mary  (Ibid.  323  n.). 

8  Bradford,  "  Life  of  Mayhew,"  102. 


JON  A  THAN  MA  YHE  W.  1 29 

tern  of  rationalism:  "Our  anointed  Lord,  the  author  and 
finisher  of  our  faith,  constantly  appealed  to  the  senses  and 
the  reason  of  mankind,  as  the  proper  judges  of  his  miracles, 
divine  commission,  and  doctrine.  He  did  not  demand  of 
men  an  implicit,  blind  belief  in  himself,  without  offering 
matter  of  conviction  to  their  understandings  ;  but  put 
them  on  examining,  in  a  rational  way,  whether  he  were 
authorized  by  heaven,  or  were  an  impostor,  and  whether  his 
doctrines  were  of  God,  or  whether  he  spake  of  himself."  * 
Mayhew  seems  always  to  think  with  emotion,  often  with 
passion,  but  he  thinks;  and  he  requires  that  they  who  hear 
him  or  read  him  shall  think.  Not  even  the  love  of  God  is 
to  be  deemed  a  thing  of  sentiment  only:  it  is  not  to  be  con- 
founded, says  Mayhew,  with  "  those  flashy  and  rapturous 
sallies  of  the  heart  towards  God,  which  may  proceed  from  a 
fond  conceit  that  we  are  singled  out  to  be  the  particular 
favorites  of  heaven.  .  .  .  The  love  of  God  is  a  steady, 
solemn,  calm,  and  rational  thing,  the  result  of  thought  and 
consideration.  It  is,  indeed,  a  passion,  but  a  passion 
excited  by  reason  presenting  the  proper  object  of  it  to  the 
mind."  2  Constantly,  even  in  times  of  general  excitement, 
as  after  an  earthquake,  or  a  great  fire,  or  a  great  tem- 
pest,— the  entire  community  then  thrilling  and  throbbing 
with  terror, — this  preacher  demands  that  men  and  women 
shall  keep  their  heads,  and  not  lose  them.  On  the  very 
morning  after  the  town  of  Boston  had  been  thrown  into 
consternation  by  an  earthquake — the  second  one  within  the 
space  of  three  days — he  went  into  his  pulpit,  and  said : 
"  It  is  not  my  intention  to  address  myself  merely  to  the 
passions  of  my  hearers,  much  less  to  take  this  opportunity, 
when  the  minds  of  many  people  may  be  ruffled  and  discom- 
posed, to  promote  the  cause  of  superstition.  ...  I 
shall,  therefore,  address  myself  to  you  as  to  men  and  reason- 
able creatures.  .  .  .  And  this  will  so  much  the  rather 
be  the  manner  of  my  address,  because  I  am  persuaded  from 

1  From  sermon  reprinted  in  part  in  Bradford,  "  Life  of  Mayhew,"  54-55. 
4  "Seven  Sermons,"  etc.,  95. 
9 


I3O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

my  own  observation,  that  no  religious  impressions  can  be  of 
the  right  kind,  durable,  and  of  lasting  benefit  to  the  sub- 
jects of  them,  besides  those  which  are  made,  or  at  least 
fixed,'  by  rational,  sober,  and  honest  methods,  with  the 
concurrence  and  blessing  of  Him  who  worketh  all  in  all." 

Of  course,  the  preacher  who  thus  reveres  the  sovereignty 
of  the  intellect,  is  one  who  will  claim,  for  himself  and  for 
every  man,  the  right  to  use  it  freely,  even  in  opposition  to 
all  external  authority,  whether  of  kings,  or  bishops,  of 
ancient  creeds,  ancient  churches,  or  modern  ones.  In  short, 
here  stands  before  us  an  uncommonly  fierce  champion  of 
the  right  of  private  judgment, — a  right  which,  he  declares, 
he  will  never  yield  up  to  the  authority  of  "  all  the  good 
Fathers  of  the  Church,  even  with  that  of  the  good  Mothers 
^-  added  to  it."  2  "  Did  I  say,  we  have  a  right  to  judge  and 
I  act  for  ourselves  ?  It  is  our  solemn  duty  to  do  it.  We 
cannot  relinquish  the  right,  nor  neglect  to  use  it,  without 
being  highly  culpable.  We  may  dispose  of  our  temporal 
substance,  if  we  please,  but  God,  and  reason,  and  the  gos- 
pel of  Christ  enjoin  it  upon  us,  as  a  duty,  to  maintain  the 
right  of  private  judgment,  and  to  worship  God  according  to 
our  consciences,  as  much  as  they  enjoin  it  on  us  to  give 
alms  to  the  poor,  to  love  God  and  our  neighbor,  and  to 
jDractise  all  righteousness.  They  are  all  duties,  and  not 
simply  rights  ;  duties  founded  in  the  reason  of  things  ; 
duties  equally  commanded  by  the  same  God ;  duties  equally 
enjoined  by  the  same  Lord;  duties  equally  required  by  the 
same  gospel.  And  the  neglect  of  the  duty  of  private  judg- 
ment, may  be  attended  by  worse  consequences  to  ourselves 
and  fellow-men,  than  the  neglect  of  any  other.  For  he  who 
does  not  examine  for  himself  what  is  right  and  true,  acts 
entirely  in  the  dark,  and  may  run  into  the  most  irregular 
and  destructive  practices  which  can  be  conceived  of,  just  as 
his  weak  or  wicked  guides  are  pleased  to  prompt  him.  He 
is  fit  only  for  a  tool  to  the  devil  and  his  emissaries;  and 

1  "Two  Sermons     ...     on  Earthquakes,"  etc.,  9-10. 

!  From  dedication  to  volume  of  "  Sermons,"  published  in  1755. 


JON  A  THAN  MA  YHE  W.  1 3 1 

may  flatter  himself  that  he  is  doing  God  service,  when  he  is 
imbruing  his  hands  in  the  blood  of  the  innocent,  and  perse- 
cuting the  true  church  of  Christ."  ' 

Moreover,  while  Mayhew  insists  on  the  necessity  of 
thought  in  every  sphere  of  religion,  he  demands  that  the 
chief  aim  of  religious  thinking  should  be  not  speculative  but 
practical:  "  Those  things  which  have  kept  the  Christian 
world  in  an  eternal  ferment,  which  have  sharpened  the 
spirits  of  men,  and  set  little  angry  bigots  a  snarling  and 
growling  at  one  another,  are  nice  metaphysical  fooleries, 
scholastic  distinctions  without  any  difference,  and  mere 
words  without  a  meaning.  These  are  the  things — or  rather 
the  nothings — which  have  been  disputed  about  to  the  neg- 
lect of  the  weightier  matters  of  the  gospel,  and  even  to  the 
destruction  of  all  piety  and  brotherly  love — of  everything 
becoming  a  man  and  a  Christian.  So  hot  and  furious 
have  many  professed  Christians  been  in  all  ages,  and  so 
wrathful  their  contentions  about  nothings  or  mere  trifles, 
that  one  unacquainted  with  the  genius  of  their  religion 
would  be  apt  to  think  it  a  very  different  thing  from  what  it 
is.  He  might  be  apt  to  think  that  the  Master  of  these  furi- 
ous, railing,  and  burning  disputants  had  left  it  in  express 
charge,  as  the  distinguishing  character  of  his  disciples,  not 
that  they  should  '  be  wise  as  serpents  and  harmless  as 
doves,'  not  that  they  should  '  love  one  another,'  and  prac- 
tise mutual  forbearance  and  condescension,  and  do  unto  all 
men  as  they  would  be  done  by,  but  that  they  should  be 
venomous  and  malicious  as  serpents — hate  one  another  with 
all  their  hearts — do  to  every  one  as  they  would  be  willing 
to  be  done  to  by  none — go  together  by  the  ears  about 
words  and  sounds — drag  each  other  to  gaols  and  gibbets,  to 
dungeons  and  flames,  and  consign  all  over  to  hell  fire  at 
last  who  could  not  immediately  pronounce  their  uncouth 
shibboleths.  But,  O  blessed  Jesus  !  thou  Saviour  of  the 
world !  is  this,  for  thy  disciples  to  love  one  another  as  thou 
hast  loved  them  ?  Or  didst  thou  mercifully  make  peace 

1  From  sermon  reprinted  in  part  in  Bradford,  "  Life  of  Mayhew,"  71-72. 


132  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

between  God  and  man  by  the  blood  of  thy  cross,  that  men, 
being  at  peace  with  God,  might  thus  make  war  upon  one 
another,  and  inhumanly  shed  each  other's  blood  ?  "  ' 

IV. 

Like  nearly  all  the  New  England  preachers  of  that  day, 
this  preacher  by  no  means  confined  himself  to  topics  con- 
cerning individual  thought  and  conduct,  but  launched  out 
habitually  on  Sundays  into  those  great  matters  of  state — 
civil,  ecclesiastical,  even  military — which  his  people  were 
thinking  about  during  the  week, — the  deaths  and  the  coro- 
nations of  English  kings;  the  rise  and  fall  of  English  minis- 
tries; the  conflicts  of  England  with  her  rivals  in  all  lands 
and  seas;  the  glorious  deeds  of  Frederick  of  Prussia  as 
champion  of  Protestant  power  throughout  the  world ;  the 
appalling  menace  to  the  American  colonies  presented  by 
the  mere  existence  of  French  colonies  in  North  America; 
the  alarming  aggressions  of  the  English  government  upon 
the  political  rights  of  Americans;  the  rightful  limits  of  sub- 
mission, the  rightful  spirit  and  method  of  resistance,  on  the 
part  of  subjects  to  their  sovereign. 

In  the  very  last  of  his  sermons  on  public  questions,  May- 
hew  avows  the  chief  sources  of  his  ideas  as  to  civil  liberty, 
saying  that  in  his  youth  he  had  imbibed  them  from  "  Plato, 
Demosthenes,  Cicero,  and  other  renowned  persons  among 
the  ancients,"  and  from  Sidney,  Milton,  Locke,  and  Hoadly 
among  the  moderns;  above  all,  that  earlier  still  he  had 
"  learnt  from  the  holy  scriptures,  that  wise,  brave,  and  vir- 
tuous men  were  always  friends  to  liberty ;  that  God  gave 
the  Israelites  a  king,  or  absolute  monarch,  in  his  anger, 
because  they  had  not  sense  and  virtue  enough  to  like  a  free 
commonwealth,  and  to  have  Himself  for  their  King;  that 
the  Son  of  God  came  down  from  heaven  to  make  us  '  free 
indeed  ' ;  and  that  '  where  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  is,  there  is 
liberty.' 

1  "  Seven  Sermons,"  etc.,  155-156.  "  "  The  Snare  Broken,"  35. 


JON  A  THA  N  MA  YHE  W.  133 

It  must  be  admitted  that  in  his  discussion  of  national  and 
international  topics,  there  is  often  a  statesman-like  largeness 
of  view,  a  dignity  and  strength  of  thought,  a  magnificence 
of  expression,  which  make  his  discourse  very  noble  and 
inspiring.  He  had  such  a  grasp,  also,  on  the  import  of 
passing  events,  that,  at  times,  his  interpretation  of  them 
was  prophecy;  as  when,  in  the  Massachusetts  election  ser- 
mon for  1754,  he  virtually  announced  the  approach  of  the 
Seven  Years'  War,  and  the  final  conflict  between  English- 
men and  Frenchmen  for  the  possession  of  North  America : 
"  We  are  morally  sure  .  .  .  that  there  must  sooner  or 
later  be  some  great  turn  of  affairs  upon  this  continent, 
which  will  put  it  out  of  our  power,  or  out  of  theirs,  to  dis- 
'pute  about  boundaries.  .  .  .  We  are  peaceably  extend- 
ing our  settlements  upon  our  own  territories  ;  they  are 
extending  theirs  beyond  their  own,  by  force  of  arms.  We 
must  meet  at  length — which  cannot  be  without  violent  con- 
cussion— and  the  time  seems  not  to  be  far  off. 
The  continent  is  not  wide  enough  for  both ;  and  they  are 
resolved  to  have  the  whole. ' '  ' 

V. 

In  Mayhew's  day,  almost  every  question  of  church  was 
also  a  question  of  state ;  and  he  believed  himself  to  be 
battling  for  the  cause  of  civil  liberty  in  assaulting  and  exe- 
crating, at  every  opportunity,  the  Church  of  Rome  and, 
more  especially,  the  Church  of  England.  The  fire,  the 
fury,  the  venom  of  his  attacks  upon  these  two  great  bodies 
of  Christians,  and,  in  particular,  his  expressions  of  anger 
and  of  horror  at  the  possible  introduction  of  Anglican 
bishops  into  America,  would,  in  the  light  of  our  present 
knowledge,  seem  like  the  ravings  of  an  eloquent  maniac, 
were  we  not  also  aware  that  his  words  on  that  subject 
expressed  the  sincere  thought  of  multitudes  of  his  most 
rational  contemporaries,  and  that  they  set  before  us,  in 

1  Massachusetts  election  sermon  for  1754,  36-37. 


134  THH  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

most  authentic  form,  one  of  the  chief  sources  of  American 
alarm,  between  1763  and  1775,  over  the  taxing-policy  of 
the  English  government,  and,  therefore,  one  of  the  pro- 
foundest  of  the  remoter  causes  of  the  American  Revolution. 
"  When  we  consider,"  said  Mayhew,  in  1763,  "  the  real 
constitution  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  how  alien  her 
mode  of  worship  is  from  the  simplicity  of  the  gospel,  and 
the  apostolic  times;  when  we  consider  her  enormous  hier- 
archy, ascending  by  various  gradations  from  the  dirt  to  the 
skies;  when  we  consider  the  visible  effects  of  that  church's 
prevailing  among  us,  to  the  degree  that  it  has;  when  we 
reflect  on  what  our  forefathers  suffered  from  the  mitred, 
lordly  successors  of  the  fishermen  of  Galilee,  for  non- 
conformity to  a  non-instituted  mode  of  worship,  which* 
occasioned  their  flight  into  this  western  world ;  when  we 
consider  that,  to  be  delivered  from  their  unholy  zeal  and 
oppressions,  countenanced  by  sceptred  tyrants,  they  threw 
themselves,  as  it  were,  into  the  arms  of  savages  and  bar- 
barians; when  we  reflect  that  one  principal  motive  to  their 
exchanging  the  fair  cities,  villages,  and  delightful  fields  of 
Britain  for  the  then  inhospitable  shores  and  deserts  of 
America,  was  that  they  might  here  enjoy  unmolested  God's 
holy  word  and  ordinances,  without  such  heterogeneous  and 
spurious  mixtures  as  were  offensive  to  their  well-informed 
consciences;  when  we  consider  the  narrow,  censorious,  and 
bitter  spirit  that  prevails  in  too  many  of  the  Episcopalians 
among  us,  and  what  might  probably  be  the  sad  conse- 
quence, if  this  growing  party  should  once  get  the  upper 
hand  here  and  a  major  vote  in  our  houses  of  assembly, — in 
which  case  the  Church  of  England  might  become  the  estab- 
lished religion  here,  tests  be  ordained,  as  in  England,  to 
exclude  all  but  conformists  from  posts  of  honor  and  emolu- 
ment, and  all  of  us  be  taxed  for  the  support  of  bishops  and 
their  underlings; — when  we  consider  these  things,  and  too 
many  others  to  be  now  mentioned,  we  cannot  well  think 
of  that  church's  gaining  ground  here  to  any  great  degree, 
and  especially  of  seeing  bishops  fixed  among  us,  without 


JO X A  THAN  MAYHEW.  f$$ 

much  reluctance.  Will  they  never  let  us  rest  in  peace, — 
except  where  all  the  weary  are  at  rest  ?  Is  it  not  enough 
that  they  persecuted  us  out  of  the  Old  World  ?  Will  they 
pursue  us  into  the  New  ? — to  convert  us  here,  compassing 
sea  and  land  to  make  us  proselytes,  while  they  neglect  the 
heathen  and  heathenish  plantations  ?  What  other  New 
World  remains  as  a  sanctuary  for  us  from  their  oppressions, 
in  case  of  need  ?  Where  is  the  Columbus  to  explore  one 
for  us,  and  pilot  us  to  it,  before  we  are  consumed  by  the 
flames,  or  deluged  in  a  flood,  o£  Episcopacy  ?  "  ' 

VI. 

Probably  no  production  of  Mayhew's  pen  is  now  so  inter- 
esting as  his  famous  "  Discourse  concerning  Unlimited 
Submission,""  preached  on  the  Sunday  immediately  after 
the  3<Dth  of  January,  1750;  none  reveals  to  us  more  clearly 
the  great  features  of  his  mind  as  a  writer,  preacher,  political 
thinker;  none  indicates,  in  a  more  comprehensive  way,  his 
special  contribution  to  those  moral  forces  which,  accumu- 
lating in  the  very  heart  of  American  society  in  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  bore  the  American  people  for- 
ward into  the  audacity  of  concerted  resistance  to  the  prerog- 
ative and  power  of  Great  Britain.  In  this  discourse,  also, 
perhaps  more  than  in  any  other  of  his,  one  is  reminded  of 
Mayhew's  own  avowal  of  his  interest  in  the  political  writ- 

1  "Observations  on  the  Charter,"  etc.,  155-156.  It  may  afford  the  reader 
some  amusement — indeed,  it  should  afford  him,  also,  some  instruction — to  recall 
the  fact,  that  Jonathan  Mayhew's  only  surviving  child,  a  daughter,  became  the 
mother  of  a  man,  who,  bearing  the  name  and  inheriting  many  of  the  brilliant 
gifts  of  his  grandfather,  became  a  distinguished  Anglican  bishop  in  America — 
Jonathan  Mayhew  Wainwright,  of  the  diocese  of  New  York.  It  was,  in  fact, 
this  grandson  of  Jonathan  Mayhew,  the  bishop-hater,  who,  replying  to  the  epi- 
gram of  Rufus  Choate,  that  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  had  founded  "  a  state  without 
a  king  "  and  "  a  church  without  a  bishop,"  made  the  famous  retort :  "  There  is 
no  church  without  a  bishop." 

'-'  A  reprint  of  this  discourse  may  be  seen  in  John  Wingate  Thornton,  "  The 
Pulpit  of  the  American  Revolution,"  39-104. 


136  THH  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

ings  of  John  Milton ; — for  here,  as  is  apparent,  the  disciple 
has  caught,  not  only  all  of  his  master's  ideas  as  to  bishops 
and  kings,  but  much  of  his  master's  vehement  and  brilliant 
scurrility  in  uttering  them.1  He  describes  the  Anglican 
commemoration  of  the  death-day  of  Charles  the  First,  as 
"  the  mystery  of  nonsense  as  well  as  iniquity,"  *  and  as  the 
result  of  "  an  impious  bargain  struck  up  betwixt  the  sceptre 
and  the  surplice,  for  enslaving  both  the  bodies  and  the  souls 
of  men."  "  After  a  denunciation,  not  at  all  self-restrained, 
of  the  public  and  private  crimes  of  the  monarch  thus  annu- 
ally exalted  as  a  saint  and  a  martyr,  the  preacher  comes, 
in  characteristic  fashion,  to  the  climax  of  his  blazing  indict- 
ment:  "  King  Charles  was  really  a  man  black  with  guilt. 
He  lived  a  tyrant ;  and  it  was  the  oppression  and 
violence  of  his  reign  that  brought  him  to  his  untimely  and 
violent  end  at  last.  Now,  what  of  saintship  or  martyrdom 
is  there  in  all  this  ?  What  of  saintship  is  there  in  encourag- 
ing people  to  profane  the  Lord's  day  !  What  of  saintship 
in  falsehood  and  perjury  ?  What  of  saintship  in  repeated 
robberies  and  depredations  ?  What  of  saintship  in  throw- 
ing real  saints  and  glorious  patriots  into  gaols  ?  What  of 
saintship  in  overturning  an  excellent  civil  constitution,  and 
proudly  grasping  at  an  illegal  and  monstrous  power  ?  What 
of  saintship  in  the  murder  of  thousands  of  innocent  people, 
and  involving  a  nation  in  all  the  calamities  of  a  civil  war  ? 
And  what  of  martyrdom  is  there  in  a  man's  bringing  an 
immature  and  violent  death  upon  himself,  by  being  wicked 
overmuch  ?  Is  there  any  such  thing  as  grace,  without  good- 
ness ? — as  being  a  follower  of  Christ,  without  following  him  ? 
— as  being  his  disciple,  without  learning  of  him  to  be  just, 

1  Of  course,  I  here  refer  to  "  A  Defense  of  the  People  of  England,  in  Answer 
to  Salmasius's  Defense  of  the  King"  ;  to  "The  Second  Defense  of  the  People 
of  England,  against  an  anonymous  Libel,  entitled  '  The  Royal  Blood  crying  to 
Heaven  for  Vengeance  on  the  English  Parricides  '  "  ;  and  to  "  Eikonoklastes,  in 
Answer  to  a  Book  entitled  '  Eikon  Basilike,  the  Portraiture  of  His  Sacred 
Majesty  in  his  Solitudes  and  Sufferings."  "  "  The  Prose  Works  of  John  Milton." 
London,  Henry  G.  Bohn,  volume  i. 

2  "  Discourse,"  etc.,  51.  3  Ibid.  52. 


JON  A  THA  N  MA  YHE  W.  137 

and  beneficent  ? — or  as  saintship,  without  sanctity  ?  If 
not,  I  fear  it  will  be  hard  to  prove  this  man  a  saint.  And, 
verily,  one  would  be  apt  to  suspect  that  that  church  must 
be  but  poorly  stocked  with  saints  and  martyrs,  which  is 
forced  to  adopt  such  enormous  sinners  into  her  calendar,  in 
order  to  swell  the  number  !  "  '  Nevertheless;  in  Mayhew's 
opinion,  even  the  colossal  absurdity  of  this  commemoration 
of  the  death  of  king  Charles  the  First  was  to  have  at  least 
one  good  result,  if  it  should  "  prove  a  standing  memento 
that  Britons  will  not  be  slaves,  and  a  warning  to  all  corrupt 
councillors  and  ministers,  not  to  go  too  far  in  advising  to 
arbitrary  despotic  measures!"*  Such,  in  1750,  was  May- 
hew's  unconscious  premonitory  advice  to  the  future  minis- 
ters of  the  future  king  George  the  Third. 

But  to  Mayhew's  countrymen,  far  more  urgent  than  the 
question  as  to  the  character  of  king  Charles  the  First, 
became  the  question  as  to  the  right  of  the  people  to  resist, 
and  to  put  to  death,  any  king,  if  he  be  at  all  as  bad  a  king 
as  that  particular  one  was  represented  to  be.  In  Mayhew's 
treatment  of  that  question  we  find,  in  most  explicit  and 
trenchant  form,  the  idea  that  made  inevitable  the  armed 
opposition  which,  some  twenty-five  years  later,  the  Ameri- 
can subjects  of  a  British  king  were  to  institute,  and  to  carry 
on,  against  him.  In  the  case  before  us,  the  preacher  has  to 
meet  the  argument  for  unlimited  submission  to  rulers,  based 
on  the  Scriptural  statement  that  "  their  power  is  from 
God."  But,  says  Mayhew,  "  rulers  have  no  authority  from 
God  to  do  mischief.  ...  It  is  blasphemy  to  call 
tyrants  and  oppressors  God's  ministers.  They  are  more 
properly  the  messengers  of  Satan  to  buffet  us.  No  rulers 
are  properly  God's  ministers,  but  such  as  are  '  just,  ruling 
in  the  fear  of  God. '  When  once  magistrates  are  contrary 
to  their  office  and  the  end  of  their  institution,  when  they 
rob  and  ruin  the  public,  instead  of  being  guardians  of  its 
peace  and  welfare,  they  immediately  cease  to  be  the  '  ordi- 
nance '  and  '  ministers  '  of  God,  and  no  more  deserve  that 

1  "  Discourse,"  etc.,  49-51.  *  Ibid.  54. 


138  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

glorious  character  than  common  pirates  and  highwaymen."  ' 
"  It  will  not  follow  that,  because  civil  government  in  gen- 
ral  is  a  good  institution,  and  necessary  to  the  peace  and 
happiness  of  human  society,  therefore  there  are  no  suppos- 
able  cases  in  which  resistance  to  it  can  be  innocent."  *  "If 
it  be  our  duty,  for  example,  to  obey  our  king  merely  for 
this  reason,  that  he  rules  for  the  public  welfare — which  is 
the  only  argument  the  apostle  makes  use  of — it  follows,  by 
a  parity  of  reasoning,  that  when  he  turns  tyrant,  and  makes 
his  subjects  his  prey  to  devour  and  to  destroy,  instead  of 
his  charge  to  defend  and  cherish,  we  are  bound  to  throw  off 
our  allegiance  to  him,  and  to  resist."  * 

VII. 

Surely,  the  preacher  who,  in  the  placid  times  of  1750, 
could  light  up  in  his  soul  such  a  flame  of  consuming  wrath 
merely  against  hypothetic  and  imagined  tyranny,  would  be 
likely  to  have  something  warm  and  enkindling  to  say  when, 
fifteen  years  later,  there  should  .appear  before  him  in 
America  a  form  of  tyranny  which  he  believed  to  be  actual. 
Writing  to  a  friend  in  England,  on  the  eighth  of  August, 
1765,  just  before  the  outbreak  in  Boston  of  the  popular  fury 
against  the  supposed  friends  of  the  Stamp  Act,  Mayhew 
put  much  of  his  political  philosophy  into  small  compass 
when  he  pithily  remarked,  "  No  people  are  under  a  religious 
obligation  to  be  slaves,  if  they  are  able  to  set  themselves  at 
liberty."  4  At  such  times,  speculative  statements  as  to  the 
right  of  resistance  are  apt  to  receive  an  application  rougher 
and  more  headstrong  than  the  teacher  has  in  mind ;  and  on 
the  morning  after  the  sack  and  destruction  of  Hutchinson's 
house,  one  of  the  rioters  confessed  that  he  had  been  incited 
to  take  part  in  that  barbarous  proceeding  by  the  sermon 
which  he  had  heard  from  Dr.  Mayhew  on  the  previous 
Sunday,  from  the  text, — "  I  would  they  were  even  cut  off 

1  "  Discourse,"  etc.,  23-24.  *  Ibid.  19.  3  Ibid.  29-30. 

4  Given  in  Bradford,  "  Life  of  Mayhew,"  418. 


JON  A  THAN  MA  YHE  W.  I  39 

which  trouble  you.  For,  brethren,  ye  have  been  called 
unto  liberty;  only  use  not  liberty  for  an  occasion  to  the 
flesh,  but  by  love  serve  one  another."  ' 

The  last  political  discourse  ever  uttered  by  Mayhew  was 
one  of  great  joy, — therein  interpreting  the  general  ecstasy 
of  his  countrymen  over  the  news  of  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp 
Act.  But  to  a  far-seeing  mind  like  Mayhew's,  no  joy  under 
such  circumstances  could  be  without  its  deep  tinge  of  solici- 
tude; and  on  the  morning  of  the  second  Sunday  after  this 
sermon  of  his  on  "  The  Snare  Broken,"  *  being  about  to 
start  upon  a  fatiguing  journey  which,  in  fact,  brought  on 
the  illness  that  proved  fatal  to  him,  he  wrote  to  his  friend, 
James  Otis,  a  hurried  note  conveying  to  that  kindred  soul 
what  proved  to  be  a  legacy  of  incomparable  value  for  all  his 
countrymen, — his  statesmanlike  project  for  a  permanent 
union  of  the  American  colonies,  so  recently  united  by  the 
bond  of  a  common  peril : — '  To  a  good  man  all  time  is  holy 
enough,  and  none  is  too  holy,  to  do  good,  or  to  think  upon 
it.  Cultivating  a  good  understanding  and  hearty  friendship 
between  these  colonies,  appears  to  me  so  necessary  a  part  of 
prudence  and  good  policy,  that  no  favorable  opportunity 
for  that  purpose  should  be  omitted.  I  think  such  an  one 
now  presents.  Would  it  not  be  proper  and  decorous  for 
our  assembly  to  send  circulars  to  all  the  rest,  on  the  late 
repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  and  the  present  favorable  aspect 
of  affairs  .  .  .  expressing  a  desire  to  cement  and  per- 
petuate union  among  ourselves,  by  all  laudable  methods  ? 
It  is  not  safe  for  the  colonies  to  sleep;  for  it  is 


1  Galatians,  v.  12-13.  Compare  Hutchinson,  "  History  of  Massachusetts 
Bay,"  iii.  123,  with  the  correspondence  between  Hutchinson  and  Mayhew  as 
given  in  Bradford,  "  Life  of  Mayhew,"  420-422.  Mayhew  was  horrified  at  the 
charge  that  his  preaching  had  incited  to  these  lawless  and  savage  acts  ;  and  he 
wrote  to  Hutchinson,  "  I  had  rather  lose  my  right  hand,  than  be  an  encourager 
of  such  outrages  as  were  committed  last  night."  He  complained,  as  many  a 
preacher  has  had  to  do,  before  and  since,  that  his  congregation,  instead  of  taking 
the  whole  text,  took  that  part  of  it  which  they  liked  best. 

'2  A  reprint  of  this  sermon  may  be  found  in  "  The  Patriot  Preachers  of  the 
American  Revolution,"  9-48. 


I4O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

probable  they  will  always  have  some  wakeful  enemies  in 
Great  Britain.  But  if  they  should  be  such  children  as  to 
do  so,  I  hope  there  are  some,  too  much  of  men,  and  too 
great  friends  to  them  as  well  as  to  liberty,  to  rock  the 
cradle,  or  to  sing  lullaby  to  them.  You  have  heard  of  the 
communion  of  churches;  and  I  am  to  set  out  to-morrow 
morning  for  Rutland,  to  assist  at  an  ecclesiastical  council. 
Not  expecting  to  return  this  week,  while  I  was  thinking  of 
this  in  my  bed,  the  great  use  and  importance  of  a  com- 
munion of  colonies  appeared  to  me  in  a  strong  light, — 
which  led  me  immediately  to  set  down  these  hints  to  trans- 
mit to  you."  ' 

1  The  whole  letter  is  in  Bradford,  "  Life  of  Mayhew,"  428-430. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

DESCRIPTIONS  OF  NATURE    AND    MAN    IN  THE  AMERICAN 
WILDERNESS:     1763-1775. 

I. — Captain  Jonathan  Carver  in  1763 — His  plan  for  a  tour  of  discovery  across 
the  continent  of  North  America — His  personal  traits — The  statesmanlike 
character  of  his  plan. 

II. — Carver's  expedition  into  the  Northwest,  in  1766  and  1767 — Descriptions  of 
the  Indians  and  their  lands — His  failure. 

III. — Carver  goes  to  England  in  1769  to  publish  his  discoveries,  and  to  get  help 
to  complete  them — Why  the  government  refused  help — His  struggle  for 
existence  in  England — Publishes  his  "  Travels  through  the  Interior  Parts 
of  North  America  " — Other  publications. 

IV. — Carver's  death  in  London  in  great  poverty — Public  compassion  for  him 
after  he  ceased  to  need  it — Remembrance  of  him  in  America  and  in  Europe 
— The  charm  and  fame  of  his  "  Travels  " — Schiller's  interest  in  them. 

V. — Major  Robert  Rogers — His  "Journal  of  the  Siege  of  Detroit,"  in  1763 — 
His  two  books  descriptive  of  the  Indians  and  the  English  colonies,  1765. 

VI. — "  An  Historical  Account  of  the  Expedition  against  the  Ohio  Indians,"  in 
1764 — History  and  character  of  the  book — Its  wide  diffusion  in  America 
and  Europe. 

VII. — William  Stork's  "  Description  of  East  Florida,"  1766 — Literary  quality 
of  the  book — Its  optimistic  account  of  reptiles  and  insects  in  that  country. 

VIII. — James  Adair's  "History  of  the  American  Indians,"  1775 — His  book 
written  among  the  people  whom  it  describes — Its  method — The  author's 
theory  as  to  the  origin  of  the  Indians — Great  value  of  its  direct  testimony 
concerning  them — Its  manly  style — His  avowal  of  sympathy  with  his  fellow- 
colonists  in  political  and  military  peril. 

I. 

IN  the  year  1763,  at  the  close  of  that  famous  war  which 
resulted  in  the  acquisition  of  Canada  by  the  English,  there 
was  in  New  England  an  enterprising  young  American  sol- 
dier, named  Jonathan  Carver,  stranded  as  it  were  amid  the 

141 


142  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

threatened  inanities  of  peace  and  civilization,  and  confront- 
ing a  prospect  that  was  for  him  altogether  insipid  through 
its  lack  of  adventure,  and  especially  of  barbaric  restlessness 
and  discomfort.  "  I  began  to  consider,"  so  he  wrote  a  few 
years  afterward,  "  having  rendered  my  country  some  ser- 
vices during  the  war,  how  I  might  continue  still  serviceable, 
and  contribute,  as  much  as  lay  in  my  power,  to  make  that 
vast  acquisition  of  territory,  gained  by  Great  Britain  in 
North  America,  advantageous  to  it.  It  appeared  to  me 
indispensably  needful  that  government  should  be  acquainted, 
in  the  first  place,  with  the  true  state  of  the  dominions  they 
were  now  become  possessed  of.  To  this  purpose,  I  deter- 
mined, as  the  next  proof  of  my  zeal,  to  explore  the  most 
unknown  parts  of  them,  and  to  spare  no  trouble  or  expense 
in  acquiring  a  knowledge  that  promised  to  be  so  useful  to 
my  countrymen.  .  .  .  What  I  chiefly  had  in  view,  after 
gaining  a  knowledge  of  the  manners,  customs,  languages, 
soil,  and  natural  productions  of  the  different  nations  that 
inhabit  the  back  of  the  Mississippi,  was  to  ascertain  the 
breadth  of  that  vast  continent,  which, extends  from  the 
Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  in  its  broadest  part  between 
forty-three  and  forty-six  degrees  northern  latitude.  Had  I 
been  able  to  accomplish  this,  I  intended  to  have  proposed  to 
government  to  establish  a  post  in  some  of  those  parts  about 
the  Straits  of  Annian,  which,  having  been  first  discovered 
by  Sir  Francis  Drake,  of  course  belong  to  the  English. 
This,  I  am  convinced,  would  greatly  facilitate  the  discovery 
of  a  northwest  passage,  or  a  communication  between  Hud- 
son's Bay  and  the  Pacific  Ocean, — an  event  so  desirable, 
and  which  has  been  so  often  sought  for  but  without  success. 
Besides  this  important  end,  a  settlement  on  that  extremity 
of  America  would  answer  many  good  purposes,  and  repay 
every  expense  the  establishment  of  it  might  occasion.  For 
it  would  not  only  disclose  new  sources  of  trade,  and  pro- 
mote many  useful  discoveries,  but  would  open  a  passage  for 
conveying  intelligence  to  China  and  the  English  settlements 
in  the  East  Indies,  with  greater  expedition  than  a  tedious 


JONATHAN  CARVER.  143 

voyage  by  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  or  the  Straits  of  Magel- 
lan will  allow  of."  ' 

Here,  then,  in  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century 
was  an  American  Englishman  in  whom  shone  some  of  the 
best  traits  of  Elizabethan  Englishmen  two  centuries  before, 
— strong-limbed  and  strong-brained  men,  with  a  love  of 
letters  and  a  love  of  deeds,  not  always  content  with  home- 
keeping  employments,  scornful  of  ease  whenever  any  tough 
matter  was  to  be  attended  to,  able  to  fight  and  to  write,  to 
sail  a  boat  into  strange  seas  or  to  lead  a  band  of  hardy  men 
through  a  wilderness,  proud  of  their  country  and  their  race, 
having  the  power  and  the  passion  to  spread  afar  through  the 
world  the  sway  of  both.  Certainly,  the  project  thus  clearly 
wrought  out  in  1763  by  this  obscure  provincial  captain  in 
New  England,  anticipated  by  forty  years  the  American 
statesmanship  which,  under  President  Jefferson,  sent  Meri- 
wether  Lewis  and  William  Clark  to  penetrate  the  passes  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains  and  to  pitch  their  tents  by  the  mouth 
of  the  Columbia  River;  even  as  it  anticipated  by  a  hundred 
years  the  Canadian  statesmanship  which,  under  Sir  John 
Macdonald,  has  in  our  time  beaten  out  an  iron  way  across 
the  continent  at  its  greatest  breadth,  and  has  made  the 
waters  that  splash  against  Vancouver  Island  neighborly 
and  friendly  to  those  which  ripple  under  the  ramparts  of 
Quebec. 

II. 

It  seems  to  have  taken  Carver  about  three  years  to  com- 
plete his  preparations  for  the  tremendous  enterprise  which 
then  inspired  him.  Not  until  June,  1766, — in  the  political 
lull  occasioned  by  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act, — was  he 
able  to  start.  After  passing  Albany,  he  plunged  at  once 
into  the  wilderness  which  then  stretched  its  rough  dominion 
over  the  uncomputed  spaces  to  the  western  sea, — a  realm 
populous  with  a  set  of  gentlemen  rather  too  fond,  as  was 

1  Carver,  "  Travels  through  the  Interior  Parts  of  North  America,"  IntroU. 
i.-ii.  ;  v.-vi. 


144  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

supposed,  of  tampering  with  the  scalps  of  harmless  travel- 
ers that  might  be  journeying  their  way.  Having  stopped 
awhile  at  the  English  fort  at  Niagara,  he  again  pushed  on 
until  he  reached  Michillimackinac,  "  a  fort  distant  from 
Boston  1300  miles.  This  being  the  uttermost  of  our  fac- 
tories towards  the  northwest,  I  considered  it  as  the  most 
convenient  place  from  whence  I  could  begin  my  intended 
progress,  and  enter  at  once  into  regions  I  designed  to 
explore.  .  .  .  Having  here  made  the  necessary  dispo- 
sitions for  pursuing  my  travels,  and  obtained  a  credit  from 
Mr.  Rogers,  the  governor,  on  some  English  and  Canadian 
traders  who  were  going  to  trade  on  the  Mississippi,  and 
received  also  from  him  a  promise  of  a  fresh  supply  of  goods 
when  I  reached  the  Falls  of  St.  Anthony,  I  left  the  fort  on 
the  third  of  September,  in  company  with  these  traders.  It 
was  agreed  that  they  should  furnish  me  with  such  goods  as 
I  might  want  for  the  presents  to  the  Indian  chiefs,  during 
my  continuance  with  them,  agreeable  to  the  governor's 
order.  But  when  I  arrived  at  the  extent  of  their  route,  I 
was  to  find  other  guides,  and  to  depend  on  the  goods  the 
governor  had  promised  to  supply  me  with."  1 

Setting  out  from  Michillimackinac  in  canoes,  he  and  his 
companions  arrived  in  fifteen  days  at  those  beautiful  islands 
which  are  strung  along  the  entrance  of  Green  Bay.  "  On 
the  largest  and  best  of  these  islands  stands  a  town  of  the 
Ottawas,  at  which  I  found  one  of  the  most  considerable 
chiefs  of  that  nation,  who  received  me  with  every  honor  he 
could  possibly  show  to  a  stranger.  But  what  appeared 
extremely  singular  to  me  at  the  time  .  .  .  was  the 
reception  I  met  with  on  landing.  As  our  canoes  approached 
the  shore,  and  had  reached  within  about  three-score  rods  of 
it,  the  Indians  began  a  feu-de-joie  in  which  they  fired  their 
pieces  loaded  with  balls ;  but  at  the  same  time  they  took 
care  to  discharge  them  in  such  a  manner  as  to  fly  a  few 
yards  above  our  heads.  During  this  they  ran  from  one 
tree  or  stump  to  another,  shouting  and  behaving  as  if  they 

1  "  Travels,"  etc.,  17,  20-21. 


JONATHAN  CARVER.  145 

were  in  the  heat  of  battle.  At  first,  I  was  greatly  surprised, 
and  was  on  the  point  of  ordering  my  attendants  to  return 
their  fire,  concluding  that  their  intentions  were  hostile;  but 
being  undeceived  by  some  of  the  traders,  who  informed  me 
that  this  was  their  usual  method  of  receiving  the  chiefs  of 
other  nations,  I  considered  it  in  its  true  light,  and  was 
pleased  with  the  respect  thus  paid  me. 

"  I  remained  here  one  night.  Among  the  presents  I 
made  the  chiefs,  were  some  spirituous  liquors,  with  which 
they  made  themselves  merry;  and  all  joined  in  a  dance  that 
lasted  the  greater  part  of  the  night.  In  the  morning  when 
I  departed,  the  chief  attended  me  to  the  shore,  and,  as  soon 
as  I  had  embarked,  offered  up,  in  an  audible  voice  and  with 
great  solemnity,  a  fervent  prayer  in  my  behalf.  He  prayed 
that  the  Great  Spirit  would  favor  me  with  a  prosperous 
voyage ;  that  he  would  give  me  an  unclouded  sky,  and 
smooth  waters  by  day,  and  that  I  might  lie  down  by  night 
on  a  beaver  blanket,  enjoying  uninterrupted  sleep  and 
pleasant  dreams;  and  also  that  I  might  find  continual  pro- 
tection under  the  great  pipe  of  peace.  In  this  manner  he 
continued  his  petitions  till  I  could  no  longer  hear  them."  ' 

Thus  Carver  passed  on  and  on  into  the  wilderness  lying 
westward  of  Lake  Michigan;  up  the  Fox  River  to  "  the 
great  town  of  the  Winnebagoes  "  ;  thence  to  the  Wisconsin 
River;  and  finally  to  the  Mississippi.  Having  reached  this 
mighty  stream,  he  parted  from  the  traders  who  had  thus  far 
been  his  companions;  and  with  only  two  servants, — one  a 
French  Canadian,  the  other  a  Mohawk  of  Canada, — he 
began  his  voyage  up  the  Mississippi  in  a  single  canoe.  In 
due  time,  he  reached  the  Falls  of  St.  Anthony,  whence 
after  some  delay  he  continued  his  ascent  of  the  great  river 
until  he  arrived  at  the  mouth  of  the  River  St.  Pierre.  Up 
this  river,  likewise,  he  forced  his  way,  having  the  pipe  of 
peace  fixed  at  the  bow  of  his  canoe  and  the  English  colors 
flying  at  the  stern,  until,  after  about  two  hundred  miles,  he 
came  to  the  country  of  "  the  Naudowessies  of  the  Plains." 

1  "  Travels,"  etc.,  23-25. 


146  7 y//:    AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Receiving  from  these  people  the  most  friendly  hospital- 
ity, he  dwelt  among  them  dftring  that  winter — seven  months 
long. 

And  now  a  great  disappointment  was  to  befall  him. 
Though  he  had  already  proceeded  so  far  into  the  wilder- 
ness, there  still  remained  more  than  two  thousand  miles  of 
wilderness  yet  to  be  traversed  before  he  could  reach  the 
goal  for  which  he  had  started — the  Straits  of  Annian, 
on  the  Pacific.  For  such  a  journey  through  strange  lands 
and  fierce  peoples,  no  success  could  be  expected  without  an 
ample  supply  of  those  goods  for  presents  which,  by  the 
promise  of  the  governor  of  Michillimackinac,  were  to  await 
him  at  the  Falls  of  St.  Anthony.  Thither,  accordingly,  he 
sent  for  them,  but  only  to  find,  with  great  bitterness  of 
heart,  that  the  governor's  promise  had  not  been  fulfilled ; 
that  the  necessary  goods  could  not  then  be  procured  from 
others;  and  that  the  completion  of  his  vast  project  must,. 
for  that  time  at  least,  be  abandoned.1 

Spending  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1767  in  energetic 
and  very  important  explorations  among  the  lands  and 
waters  and  peoples  between  the  Mississippi  and  Lake  Supe- 
rior, he  finally  coasted  along  the  northern  shore  of  that 
immense  lake,  and  early  in  November,  1767,  he  arrived 
once  more  at  Michillimackinac.  During  the  fourteen 
months  which  had  passed  since  his  departure  from  this  fortr 
he  had  traveled  on  foot  and  by  canoe  nearly  four  thousand 
miles,  and  had  formed  acquaintance  with  twelve  nations  of 
Indians,  besides  making  geographical  discoveries  of  no  little 
importance.  At  Michillimackinac  he  was  obliged  to  remain 
until  the  opening  of  navigation  in  June,  1768,  when  he 
began  his  journey  homeward.  In  the  October  following,  he 
reached  Boston,  "  having,"  as  he  says,  "  been  absent  from 
it  on  this  expedition  two  years  and  five  months,  and  during 
that  time  traveled  near  seven  thousand  miles.  From 
'thence,  as  soon  as  I  had  properly  digested  my  journal  and 
charts,  I  set  out  for  England,  to  communicate  the  discov- 

1  "  Travels,"  etc.,  92-93,   131. 


JONATHAN  CARVER.  147 

cries   I   had  made,   and  to  render  them  beneficial  to  the 
kingdom."  ' 

III. 

Arriving  in  England  in  1769,  he  petitioned  the  govern- 
ment for  some  recognition  of  his  labors  and  of  his  losses  in 
the  public  service, — in  the  hope,  also,  of  being  thus  enabled 
to  resume  and  to  complete  his  great  tour  of  discovery  across 
the  continent.  To  the  lords  of  trade  and  plantations,  he 
submitted  his  journals  and  his  charts;  by  these  great  officers 
he  was  examined  in  person  respecting  his  travels  ;  he 
received  from  them  a  gracious  permission  to  publish  his  dis- 
coveries— and  that  was  all  that  he  received  from  them, — 
even  that,  also,  being  soon  withdrawn. 

Of  course,  for  the  business  to  which  he  desired  to  draw 
their  attention,  the  time  was  most  inopportune.  The  dis- 
pute with  the  colonies,  which  had  been  allayed  by  the  repeal 
of  the  Stamp  Act,  and  had  been  revived  by  the  legislation 
of  the  following  year,  was  now  fast  ripening  into  its  later 
fierceness  and  violence.  No  doubt  the  project  then  pressed 
by  Carver  upon  the  attention  of  the  government  was  an 
important  one.  Unfortunately,  however,  it"  was  not  the 
project  then  first  in  order.  Before  the  British  government 
could  properly  incur  the  cost  of  ascertaining  the  extent  of 
its  American  possessions,  it  needed  to  incur  the  cost  of 
ascertaining  whether  it  was  destined  to  have  any  American 
possessions  at  all.  When,  at  last,  the  dispute  with  the  col- 
onies passed  from  words  to  blows,  Carver  became  still  more 
embarrassed.  Soldier  as  he  was,  he  shrank  from  taking 
service  on  either  side ;  he  would  not  draw  his  sword  against 
his  king,  nor  had  he  the  heart  to  draw  it  against  his  own 
countrymen.  Unable,  therefore,  to  return  to  America — 
where  his  neutrality  would  have  been  an  offense;  with  no 
funds  at  his  command  in  England;  with  no  claims  upon  the 
government  which  the  government  could  then  recognize,  he 

1  "  Travels,"  etc.,  177. 


148  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

was  forced  for  his  livelihood  to  become  a  hack-writer,  and 
to  bow  himself  down  to  such  ill-paid  tasks  as  the  booksellers 
of  London  might  choose  to  employ  him  in.  In  1778,  nine 
years  after  his  arrival  there,  he  succeeded  in  bringing  out  his 
noble  and  fascinating  book  of  "  Travels  through  the  Interior 
Parts  of  North  America."  On  account  of  the  reputation 
which  this  book  brought  to  him,  he  was  enabled  in  the  fol- 
lowing year  to  gain  something  by  the  sale  of  his  name  for  a 
compilation  entitled  "  The  New  Universal  Traveler."  '  In 
the  same  year,  also,  in  the  hope  of  stimulating  an  industry 
then  made  important  by  the  cutting  off  of  the  usual  supply 
of  tobacco  from  America,  he  published  in  Dublin  "  A 
Treatise  on  the  Culture  of  the  Tobacco  Plant,  with  the 
Manner  in  which  it  is  usually  cured :  adapted  to  Northern 
Climates,  and  designed  for  the  Use  of  the  Landholders  of 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland."  a 

IV. 

All  these,  however,  were  employments  which,  if  they 
brought  him  some  immediate  distinction,  brought  him  little 
else.  Baffled  at  every  turn,  submitting  himself  at  last  to 
the  abject  labors  of  a  clerk  in  a  lottery  office,  working  and 
worrying  beyond  his  strength  in  the  effort  to  save  his 
English  *  wife  and  children  from  starvation,  even  his  robust 

1  It  is  a  further  token  of  the  reputation  which  his  "  Travels"  brought  to  him, 
that  in  "  A  New  and  Complete  Collection  of  Voyages  and  Travels,"  compiled 
by  John  Hamilton  Moore,  and  published  in  London  (n.d.,  but  probably)  about 
1780,  Carver  is  chosen  as  the  last  of  the  famous  travelers  to  represent  American 
exploration.     What  is  given  of  his  book  extends  in  double  columns  from  page 
874  to  page  895  of  the  second  volume  of  this  "  Collection." 

2  Of  this  very  rare  book,  the  only  copy  I  have  ever  met  with  is  in  the  library 
of  Mr.  John  Nicholas  Brown,  of  Providence,  R.  I. 

3  Nothing  is  here  said  of  any  efforts  made  by  him  for  the  support  of  his 
American  wife  and  children.     Jonathan  Carver  was  in  many  ways  so  gallant  a 
fellow  that  one  is  quite  sorry  to  be  compelled  to  mention,  even  in  the  privacy  of 
a  footnote,  the  one  serious  stain  which  rests  upon  his  character.     Was  it,  per- 
haps, due  to  his  prolonged  residence  among  the  Indians,  that,  after  he  had  gone 
to  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  it  became  somewhat  easy  for  him  to  yield  him- 
self to  the  polygamic  custom?    At  any  rate,  it  must  not  be  concealed  that,  "  at 


JONATHAN  CARVER.  149 

constitution  finally  gave  way;  and  in  the  year  1780,  "  after 
rendering,  at  the  expense  of  fortune  and  health  and  the 
risk  of  life,  many  important  services  to  his  country,"  Jona- 
than Carver  "  perished  through  want  in  the  first  city  of  the 
world."  With  this  man's  sorrowful  history,  is  bound  up 
another  touching  fact — a  fact  most  worthy  of  remembrance, 
as  a  token  of  the  solidarity  and  of  the  interchanging  benig- 
nity of  literature  in  England  and  America.  It  was  in  con- 
sequence of  the  publication,  soon  after  his  death,  of  the  tale 
of  Carver's  career  as  an  explorer  in  America,  and  especially 
of  the  struggles  and  the'  miseries  he  encountered  as  an 
American  man  of  letters  in  London,  that,  for  the  relief  in 
future  of  deserving  men  of  letters  there,  the  foundation  was 
laid  for  that  munificent  endowment,  now  so  celebrated 
under  the  name  of  "  The  Royal  Literary  Fund."  a 

Every  one  who  has  come  to  some  acquaintance  with 
Jonathan  Carver,  will  be  glad  to  think  that  his  name  is  not 
likely  to  be  forgotten  among  those  vast,  intelligent,  and 
powerful  communities  now  filling  that  portion  of  the  North- 
west which  he  explored  so  lovingly,  and  at  a  cost  to  him- 
self so  great.3  It  is,  however,  to  something  more  than 
to  a  local  remembrance  in  this  country  that  he  seems  des- 
tined. His  best  monument  is  his  book.  As  a  contribution 
to  the  history  of  inland  discovery  upon  this  continent,  and 
especially  to  our  materials  for  true  and  precise  information 

the  time  of  his  marriage  in  England,  he  had  a  wife  and  five  children  living  in 
America."  J.  Westby-Gibson,  in  "Dictionary  of  National  Biography,"  ix., 
238. 

1  These  words  are  from  the  "  Account  of  the  Author,"  prefixed  to  the  third 
edition  of  Carver's  "  Travels  "  published  in  London  in  1781.     See  pages  18-19. 

2  F.  S.  Drake,  "  Die.  of  Am.  Biog.,"  167. 

3  In  1867, — just  one  hundred  and  one  years  from  the  date  of  his  arrival  in 
that  region, — a  commemoration  of  him  was  held  not  far  from  St.  Paul,  at  the 
cave  which  bears  his  name  ;  and  a  report  of  the  ceremony  has  been  published 
under  the  title  of  "  The  Carver  Centenary."     His  name  has  been  again  brought 
to  public  attention  by  Mr.  Paul   Leicester  Ford,  who  in   1890  reprinted   from 
"  The  Royal  Magazine,"  for  September,  1759,  "  A  Short  History  and  De^crip- 
tion  of  Fort  Niagara,  with  an  Account  of  its  importance  to  Great  H.itain. 
Written  by  an  English  Prisoner,  1758,"  and  signed  "  J.  C r." 


I5O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

concerning  the  "  manners,  customs,  religion,  and  language 
of  the  Indians,"  Carver's  book  of  "  Travels  "  is  of  unsur- 
passed value.  Besides  its  worth  for  instruction,  is  its  worth 
for  delight;  we  have  no  other  "  Indian  book  "  more  capti- 
vating than  this.  Here  is  the  charm  of  a  sincere,  powerful, 
and  gentle  personality — the  charm  of  novel  and  significant 
facts,  of  noble  ideas,  of  humane  sentiments,  all  uttered  in 
English  well-ordered  and  pure.  In  evidence,  also,  of  the 
European  celebrity  acquired  by  his  book,  may  be  cited  the 
fact  that  it  seems  to  have  had  a  strong  fascination  for  Schil- 
ler, as,  indeed,  might  have  been  expected ;  and  Carver's 
report '  of  a  harangue  by  a  Naudowessian  chief  over  the 
dead  body  of  one  of  their  great  warriors — being  itself  a 
piece  of  true  poetry  in  prose — was  turned  into  verse  by  the 
German  poet,  and  became  famous  as  his  "  Nadowessiers 
Totenlied,"  3 — a  dirge  which  pleased  Goethe  so  much  that 
he  declared  it  to  be  among  the  best  of  Schiller's  poems  in 
that  vein,  and  wished  that  his  friend  had  written  a  dozen 
such.3 

V. 

Robert  Rogers,  who  was  born  in  New  Hampshire  in  1727 
and  who  died  in  London  near  the  close  of  the  century,  was 
a  noted  American  officer  in  the  service  of  the  crown  during 
the  two  great  wars  which  occurred  in  America  in  his  time. 
He  is  also  to  be  remembered  for  his  intelligent  contributions 
to  the  history  of  the  first  of  these  wars,  and  for  his  descrip- 
tions, as  an  eye-witness,  of  the  lands  and  peoples  immedi- 

1  "  Travels,"  399-400. 

9  "  Schillers  samtliche  Werke  in  fQnfzehn  Banden.  Mit  Einleitungen  von 
Karl  Goedeke."  i.  162-163. 

3  Schiller's  versification  of  the  Indian  harangue  as  given  by  Carver,  was  trans- 
lated into  English  by  Sir  Edward  Bulwer-Lytton,  and  was  published,  first,  as 
"  The  Indian's  Death-Song,"  in  "  Blackwood's  Magazine"  for  December,  1842, 
P-  7°5  ;  again,  as  "  The  Indian  Death-Dirge,"  in  "  The  Poems  and  Ballads  of 
Schiller,"  Tauchnitz  ed.,  Leipzig,  1844,  pp.  26-27  ;  and  still  again,  and  much 
improved,  as  "The  Nadowessian  Death-Dirge,"  in  the  London  edition  of  the 
volume  last  named.  Of  this  London  edition  an  American  reprint  appeared  in 
New  York  in  1866,  wherein  this  song  is  given  on  pages  55-56. 


ROBERT  ROGERS.  151 

ately  concerned  therein.  Being  present  at  the  siege  of 
Detroit  in  the  war  with  Pontiac,  in  1763,  he  kept  "  A  Jour- 
nal "  of  it,  beginning  with  the  sixth  of  May,  and  breaking 
off  suddenly  on  the  eighth  of  August.1  Two  years  after- 
ward, he  published  in  London  "  Journals  of  Major  Robert 
Rogers:  containing  an  Account  of  the  several  Excursions 
he  made  under  the  Generals  who  commanded  upon  the 
Continent  of  North  America,  during  the  late  War."2  In 
the  same  year,  and  in  the  same  city,  he  also  published  "  A 
Concise  Account  of  North  America,"  devoted  to  descrip- 
tions of  the  several  British  colonies  there,  and  of  especial 
value  for  its  sketches  of  the  Indians  and  of  the  outlying 
countries  then  occupied  by  them.  Both  of  these  books 
have  the  worth  which  attaches  to  direct  testimony  from  a 
competent  witness.  In  both  of  them,  also,  the  author 
writes  with  a  manly  and  soldierlike  straightforwardness, 
saying  simply  the  thing  he  has  to  say,  and  being  therewith 
content.8 

VI. 

In  proof  of  the  almost  insatiable  interest  of  the  public  in 
direct  facts  touching  the  American  Indians  and  the  way  to 
deal  with  them,  may  be  mentioned  the  temporary  celebrity, 
both  in  America  and  in  Europe,  acquired  by  "  An  His- 
torical Account  of  the  Expedition  against  the  Ohio  Indians, 
in  the  Year  1764,  under  the  Command  of  Henry  Bouquet, 
Esquire,  Colonel  of  Foot  and  now  Brigadier  General  in 

1  This  "  Journal  "  seems  to  have  been  sent  off  by  him,  during  the  siege,  to 
Sir  William  Johnson,  among  whose  manuscripts  in  the  New  York  State  Library 
it  was  found  about  forty  years  ago.  It  was  edited  by  Franklin  B.  Hough,  and 
published  in  1860,  forming  pages  121-135  in  the  fourth  number  of  "  Munsell's 
Historical  Series." 

*  The  pretended  reprint  of  this  work  at  Concord,  New  Hampshire,  in  1831, 
under  the  title  of  "  Reminiscences  of  the  French  War,"  etc.,  is  a  slovenly  and 
fraudulent  piece  of  work  :  it  tampers  with  the  text  in  an  abominable  way. 

3  The  literary  versatility  of  this  bold  soldier  is  further  seen  in  a  tragedy  writ- 
ten by  him,  and  founded  on  his  knowledge  of  the  great  Indian  chieftain,  Pontiac. 
For  this,  the  reader  of  the  present  work  is  referred  to  the  chapter  dealing  with 
our  early  dramatic  writings. 


I$2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

America,"  published  first  in  Philadelphia  in  1765,  next  in 
London  in  1766,  and  next  in  Amsterdam  in  1769,  the  last 
being  a  French  translation  by  C.  G.  F.  Dumas.  The  con- 
spicuous matter  in  the  book  is  the  military  journal,  which 
was  written  by  the  gallant  Bouquet  during  his  campaign 
beyond  the  Alleghanies,  and  which  was  retouched,  diluted, 
and  somewhat  conventionalized  by  an  editor  who  is  here 
content  to  describe  himself  as  "  a  Lover  of  his  Country  " — 
under  which  designation  long  lay  concealed  the  versatile 
William  Smith,  Provost  of  the  College  in  Philadelphia.1 
The  real  value  and  the  fascination  of  the  book  were  also 
much  enhanced  by  the  insertion  of  a  series  of  "  military 
papers  "  treating  of  the  traits  and  resources  of  the  Indians 
in  their  favorite  capacity  as  fighters;  likewise,  of  the  pru- 
dent method  of  forming  English  settlements  along  that 
frontier — so  horrid  with  its  menace  of  the  terror  by  night 
and  of  the  arrow  that  flieth  by  day.8 

VII. 

"A  Description  of  East  Florida,"8  by  William  Stork, 
first  published  in  London  in  1766,  is  a  skillful  and  a  delight- 
ful account  of  a  country  then  but  little  known  to  the  rest  of 
the  world,  and  especially  to  England  to  which  it  belonged. 
In  a  style  pure,  flexible,  and  graceful,  with  a  charming  for- 
bearance from  over-emphasis  and  with  frequent  touches  of 
humor,  the  author  contrives  to  pack  his  thirty  or  forty 
pages  full  of  the  most  readable  information  about  Florida, 
under  the  several  divisions  of  "  climate  and  situation," 
"  soil,"  "  natural  productions,"  and  "  cultivation."  As 
might  be  expected  of  so  deft  an  advocate,  his  optimism  is 

1  Horace  Wemyss  Smith,  "  Life  and  Correspondence  of  the  Rev.  William 
Smith,"  i.  392.  Until  recently  it  has  been  supposed  that  the  compiler  of  the 
book  was  Thomas  Hutchins  ;  and  to  him  it  is  ascribed  by  Rich,  William  Allen, 
Allibone,  and  others. 

9  "  Historical  Account  of  Bouquet's  Expedition,"  etc.,  93-156,  reprinted  in 
"  Ohio  Valley  Historical  Series,"  Cincinnati,  1868. 

3  Third  ed.,  London,  1769. 


WILLIAM  STORK.  153 

equal  to  almost  any  draught  that  may  be  made  upon  it  by 
the  circumstances  of  his  lovely  client, — as,  for  instance,  in 
connection  with  so  troublesome  a  topic  as  that  of  the  insects 
and  reptiles  of  Florida:  "  If  one  considers  the  extent  of 
East  Florida,  and  the  small  number  of  inhabitants  it  has 
had  these  sixty  years  since  the  native  Indians  were  exter- 
minated by  the  Creeks,  one  would  be  apt  to  think  it  must 
of  course  be  overrun  with  venomous  insects  and  reptiles. 
Several  writers  who  mention  Florida  have  taken  it  for 
granted  to  be  so :  amongst  others,  the  gentleman  who  lately 
wrote  Major  Rogers's  '  History  of  North  America,'  tells  us 
East  Florida  would  be  a  fine  country,  were  it  not  for  the 
innumerable  venomous  insects  with  which  it  is  infested. 
The  fact  is  quite  otherwise.  If  we  except  the  alligator, 
East  Florida  has  fewer  insects  than  any  other  province  in 
America.  During  my  stay  there,  I  saw  but  two  black 
snakes.  Mr.  Rolle,  who  for  eighteen  months  lived  con- 
stantly in  the  woods,  has  seen  but  one  rattlesnake.  If 
East  Florida  is  so  happy  as  to  have  but  few  venomous  crea- 
tures, it  is  not  owing  to  a  supernatural  or  miraculous  cause, 
like  the  blessings  of  St.  Patrick  upon  Ireland,  but  to  a  very 
plain  and  natural  one,  which  is,  that  the  hunting  parties  of 
the  Creek  Indians,  who  are  dispersed  through  the  whole 
province,  continually  set  the  grass  on  fire,  for  the  con- 
veniency  of  hunting;  by  which  means,  not  only  the  insects 
but  the  eggs  are  destroyed. 

"  Alligators  are  here  very  numerous.  They  do  not  excite 
any  fear,  as  there  has  not  yet  occurred  any  instance  of  their 
attacking  men,  either  in  the  water  or  upon  the  land. 

'  There  is  an  insect  in  East  Florida,  not  known  in  other 
parts  of  America ;  which  is  a  large  yellow  spider.  The  hind 
part  of  his  body  is  bigger  than  a  pigeon's  egg,  and  the  rest 
in  proportion ;  its  web  is  a  true  yellow  silk,  so  strong  as  to 
catch  small  birds,  upon  which  it  feeds.  The  bite  of  this 
spider  is  attended  with  a  swelling  of  the  part  and  great 
pain,  but  no  danger  of  life. 

"  A  great  variety  of  lizards  are  found  here,  some  of  them 


154  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

very  beautiful — changing  their  color  like  the  cameleon :  they 
are  quite  harmless."  ' 

VIII. 

In  1775,  just  as  the  physical  conflict  of  the  Revolution 
was  beginning  to  redden  our  fields,  there  was  published  in 
London  a  somewhat  stately  quarto  volume  of  nearly  five 
hundred  pages,  entitled  "  The  History  of  the  American 
Indians," — the  author,  James  Adair,  being  described  on  the 
title-page  as  "  a  trader  with  the  Indians,  and  resident  in 
their  country  for  forty  years."  This  book,  then,  is  a  true 
product  of  the  American  wilderness.  "  Most  of  the  pages," 
says  he,  "  were  written  among  our  old  friendly  Chickasaw, 
with  whom  I  first  traded  in  the  year  1744.  .  .  .  Never 
was  a  literary  work  begun  and  carried  on  with  more  disad- 
vantages. The  author  was  separated  by  his  situation  from 
the  conversation  of  the  learned,  and  from  any  libraries;  fre- 
quently interrupted,  also,  by  business,  and  obliged  to  con- 
ceal his  papers,  through  the  natural  jealousy  of  the  natives. 
The  trader's  letters  of  correspondence  aways  excited  their 
suspicions,  and  often  gave  offense.  Another  difficulty  I 
had  to  encounter,  was  the  secrecy  and  closeness  of  the 
Indians  as  to  their  own  affairs,  and  their  prying  disposition 
into  those  of  others, — so  that  there  is  no  possibility  of 
retirement  among  them.  .  .  .  One  great  advantage  my 
readers  will  here  have:  I  sat  down  to  draw  the  Indians  on 
the  spot — had  them  many  years  standing  before  me — and 
lived  with  them  as  a  friend  and  brother.  .  .  .  The 
public  may  depend  on  the  fidelity  of  the  author,  and  that  his 
descriptions  are  genuine,  though  perhaps  not  so  polished 
and  romantic  as  other  Indian  histories  and  accounts  they 
may  have  seen."  ' 

The  style  of  the  book  throughout  comports  with  these 
tokens, — the  style  of  an  honest  man  and  a  manly  English- 
man,— plain,  frank,  sinewy.  Nor  is  the  book  lacking  in  pas- 

1  "A  Description,"  etc.,  21-22.  s  Preface. 


JAMES  AD  AIR.  155 

sages  -of  vivid  force  and  picturesqueness,  having  that 
sincerity  and  fulness  of  statement  which  comes  of  a  direct 
handling  of  the  facts  in  the  case,  all  apparently  quickened 
and  guided  by  motives  humane  and  patriotic.  As  mere 
testimony  it  has  this  weakness :  its  author  had  adopted  the 
theory  of  the  Jewish  origin  of  the  American  Indians,  and 
was  led  thereby  to  marshall  a  part  of  his  statements  in  the 
form  of  twenty-three  "  arguments  "  in  support  of  that 
hypothesis.  Nearly  one  half  of  the  book  is  thus  taken  up 
with  what  one  of  his  contemporaries  described  as  "  ingen- 
ious extravagance."  '  After  he  makes  his  escape,  however, 
from  this  perilous  bog  of  preconceived  theory,  he  proceeds 
to  tell  the  remainder  of  his  story  for  its  own  sake,  and  not 
for  the  sake  of  a  bit  of  speculation  which  he  is  anxious  to 
bolster  up.  By  far  the  most  important  part  of  the  book, 
thatefore,  is  the  latter  part.  Through  all  those  solid  pages 
— about  two  hundred  and  fifty  of  them — he  gives  his  testi- 
mony like  an  honest  and  clear-headed  witness,  unfolding 
the  things  that  he  himself  knows,  and  knows  entirely: 
namely,  the  results  of  forty  years  of  observation  and  expe- 
rience among  those  powerful  and  fierce  tribes  of  Indians 
who  then  dwelt  in  the  lands  south  of  the  Ohio  and  east  of 
the  Mississippi.  As  a  piece  of  sustained  narration  and 
description  pertaining  to  that  subject,  the  book  has  an 
unrivaled  value  and  charm.  No  lapse  of  time  can  diminish 
the  interest  attaching  to  the  modest  and  graphic  tales  he 
here  tells  of  his  own  thrilling  adventures";  or  to  his  clear- 
cut  delineations  of  those  ferocious  but  still  fascinating 
bipeds  with  whom  he  had  to  deal — strange  survivals  of  the 
stone  age  of  human  culture3;  or,  even,  to  the  brusque  and 
fearless  words  with  which,  in  the  very  capital  of  the  empire 
and  within  ear-shot  of  the  king's  palace,  he  speaks  out  his 
sympathy  with  his  fellow-colonists  in  that  crisis  of  their 

1  B.  S.  Barton,  "  New  Views,"  etc.,  Prelim.  Descrip.,  iii. 

*  For  example,  see  pages  276-278  ;  also,  pages  298-302. 
3  See  pages  388-399. 


156  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

danger,  and  his  disdain  for  the  petty  English  statesmanship 
which  was  then  presuming  to  govern  an  empire  with  an 
amount  of  wit  which  would  hardly  have  sufficed  for  the 
government  of  a  village.1 

1  See  pages  266-267  ;  also,  pages  462-464. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

BEGINNINGS  OF  NEW  LIFE  IN  VERSE  AND  PROSE:  PHILA- 
DELPHIA, PRINCETON,  AND  NEW  YORK.  1/63-1775. 

I. — Nathaniel  Evans's  "  Poems  on  Several  Occasions" — His  death  in  1767 — 
"  To  Melancholy" — "  An  Ode,  Attempted  in  the  Manner  of  Horace." 

II. — Elizabeth  Fergusson — Her  "Postscript,"  1764 — Her  verses  addressed  to 
Nathaniel  Evans. 

III. — Francis  Hopkinson  as  described  by  John  Adams  in  1776 — His  versatility. 

IV. — Hopkinson's  early  life — His  political  attitude  in  1766 — His  visit  to  Eng- 
land just  after  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act — His  occupations  in  America 
till  after  the  Declaration  of  Independence — His  character  as  a  statesman 
not  hurt  by  his  levity  as  a  writer. 

V. — Hopkinson's  early  work  as  a  lyric  poet — "My  Generous  Heart  Disdains" 
— "  O'er  the  Hills  Far  Away  " — "  My  Love  is  Gone  to  Sea." 

VI. — The  death  of  Philip  Freneau  in  extreme  old  age — Interest  attaching  to  his 
long  career— His  unique  position  as  a  satirist  of  the  enemies  of  the  Revo- 
lution. 

VII. — Freneau's  lineage  and  early  training — His  graduation  at  Princeton  in 
1771 — His  earliest  work  as  a  verse-writer — Occupations  during  the  Revolu- 
tion— His  fondness  for  the  sea — His  sea-poetry — His  playful  poem  on  the 
ship's  crew  with  clerical  names. 

VIII. — Other  examples  of  his  playful  manner  in  verse — His  prevailing  note, 
both  serious  and  severe — His  choice  of  satire  as  his  chief  poetic  vocation — 
His  gifts  for  other  and  higher  forms  of  verse — Oblique  tributes  to  him  by 
Campbell,  Walter  Scott,  and  other  British  writers. 

IX. — Freneau's  escape  from  the  poetic  mannerisms  of  English  verse  in  his  time 
— His  "  Power  of  Fancy" — His  "  Retirement." 

I. 

IN  the  year  1772,  amid  all  the  heat  and  uproar  of  politics 
then  raging  up  and  down  these  sea-board  communities  in 
America,  there  was  published  in  Philadelphia  a  volume  so 
unique  as  to  contain  absolutely  no  reference  to  politics,— 
to  wit,  "  Poems  on  Several  Occasions,  with  Some  Other 

'57 


158  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Compositions,"  by  Nathaniel  Evans.  The  writer,  a  native 
of  Philadelphia,  a  master  of  arts  in  its  college,  and  a  clergy- 
man of  the  Anglican  Church,  had  died  five  years  before,  at 
the  age  of  twenty-five,  leaving  behind  him,  throughout  a 
wide  circle  of  acquaintance,  the  impression  of  something 
very  rare  in  literary  capacity,  as  well  as  very  sweet  and 
noble  in  personal  character.  Nearly  all  of  the  writings  here 
huddled  together  into  print — after  he  was  gone  and  could 
neither  explain  nor  protest — were  but  the  playthings  of  a 
sensitive  but  still  undeveloped  mind,  the  finger-practice  of 
a  youth  of  poetic  instincts,  who  was  training  himself  for 
maturer  work  but  still  under  pernicious  leadership,  and  in 
opposition  to  a  host  of  disadvantages  in  his  outward  life. 
That  he  had  in  him  the  likelihood  of  an  ultimate  escape 
from  the  wooden  tyranny  of  his  poetic  models,  may  partly 
appear  from  these  lines,  "  To  Melancholy  "  : 

"  Come,  thou  queen  of  pensive  air, — 
In  thy  sable,  sooted  car, 
By  two  mournful  turtles  drawn, — 
Let  me  meet  thee  on  yon  lawn, 
With  decent  vestments  wrapt  around, 
And  thy  brows  with  cypress  bound  ! 
Quickly  come,  thou  sober  dame, 
And  thy  musing  poet  claim. 
Bear  me  where  thou  lov'st  to  rove 
In  the  deep,  dark,  solemn  grove, 
Where,  on  banks  of  velvet  green, 
Peace,  with  Silence,  still  is  seen  ; 
And  Leisure,  at  the  sultry  noon, 
On  flowery  carpet  flings  him  down. 
There,  sweet  queen,  I  '11  sing  thy  pleasures 
In  enthusiastic  measures, 
And  sound  thy  praise  through  the  lone  vale, 
Responsive  to  the  hollow  gale  ; 
The  murmuring  rills  shall  spread  it  round, 
And  grottoes  the  wild  notes  rebound."  ' 


Poems  on  Several  Occasions,"  135. 


NATHANIEL   EVANS.  159 

A  still  more  valid  token  of  poetic  promise  in  Nathaniel 
Evans  is  furnished  us  by  some  lines  of  his,  struck  off  with 
playful  strokes, — "  An  Ode,  Attempted  in  the  Manner  of 
Horace,"  and  addressed  to  his  boon  companion  in  poetry 
and  in  poverty,  Thomas  Godfrey.1  At  the  time  when  these 
verses  were  written,  Godfrey  was  earning  his  daily  bread  in 
some  commercial  employment  in  North  Carolina,  while 
Evans  was  doing  the  same  thing  in  the  same  way  in  Phila- 
delphia,— both  lads  being  full  of  literary  aspiration,  both 
hampered  by  the  hard  limitations  of  their  lives,  and  both 
conscious  of  some  deadly  chill  in  the  surrounding  atmos- 
phere, charged  as  it  was  with  the  maxims  and  ambitions  of 
commerce : 

"  While  you,  dear  Tom,  are  forced  to  roam, 
In  search  of  fortune,  far  from  home, 

O'er  bogs,  o'er  seas,  and  mountains, 
I,  too,  debarred  the  soft  retreat 
Of  shady  groves,  and  murmur  sweet 

Of  silver-prattling  fountains, 

"  Must  mingle  with  the  bustling  throng, 
And  bear  my  load  of  cares  along, 

Like  any  other  sinner  : 
For,  where  's  the  ecstasy  in  this — 
To  loiter  in  poetic  bliss, 
And  go  without  a  dinner  ? 

"  Flaccus,  we  know,  immortal  bard, 
With  mighty  kings  and  statesmen  fared, 

And  lived  in  cheerful  plenty  ; 
But  now,  in  these  *  degenerate  days, 
The  slight  reward  of  empty  praise 
Scarce  one  receives  in  twenty. 


1  I  have  given  an  account  of  Godfrey,  in  my  "  History  of  Am.  Lit.  during 
the  Colonial  Time,"  ii.  244-251. 

2  The  text  reads,  "  those  " — evidently  a  misprint. 


l6o  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  Well  might  the  Roman  swan  along 
The  pleasing  Tiber  pour  his  song, 

When  blest  with  ease  and  quiet  ; 
Oft  did  he  grace  Maecenas'  board, 
Who  would  for  him  throw  by  the  lord, 

And  in  Falernian  riot. 

"  But,  dearest  Tom  !  those '  days  are  past, 
And  we  are  in  a  climate  cast 

Where  few  the  Muse  can  relish  ; 
Where  all  the  doctrine  now  that 's  told, 
Is  that  a  shining  heap  of  gold 

Alone  can  man  embellish. 

"Then  since  't  is  thus,  my  honest  friend, 
If  you  be  wise,  my  strain  attend, 

And  counsel  sage  adhere  to  : 
With  me,  henceforward,  join  the  crowd, 
And  like  the  rest,  proclaim  aloud, 

That  money  is  all  virtue  ! 

"  Then  may  we  both,  in  time,  retreat, 
To  some  fair  villa,  sweetly  neat, 

To  entertain  the  Muses  ; 
And  then  life's  noise  and  trouble  leave — 
Supremely  blest,  we  '11  never  grieve 

At  what  the  world  refuses."  a 


II. 

It  is  rather  for  her  possible,  than  for  her  actual,  poetic 
achievement,  that  Elizabeth  Fergusson,  a  woman  of  brill- 
iant social  gifts,  survives  among  the  literary  traditions  of 
the  Revolution.  Belonging  to  a  family  of  considerable  note 
in  the  middle  colonies,  much  of  her  life  was  passed  at 
Graeme  Park,  a  somewhat  stately  country-seat  eighteen 

1  The  text  reads  "  these," — evidently  a  misprint. 
*  "  Poems  on  Several  Occasions,"  50-52. 


ELIZABETH  FERGUSSON.  l6l 

miles  northwest  of  Philadelphia.1  But  little  of  her  work  as 
a  writer  was  ever  permitted  to  go  into  print ;  and  what  she 
did  make  public  seems  commonly  to  have  been  hidden 
under  some  form  of  literary  disguise.  It  is  probable  that 
her  hand  may  be  traced  in  the  rather  striking,  even  if  som- 
bre, verses  which,  with  true  feminine  appropriateness,  were 
added  as  "  A  Postscript  "  to  an  anonymous  poem  entitled 
"  Resignation,"  2  published  at  Philadelphia  in  1764: 

"  Why  mourn  the  dead  ?     You  wrong  the  grave — 

From  storm  that  safe  retreat  ; 
We  are  still  tossing  out  at  sea — 
Our  Admiral  in  port  ! 

"  Was  death  denied,  this  world — a  scene 

How  dismal  and  forlorn  ! 
To  Death  we  owe  that  't  is  to  man 
A  blessing  to  be  born. 


"  How  happy  that  no  storm  or  time 

Of  Death  can  rob  the  just, — 
None  pluck  from  their  unaching  heads 
Soft  pillows  in  the  dust  !  "  8 

Examples  of  her  sprightlier  and  more  carnal  moods  are  to 
be  seen  in  a  series  of  little  poems  4  produced  by  her,  under 
the  name  of  "  Laura,"  in  the  course  of  a  literary  duel  of 
badinage  and  flirtation  with  the  poet,  Nathaniel  Evans. 
To  this  charming  young  bachelor,  then  settled  as  an  Angli- 
can clergyman  in  Gloucester  County,  New  Jersey,  she 

1  An  account  of  her  is  given  in  "  Memoirs  of   the  Hist.  Soc.  of   Pa.,"  i. 
459-463. 

2  I  found  this  volume  in  the  library  of  the  Pa.  Hist.  Society  ;  and  in  attrib- 
uting these  lines  to  Elizabeth  Fergusson,  I  follow  the  lead  of  local  information 
inscribed  upon  the  title-page. 

3  "  Resignation,"  etc.,  71. 

4  These  are  in  Evans,  "Poems  on  Several  Occasions,"  etc.,  149-150,  152- 
154,  159-160. 


l62  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

addressed  what  she  called  "  A  Parody,"  playfully  descant- 
ing on  the  supposed  felicities  of  his  unwedded  life  in  that 
parochial  solitude : 

"  How  happy  is  the  country  parson's  lot  ! — 
Forgetting  bishops,  as  by  them  forgot ; 
Tranquil  of  spirit,  with  an  easy  mind, 
To  all  his  vestry's  votes  he  sits  resigned. 
Of  manners  gentle,  and  of  temper  even, 
He  jogs  his  flocks  with  easy  pace  to  heaven. 
In  Greek  and  Latin  pious  books  he  keeps  ; 
And  while  his  clerk  sings  psalms,  he  soundly  sleeps. 
His  garden  fronts  the  sun's  sweet  orient  beams, 
And  fat  churchwardens  prompt  his  golden  dreams. 
The  earliest  fruit  in  his  fair  orchard  blooms  ; 
And  cleanly  pipes  pour  out  tobacco's  fumes. 
From  rustic  bridegroom  oft  he  takes  the  ring ; 
And  hears  the  milkmaid  plaintive  ballads  sing. 
Backgammon  cheats  whole  winter  nights  away, 
And  Pilgrim's  Progress  helps  a  rainy  day."  ' 

III. 

On  the  morning  of  a  certain  day  in  August,  1776,  John 
Adams,  member  of  the  Continental  Congress  then  in  session 
at  Philadelphia,  unbent  his  mind  -from  the  cares  of  state  by 
taking  a  walk  into  Arch  Street,  and  visiting  there  the  studio 
of  the  portrait-painter,  Charles  Willson  Peale;  and  in  a  let- 
ter to  his  wife  on  the  following  day,  the  sturdy  Puritan 
politician  gave  a  naive  sketch  of  the  persons  and  things  he 
had  seen  there, — a  sketch  first  of  the  painter  himself,  then 
of  his  paintings,  and  finally  of  a  fellow-congressman  who 

1  "  Poems  on  Several  Occasions,"  etc.,  by  N.  Evans,  149-150.  These  lines 
will  be  recognized  as  a  parody  on  that  part  of  Pope's  "  Eloiza  to  Abelard," 
which  begins  : 

"  How  happy  is  the  blameless  vestal's  lot  ! 

The  world  forgetting,  by  the  world  forgot "  ; 

and  extending  from  line  207  to  line  222.  "  Works  of  Alexander  Pope,"  War- 
burton's  edition,  London,  1753,  ii.  24-30;. 


FRAXCIS  HOP  KIN  SON.  163 

happened  to  be  at  the  studio  as  a  visitor  like  himself.  "  At 
this  shop,"  he  says,  "  I  met  Mr.  Francis  Hopkinson,  late  a 
mandamus  councillor  of  New  Jersey,  now  a  member  of  the 
Continental  Congress,  who,  it  seems,  is  a  native  of  Phila- 
delphia, .  .  .  was  liberally  educated,  and  is  a  painter 
and  a  poet.  I  have  a  curiosity  to  penetrate  a  little  deeper 
into  the  bosom  of  this  curious  gentleman,  and  may  possi- 
bly give  you  some  more  particulars  concerning  him.  He  is 
one  of  your  pretty,  little,  curious,  ingenious  men.  His 
head  is  not  bigger  than  a  large  apple,  less  than  our  friend 
Pemberton,  or  Doctor  Simon  Tufts.  I  have  not  met  with 
anything  in  natural  history  more  amusing  and  entertaining 
than  his  personal  appearance, — yet  he  is  genteel  and  well 
bred,  and  is  very  social."  The  unconscious  humor  of  this 
final  concession  lingers  on  into  the  words  of  the  next  sen- 
tence, revealing,  as  the  entire  letter  does,  the  mind  of  a 
practical,  aspiring,  New  England  lawyer  and  politician  of 
that  period,  just  waking  up  to  the  perception  of  a  form  of 
culture  with  which  up  to  that  time  he  had  had  no  contact ; 
of  which,  indeed,  he  could  not  help  speaking  with  a  sort  of 
condescension ;  and  yet  to  the  acquisition  of  which  even  he 
could  almost  be  willing  betimes  to  let  himself  down.  "  I 
wish,"  he  adds,  "  I  had  leisure  and  tranquillity  of  mind  to 
amuse  myself  with  those  elegant  and  ingenious  arts  of 
painting,  sculpture,  statuary,  architecture,  and  music.  But 
I  have  not." 

But,  now,  this  queer  little  congressman  whom  John 
Adams  thus  met  in  Peale's  studio,  and  who  seemed  to  the 
New  Englander  to  be  as  amusing  a  specimen  of  natural 
history  as  he  had  ever  met  with, — who  and  what  was  he  ? 
The  range  of  this  little  man's  versatility  was  by  no  means 
fully  indicated  in  the  remark  that  he  had  been  a  mandamus 
councillor,  and  was  at  that  time  a  member  of  congress,  a 
painter,  and  a  poet.  Even  in  these  days,  Francis  Hopkin- 
son would  have  been  regarded  as  a  man  of  quite  unusual 
cultivation,  having  in  reality  many  solid  as  well  as  shining 

1  "  Letters  of  John  Adams,  Addressed  to  His  Wife,"  i.  156-157. 


164  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

accomplishments.  He  was  a  distinguished  practitioner  of 
the  law;  he  became  an  eminent  judge;  he  was  a  statesman 
trained  by  much  study  and  experience;  he  was  a  mathema- 
j  tician,  a  chemist,  a  physicist,  a  mechanician,  an  inventor,  a 
/  musician  and  a  composer  of  music,  a  man  of  literary  knowl- 
v_  edge  and  practice,  a  writer  of  airy 'and  dainty  songs,  a 
clever  artist  with  pencil  and  brush,  and  a  humorist  of 
unmistakable  power.  For  us  Americans,  the  name  of 
Francis  Hopkinson  lives — if  indeed  it  does  live — chiefly  on 
account  of  its  presence  in  the  august  roll-call  of  the  signers 
of  the  Declaration  of  Independence;  and  through  all  the 
strenuous  years  which  preceded  and  followed  that  great 
avowal,  this  man  served  the  cause  therein  set  forth,  not 
only  as  a  patriot  of  austere  principle,  as -a  statesman  of 
genuine  sagacity,  as  a  citizen  of  high  civic  courage,  but  as 
a  wit  and  a  satirist, — the  edge  of  his  sarcasm  cutting  into 
the  enemy  as  keenly  as  any  sword,  and  the  ruddy  glow  of 
his  mirth  kindling  good  cheer  over  all  the  land  on  many  a 
grim  day  when  good  cheer  was  a  hard  thing  to  be  had  on 
his  side  of  the  fight.1 

IV. 

He  was  born  in  Philadelphia  on  the  second  of  October, 
1737.  His  father,  Thomas  Hopkinson,  a  barrister  of  Eng- 
lish birth  and  education,  had  settled  in  Philadelphia  in  early 
life,  arriving  there,  probably,  in  1731;  and  thenceforward, 
until  his  premature  death  in  1751,  he  had  risen  steadily  in 
the  public  esteem,  not  only  as  a  lawyer  and  a  judge,  but  as 
a  man  of  literary  and  scientific  training,  and  as  a  friend  of 

1  Of  Francis  Hopkinson  no  adequate  biography  has  yet  been  written.  An 
early  sketch  of  him  in  "  Delaplaine's  Repository,"  vol.  ii.  part  i.  pp.  125- 
138,  seems  to  be  founded  on  an  earlier  sketch  by  some  writer  not  named  by 
Delaplaine,  but  contemporary  with  Hopkinson.  Other  sketches  of  him  are  in 
Sanderson,  "Biography  of  the  Signers,"  ii.  187-204  ;  in  "  The  National  Por- 
trait Gallery"  for  1836,  $th  article;  and  in  "The  Pa.  Mag.  of  Hist,  and 
Biog.,"  ii.  314-324.  The  last  is  by  Charles  R.  Hildeburn  ;  and  though  it  con- 
tains one  quite  serious  lapse  from  accuracy,  it  is  upon  the  whole  the  best  account 
of  Hopkinson  now  to  be  had. 


FRANCIS  HOPKINSON.  165 

every  good  cause.1  The  son,  thus  left  an  orphan  at  the  age 
of  fourteen,  received  the  best  education  then  to  be  had  in 
that  neighborhood.  He  happened  to  be  the  first  pupil  to 
enter  the  new  College  of  Philadelphia,  and  was  in  the  class 
of  its  first  graduates, — receiving  his  bachelor's  degree  in 
1757,  and  his  master's  degree  in  1760.  He  studied  law  in 
the  office  of  Benjamin  Chew,  the  attorney-general  of  Penn- 
sylvania; he  was  admitted  to  the  bar  in  1761  ;  he  devoted 
himself  zealously  and  with  success  to  the  work  of  his  pro- 
fession ;  and  to  the  very  end  of  his  life,  he  showed,  as  his 
father  had  done  before  him,  a  fine  versatility  of  talent,  and 
an  active  interest  in  all  things  tending  to  the  public  good.3 

On  the  26th  of  May,  1766,  almost  at  the  very  moment  of 
the  news  that  the  Stamp  Act  had  been  repealed,  Hopkin- 
son  set  sail  for  England, — where  he  was  to  pay  a  long  visit 
among  his  kinsfolk  on  that  side  of  the  sea.  It  is  a  touching 
fact  that  almost  the  last  glimpse  which  the  young  American 
barrister  then  had  of  his  own  country,  as  his  ship  moved 
down  the  Delaware,  was  of  the  popular  illuminations  at 
Newcastle  over  the  news  which  was  then  making  all  Ameri- 
cans so  glad.'  As  his  ship  sailed  away  from  those  happy 

1  Thomas  Hopkinson  became  judge  of  the  Vice-Admiralty  for  Pennsylvania, 
member  of  the  Council  of  Pennsylvania,  and  first  president  of  the  American 
Philosophical  Society.  He  is  named  by  Provost  William  Smith  as  the  first  of 
four  men  most  active  in  the  founding  of  the  College  of  Philadelphia,  now  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania.  He  was  also  a  member  of  Franklin's  Junto,  and 
one  of  Franklin's  very  intimate  friends  ;  and  it  was  to  him  that  Franklin  ac- 
knowledged himself  as  indebted  for  the  discovery  of  the  power  of  metallic  points 
"  to  throw  off  the  electrical  fire."  "  Works  of  Franklin,"  Sparks'  ed.,  v.  182. 

^  It  helps  one  to  ascertain  the  quality  and  range  of  this  man's  gifts  to  note, 
that  besides  devoting  himself  to  his  profession  as  a  lawyer,  and  to  experimental 
researches  in  chemistry  and  physics,  and  to  much  study  of  literature,  and  at  one 
time  even  to  the  business  of  a  conveyancer  and  of  a  shop-keeper,  he  was  able, 
on  behalf  of  the  public,  to  serve  as  secretary  of  the  Library  Company  of  Phila- 
delphia for  several  years,  as  its  librarian  for  more  than  one  year,  and  as  its 
director  for  more  than  two  years  ;  also,  for  various  periods,  as  secretary  to  the 
vestry  of  the  united  parishes  of  Christ  Church  and  St.  Peter's,  and  as  warden  of 
St.  Peter's.  For  awhile,  also,  he  tried  to  improve  the  services  of  the  two 
parishes  by  teaching  their  children  to  sing. 

3  Hopkinson  to  his  mother,  2  July,  1766,  in  "The  Pa.  Mag.  of  Hist,  and 
Biog.,"  ii.  3I&-3I7. 


1 66  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

signals,  and  carried  him  out  into  the  double  mystery  of  the 
.ocean  and  of  the  future,  no  doubt  those  lights  blazing  upon 
the  shore  seemed  to  him  to  be  a  token  of  the  end  of  all  the 
dangerous  disputes  that  could  arise  for  many  a  year  between 
the  colonies  and  the  mother  country.  So  little,  in  fact,  did 
he  dream  of  the  fiercer  and  the  less  extinguishable  flames 
that  were  soon  to  be  kindled  all  along  the  continent,  that 
when,  during  the  period  of  this  very  visit  in  England,  par- 
liament passed  its  acts  for  laying  new  customs  duties  on  the 
colonies  and  even  for  setting  up  in  America  a  board  of  com- 
missioners for  collecting  such  duties,  Hopkinson  himself 
became  an  eager  applicant  for  a  place  on  that  board,  and 
suffered  deep  disappointment  in  consequence  of  his  failure 
to  get  it.1 

In  England,  he  spent  about  fourteen  months, — having 
access  to  the  best  society  there.  A  near  kinsman  of  his  was 
the  Bishop  of  Worcester;  and  Hopkinson  made  long  visits 
at  that  prelate's  palace  at  Hartlebury.  In  London,  his 
acquaintance  was  among  interesting  and  distinguished 
people.  One  day  he  speaks  of  having  a  whitebait  dinner 
at  Greenwich  with  Benjamin  West  and  his  family;  and,  on 
another  day,  of  dining  with  John  Penn,  the  proprietor  of 
Pennsylvania,  and  with  Lord  North."  Finally,  having  seen 
something  of  the  world  beyond  his  own  horizon,  and  having 
gained,  doubtless,  something  of  the  catholicity  of  mind  and 
the  polish  of  manners  which  a  year  or  two  of  the  best  Eng- 
lish life  could  give  to  an  observant  and  tractable  young 
fellow  like  him,  Hopkinson  returned  home  in  the  latter  part 
of  1767.  One  year  afterward,  he  was  married  to  Ann 
Borden,  of  Bordentown,  New  Jersey,  granddaughter  of  the 
man  who  founded  the  town ;  and  through  his  alliance  with 
that  wealthy  and  influential  family,  he  was  gradually  drawn 
to  be  a  citizen  of  New  Jersey.  The  young  politician  who 
had  dined  with  Lord  North  in  1767,  had  evidently  made  a 
good  impression  on  that  powerful  statesman;  for,  in  1772, 

1  Letter  of  Hopkinson's,  "The  Pa.  Mag.  of  Hist,  and  Biog.,"  ii.  318. 
»  Ibid.  317. 


FRANCIS  HOP  KIN  SON.  1 67 

through  Lord  North's  favor,  Hopkinson  was  given  the 
office  of  collector  of  customs  at  Newwcastle,  with  the  privi- 
lege of  discharging  its  duties  by  deputy;  and,  in  1774,  he 
became  by  royal  appointment  a  member  of  the  council  of 
New  Jersey. 

Meantime,  the  square  issue  was  forming  between  the 
colonies  on  the  one  side,  and  the  British  government  on  the 
other.  How  would  Francis  Hopkinson  stand,  with  respect 
to  that  issue  ?  This  flattering  kindness  of  Lord  North,  this 
profitable  sinecure  office  at  Newcastle,  this  seat  in  the  aris- 
tocratic branch  of  the  legislature  of  New  Jersey, — all  these 
were  dangerous  lures  to  an  ambitious  American  politician  of 
that  period.  The  firmness  of  many  a  member  of  the  oppo- 
sition went  down,  in  those  times,  under  such  temptations. 
Concerning  Francis  Hopkinson,  however,  there  seems  not 
to  have  been  any  serious  doubt.  In  June,  1776,  when  the 
question  of  national  Independence  had  suddenly  become  the 
master-question  of  the  hour,  he  was  sent  by  New  Jersey  as 
one  of  her  delegates  in  Congress.  On  the  28th  of  June,  he 
presented  his  credentials,  and  took  his  seat ;  on  the  second  of 
July,  he  voted  for  the  resolution  favoring  Independence ;  two 
days  later,  he  voted  for  the  Declaration  itself;  on  the  second 
of  August,  when  the  engrossed  copy  of  the  Declaration  came 
into  the  house  for  signatures,  he  put  his  signature  there 
where  it  belonged ;  and  from  the  midst  of  all  those  perilous 
proceedings,  he  wrote  to  a  friend  in  Baltimore  these  modest 
and  manly  words:  "  If  my  poor  abilities  can  be  of  the  least 
service  to  my  country  in  her  day  of  trial,  I  shall  not  com- 
plain of  the  hardship  of  the  task."  ' 

Thus,  as  it  appears,  this  same  "  pretty,  little,  curious, 
ingenious  man  " — this  member  of  congress  who  was  to 
John  Adams  an  amusing  specimen  of  natural  history — this 
lawyer  and  statesman  who  could  also  write  songs  and  set 
them  to  music  of  his  own,  who  could  play  daintily  on  the 
harpsichord,  and  could  draw  in  crayon  exquisite  portraits  of 

1  Hopkinson  to  Dr.  Coale,  of  Baltimore,  in  "  The  Pa.  Mag.  of  Hist,  and 
Biog.,"  ii.  319. 


1 68  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

the  beauties  of  Bordentown  and  of  Philadelphia,  and  who 
had  a  head  "  not  bigger  than  a  large  apple  " — had  a  heart 
also  quite  as  big  perhaps  as  John  Adams's,  and  a  soul  kin- 
dred to  his,  likewise,  in  central  gravity,  and  in  valor,  and  in 
the  power  of  self-sacrifice.  Beneath  the  elegant  exterior  of 
that  traveled  and  polished  little  gentleman,  not  spoiled  by 
any  dilettanteism  of  his,  nor  made  frivolous  by  his  irrepress- 
ible gift  of  mirth,  nor  seduced  by  the  smiles  of  the  great 
man  in  England  who  stood  nearest  to  the  king,  was  a  nature 
as  clear-eyed,  as  pure-handed,  as  firm-footed,  and  as  solidly 
good,  we  may  suppose,  as  belonged  to  the  most  ponderous 
and  unadorned  patriot-father  in  all  the  august  Congress  at 
Philadelphia. 

V. 

But  before  we  drift  quite  away  into  those  angry  times  in 
which  Francis  Hopkinson  acted  his  rare  and  effective  part, 
let  us  stay  a  moment  for  one  glimpse  at  a  far  different  aspect 
of  his  mind  and  life.  As  one  thinks  of  that  extremely  seri- 
ous collection  of  personages — the  signers  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence — whose  faces,  looking  down  upon  us  from 
their  squares  of  canvas  in  Independence  Hall,  seem  to  have 
solidified  themselves  into  a  preternatural  and  somewhat 
ligneous  gravity,  as  if  to  confront  the  perpetual  stare  of  an 
admiring  posterity ;  as  one  remembers  the  wise,  operose, 
valiant,  sedate,  and  altogether  considerable  things  those 
solemn  gentlemen  did  in  their  times, — it  is  not  quite  easy 
to  conceive  of  any  one  of  them  as  ever  having  had  in  this 
grim  life  such  a  thing  as  a  lyric  mood,  a  solitary  hour  uncon- 
cerned enough  to  have  permitted  him  to  write,  and  to  set 
to  music,  and  even  to  sing,  say,  a  dainty,  defiant,  little  love- 
song  like  this — a  song  not  unworthy  of  the  touch  of  Herrick 
or  of  Lovelace : 

"  My  generous  heart  disdains 
The  slave  of  love  to  be  ; 
I  scorn  his  servile  chains, 
And  boast  my  liberty. 


FRANCIS  HOPKINSON.  169 

This  whining 

And  pining 

And  wasting  with  care, 
Are  not  to  my  taste,  be  she  ever  so  fair. 


"  Shall  a  girl's  capricious  frown 
Sink  my  noble  spirits  down  ? 
Shall  a  face  of  white  and  red 
Make  me  droop  my  silly  head  ? 
Shall  I  set  me  down  and  sigh 
For  an  eye-brow,  or  an  eye  ? 
For  a  braided  lock  of  hair, 
Curse  my  fortune  and  despair? 
My  generous  heart  disdains,  etc. 


"  Still  uncertain  is  to-morrow, 
Not  quite  certain  is  to-day — 
Shall  I  waste  my  time  in  sorrow  ? 
Shall  I  languish  life  away  ? 
All  because  a  cruel  maid 
Hath  not  love  with  love  repaid  ? 
My  generous  heart  disdains,  etc."  * 

And  who  would  have  imagined  that,  among  all  those 
plodding  and  pragmatical  members  of  the  Continental  Con- 
gress, engaged  in  their  portentous  task  of  hunting  out  of 
the  land  sundry  herds  of  Hessians  and  their  British  employ- 
ers, was  one  who  could,  at  any  time,  have  written  a  merry 
little  sporting-song  like  this, — a  song  for  the  fox-hunters, — 
a  song  having  lightness  of  touch,  swiftness,  airy  melody, 
and  genuine  lyric  feeling  ? 

"  Poems  on  Several  Subjects,"  190-191  ;  separate  paging  in  vol.  iii.  of 
Hopkinson's  "  Miscellaneous  Essays  and  Occasional  Writings."  These  volumes, 
printed  as  they  were  after  Hopkinson's  death,  contain  an  unusual  number  of 
typographical  errors. 


1 70  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  O'er  the  hills  far  away,  at  the  birth  of  the  morn, 
I  hear  the  full  tone  of  the  sweet-sounding  horn  ; 
The  sportsmen  with  shoutings  all  h^il  the  new  day, 
And  swift  run  the  hounds  o'er  the  hills  far  away. 
Across  the  deep  valley  their  course  they  pursue,  ,- 
And  rush  thro'  the  thickets  yet  silver'd  with  dew  : 
Nor  hedges  nor  ditches  their  speed  can  delay — 
Still  sounds  the  sweet  horn  o'er  the  hills  far  away."  ' 

And,  surely,  no  reader  seeking  for  other  verses  of  Hop- 
kinson's  which  may  still  be  worth  recalling,  is  likely  to 
overlook  this  little  thing, — the  song  of  the  young  wife  of 
Jemmy  the  Sailor,  after  Jemmy  the  Sailor  has  gone  to  sea: 


My  love  is  gone  to  sea, 

Whilst  I  his  absence  mourn, 
No  joy  shall  smile  on  me 

Until  my  love  return. 
He  ask'd  me  for  his  bride, 

And  many  vows  he  swore  ; 
I  blush'd — and  soon  complied, 

My  heart  was  his  before. 


:  One  little  month  was  past, 

And  who  so  blest  as  we  ? 
The  summons  came  at  last, 

And  Jemmy  must  to  sea. 
I  saw  his  ship  so  gay 

Swift  fly  the  wave-worn  shore ; 
I  wip'd  my  tears  away — 

And  saw  his  ship  no  more. 

3- 

;  When  clouds  shut  in  the  sky, 
And  storms  around  me  howl  ; 

1  "  Poems  on  Several  Subjects,"  190. 


PHILIP  FREXEAU.  I/ 1 

When  livid  lightnings  fly, 

And  threatening  thunders  roll  ; 

All  hopes  of  rest  are  lost, 
No  slumbers  visit  me  ; 

My  anxious  thoughts  are  tost 
With  Jemmy  on  the  sea."  * 

VI. 

On  the  eighteenth  of  December,  1832,  an  old  man, 
sprightly  and  vigorous  under  the  weight  of  nearly  eighty- 
one  years,  started,  just  as  the  evening  was  coming  on,  to 
walk  from  the  village  of  Monmouth,  in  New  Jersey,  to  his 
home  in  the  open  country,  a  distance  of  about  two  miles. 
At  that  home,  a  paternal  estate  of  a  thousand  acres,  this 
man  had  passed,  at  intervals,  many  years  of  his  long  life — 
rilled  as  it  had  been  with  manifold  employments  on  land 
and  sea.  He  was  still  a  fine  specimen  of  active  and  manly 
old  age ;  in  person  somewhat  below  the  ordinary  height, 
but  muscular  and  compact ;  his  face  pensive  in  expression 
and  with  a  care-worn  look ;  his  dark  gray  eyes  sunken  deep 
in  their  sockets,  but  sending  out  gleams  and  flashes  of  fire 
when  aroused  in  talk;  his  hair  once  abundant  and  beauti- 
ful, now  thinned  and  bleached  by  time ;  stooping  a  little  as 
he  walked ;  to  those  who  knew  him,  accustomed  to  give 
delight  by  a  conversation  abounding  in  anecdotes  of  the 
great  age  of  the  American  Revolution.  On  the  evening 
just  referred  to,  he  had  started  alone  on  his  walk  towards 
his  home,  but  the  night  passed  away  without  his  arrival 
there;  and  the  next  morning  his  lifeless  body  was  found  in 
a  swampy  meadow,  into  which,  as  it  seemed,  he  must  have 
wandered, — missing  his  way  in  the  darkness,  and  in  his 
exhaustion  and  bewilderment  surrendering  at  last  to  death. 

That  dead  old  man  was  Philip  Freneau,  incomparably  the 
bitterest  and  the  most  unrelenting,  and,  in  some  respects 
the  most  powerful,  of  the  satirical  poets  belonging  to  the 
insurgent  side  of  the  Revolution.  His  long  life,  beginning 

1  "  Poems  on  Several  Subjects,  186-187. 


1/2  THK   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

on  the  second  of  January,  1752,  twenty-four  years  before 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  had  spanned  a  period 
which  included  such  events  as  the  British  conquest  of 
Canada,  the  American  Revolution,  the  futile  experiment  of 
the  confederation,  the  establishment  of  the  national  consti- 
tution, the  rise  and  fall  and  extinction  of  the  Federalist 
party,  the  whole  tragedy  of  the  French  Revolution,  the 
earliest  dawn  and  the  final  setting  of  the  career  of  Napoleon, 
our  second  war  with  England,  the  expansion  of  our  national 
domain  to  the  breadth  of  the  continent,  the  development 
of  the  American  slave-power  into  an  aggressive  territorial 
and  political  propaganda,  the  inception  of  the  triumphant 
anti-slavery  movement  in  America,  the  second  election  of 
Andrew  Jackson,  and  the  assertion  by  South  Carolina  of 
the  doctrine  of  nullification.  The  poor  old  man,  thus 
found  dead  on  the  lonely  New  Jersey  moor,  had  undoubt- 
edly some  sweetness  in  his  heart ;  but  he  permitted  very 
little  of  it  to  work  its  way  down  to  the  tip  of  his  pen. 
With  that  pitiless  pen  of  his  he  had  fought  many  a  fierce 
fight  in  his  day ;  but  the  one  fierce  fight  most  worthy  of 
him  and  most  likely  to  keep  his  name  alive  in  the  memory 
of  his  countrymen,  was  that  which  he  fought  on  behalf  of 
the  American  Revolution.  For  such  a  fight  he  was  born. 
He  was  the  poet  of  hatred,  rather  than  of  love.  He  had  a 
passion  for  controversy.  His  strength  lay  in  attack ;  his 
characteristic  measure  was  the  iambic.  Among  all  his 
verses,  the  reader  finds  scarcely  one  lyric  of  patriotic  enthu- 
siasm, nor  many  lines  to  thrill  the  hearts  of  the  Revolutionists 
by  any  touch  of  loving  devotion  to  their  cause,  but  every- 
where lines  hot  and  rank  with  sarcasm  and  invective  against 
the  enemy.  He  did,  indeed,  give  ample  proof  that  he  had 
the  genius  for  other  and  higher  forms  of  poetry;  yet  it  was 
as  a  satirist  that  he  won  his  chief  distinction, — as  a  satirist, 
likewise,  doing  always  the  crudest  work  of  that  savage 
vocation  with  the  greatest  relish.  In  this  respect,  Philip 
Freneau  correlates,  upon  the  Whig  side,  to  Jonathan  Odell 
on  the  side  of  the  Tories.  Like  Odell,  Freneau  was  a  good 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  173 

hater ;  his  was  the  wrathful  muse ;  his  chosen  warfare  was 
grim,  unsparing,  deadly.  He  was  the  satirical  gladiator  on 
behalf  of  the  Revolution,  even  as  Odell  was  the  satirical 
gladiator  in  opposition  to  it. 

VII. 

He  came  of  heroic  stock — that  of  the  Huguenots;  and  if, 
from  the  moment  of  the  first  American  alienation,  he 
quickly  learned  to  hate  the  British  with  a  hate  uncommon 
even  for  an  American  Revolutionist,  he  perhaps  inherited 
the  aptitude  for  doing  so,  along  with  his  French  name  and 
his  French  blood.  At  Princeton,  where  he  received  his 
education,  he  had  for  classmates  two  or  three  men  of  note 
in  after  years, — Samuel  Spring,  Hugh  Henry  Brackenridge, 
and  James  Madison.  Already  the  odor  of  insurrection  was 
in  the  air;  and  these  young  collegians — as  is  apt  to  be  the 
case  with  young  collegians — sniffed  it  eagerly,  though  per- 
haps they  did  not  quite  realize  what  the  wild  fragrance 
meant  that  pleased  them  so.  The  part  which  Freneau  took 
on  commencement  day,  in  1771,  was  that  of  an  interlocutor 
in  a  metrical  dialogue,  written  by  himself  and  by  Brack- 
enridge, on  "  The  Rising  Glory  of  America"  ' — one  of  a 
thousand  tokens  that  already  among  these  colonists  was 
born  a  spirit  of  national  self-consciousness  which  must  soon 
snap  the  cords  of  provincial  subordination,  and  even  fling 
off  at  some  time  the  tremendous  and  indeed  the  unwhole- 
some fascination  with  which  Europe  predominated  over  the 
American  spirit. 

Already,  too,  before  his  departure  from  Princeton,  Fre- 

1  The  entire  poem  was  published  in  Philadelphia  in  1772.  The  portion  writ- 
ten by  Freneau  was  afterward  printed  by  itself  in  the  first  edition  of  his  collected 
verses,  entitled  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  37-51,  Philadelphia,  1786. 
This  edition  is  extremely  rare.  After  much  enquiry,  I  have  met  with  but  one 
copy,— that  belonging  to  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  and  formerly  the 
property  of  George  Ticknor.  Fortunately,  this  edition  has  been  reprinted  in  a 
form  that  places  it  within  easy  reach,  by  John  Russell  Smith,  London,  1861. 
To  this  reprint  I  always  refer  in  citing  the  above  title. 


1/4  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

neau  had  caught  another  infection — a  more  fatal  one,  even, 
than  that  of  incipient  rebellion — the  infection  of  verse- 
making.  When  but  sixteen  years  old,  he  wrote  a  consider- 
able poem,  vigorously  conceived,  and  in  well-wrought 
rhymed  pentameters,  on  the  rather  discouraging  topic  of 
"  The  Prophet  Jonah  "  ;  and,  a  year  later,  a  dramatic  frag- 
ment in  blank  verse,  on  "  The  Pyramids  of  Egypt."  Both 
are  examples  of  really  strong  and  promising  poetic  work. 

It  is  not  easy  to  learn  just  how  he  was  employed  during 
the  years  immediately  following  his  graduation.  Very 
likely,  with  an  inward  preference  for  a  literary  life,  he  found 
in  the  commercial  and  maritime  connections  of  his  family 
an  occupation  not  altogether  unfriendly  to  his  favorite 
studies.  As  the  war  came  on,  though  he  had  a  passionate 
interest  in  its  problems,  and  took  in  it  a  fierce  and  a  great 
part  with  his  terrible  pen,  he  seems  never  to  have  fought  in 
it  with  musket  or  sword.  It  is  known  that  both  before  and 
during  the  war  he  often  went  to  sea,  at  times  in  command 
of  a  ship,  being  thus  engaged  in  commercial  transactions  in 
the  West  Indies. 

Indeed,  he  appears  to  have  heen  greatly  attracted  by  life 
upon  the  ocean ;  and  among  his  poems,  both  political  and 
non-political,  not  a  few  refer  to  the  sea,  and  to  traits  of  his 
own  experience  upon  it,  and  to  those  fascinating  tropical 
realms  into  which  his  voyages  had  so  often  brought  him  as 
a  pilgrim.  It  is  obvious,  too,  that  in  the  watch  he  kept  of 
the  unfolding  fortunes  of  the  Revolution,  he  was  especially 
drawn  to  those  incidents  which  appealed  to  him  as  a  sailor- 
poet.  Moreover,  for  the  purposes  of  humorous  verse,  he 
was  not  slow  to  perceive  and  to  use  the  comic  phases  of 
nautical  life — even  of  nautical  coarseness  and  irreverence; 
as  is  to  be  seen,  for  example,  in  some  playful  lines  written 
by  him  on  finding  that  the  crew  of  a  ship  on  which  he  hap- 
pened to  be,  was  made  up  of  men  bearing,  absurdly  enough, 
the  names  of  several  famous  English  divines: 

"  In  life's  unsettled,  odd  career 
What  changes  every  day  appear, 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  1 75 

To  please  or  plague  the  eye  ! — 
A  goodly  brotherhood  of  priests 
Are  here  transformed  to  swearing  beasts 

That  heaven  and  hell  defy. 

"  Here  Bonner,  bruised  with  many  a  knock, 
Has  changed  his  surplice  for  a  frock  ; 

Old  Erskine  swabs  the  deck  ; 
And  Watts,  that  once  such  pleasure  took 
In  writing  hymns,  here  turned  a  cook, 
Sinners  no  longer  vex. 

"  Here  Burnet,  Tillotson,  and  Blair, 
With  Jemmy  Hervey,  curse  and  swear ; 

Here  Cudworth  mixes  grog  ; 
Pearson  the  crew  to  dinner  hails, 
A  graceless  Sherlock  trims  the  sails, 
And  Bunyan  heaves  the  log."  * 

VIII. 

The  note  of  playfulness  in  these  lines  is,  however,  a  rare 
one  in  Freneau's  work,  whether  for  land  or  sea;  but  still 
other  examples  of  it  may  be  seen  in  "  The  Village  Mer- 
chant, "a  in  "The  Desolate  Academy,"3  in  "Epitaph 
intended  for  the  Tomb-stone  of  Patrick  Bay,  an  Irish  Sol- 
dier and  Inn-holder,  killed  by  an  ignorant  Physician,"  4  and 
especially  in  "  Crispin  O'Connor's  Answer,"  6  wherein  the 
said  Crispin  thus  explains  why  he  had  left  Ireland  and  come 
to  America: 

"  I  could  not  bow  to  noble  knaves    ' 
Who  equal  rights  to  men  deny  ; 
Scornful  I  left  a  land  of  slaves, 
And  hither  came — my  axe  to  ply. 

1  "  Poems  on  Several  Occasions,"  Monmouth,  1795,  161. 
•  Ibid.  9-15. 

3  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  72-73. 

4  Ibid.  31-32. 

6  "  Poems  on  Several  Occasions,"  160-161. 


176  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  The  axe  has  well  repaid  my  toil  : 

No  king,  no  priest,  I  yet  espy — 
To  tythe  my  hogs,  to  tax  my  soil, 
And  suck  my  whiskey-bottle  dry. 

"  In  British  land  what  snares  are  laid  ! — 

There,  royal  rights  all  right  defeat  : 
They  taxed  my  sun,  they  taxed  my  shade, 

They  taxed  the  wretched  crumbs  I  eat ;  . 

"  They  taxed  my  hat,  they  taxed  my  shoes, 

Fresh  taxes  still  on  taxes  grew  ; 
They  would  have  taxed  my  very  nose, 
Had  I  not  fled,  dear  friends,  to  you  !  " 

Too  seldom,  however,  was  the  playful  note  allowed  to 
give  its  relief  to  Freneau's  work.  His  prevailing  tone  is  not 
only  serious,  but  severe.  Rarely  does  he  permit  a  smile  to 
ripple  upon  his  own  face,  or  upon  ours ;  and  though  he  did 
attempt,  with  a  successs  that  is  unmistakable,  some  of  the 
nobler  forms  of  poetry,  it  was  to  satire  that  he  felt  himself 
called,  if  not  by  the  limitations  of  his  own  genius,  at  least 
by  the  circumstances  of  his  own  time.  Indeed,  upon  this 
subject  we  are  not  left  to  conjecture;  for  in  a  little  poem 
of  his,  called  "  The  Author,"  he  expressly  tells  us  that,  in/ 
his,  opinion,  an  American  poet  was  then  debarred  by  the 
very  conditions  of  American  life,  from  every  form  of  poetry 
but  satire: 

"  On  these  bleak  climes  by  Fortune  thrown, 
Where  rigid  Reason  reigns  alone, 
Where  flowery  Fancy  holds  no  sway, 
Nor  golden  forms  around  her  play, 
Nor  Nature  takes  her  magic  hue — 
Alas  !  what  has  the  Muse  to  do  ? 
An  age  employed  in  pointing  steel, 
Can  no  poetic  raptures  feel  ; 
No  fabled  Love's  enchanting  power, 
Nor  tale  of  Flora's  shady  bower, 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  1 77 

Nor  woodland  haunt,  or  murmuring  grove, 

Can  its  prosaic  bosom  move. 

The  Muse  of  Love  in  no  request, 

I  '11  try  my  fortune  with  the  rest. 

Which  of  the  Nine  shall  I  engage, 

To  suit  the  humor  of  the  age  ? 

On  one,  alas  !  my  choice  must  fall, 

The  least  engaging  of  them  all  ! 

Her  visage  stern,  severe  her  style, 

A  clouded  brow,  a  cruel  smile, 

A  mind  on  murdered  victims  placed — 

She,  only  she,  can  please  the  taste." 1 

Perhaps  for  immediate  recognition,  especially  under  the 
political  and  commercial  tests  of  the  American  literary  mar- 
ket, Freneau's  conclusion  may  have  been  the  wise  one.  At 
any  rate,  it  is  impossible  not  to  regret  that  the  circum- 
stances of  his  life,  and  especially  the  intellectual  cravings  of 
the  public  to  which  his  appeal  was  confined,  did  not  encour- 
age him  to  give  more  of  his  strength  to  other  muses  than  to 
her  of  the  "  visage  stern."  Surely,  an  American  poet  from 
whom  Thomas  Campbell,  "  in  his  best  day,  thought  it 
worth  while  to  borrow  an  entire  line,"  and  that,  too',  with- 
out taking  the  trouble  to  mention  the  fact,  need  not  have 
confined  himself  to  the  field  of  satire  for  lack  at  least  of 
"  fine  tact  and  delicate  handling  "  *  in  the  higher  work  of 
poetry.  In  Campbell's  mystic  and  most  musical  love-tale, 
O'Connor's  Child;  or,  The  Flower  of  Love  Lies  Bleed- 
ing,"— that  fastidious  poet  thus  sings  of  the  dead  warrior, 
Connocht  Moran,  and  of  the  living  lady  who  still  loved 
him: 

"  Bright  as  the  bow  that  spans  the  storm, 

In  Erin's  yellow  vesture  clad, 
A  son  of  light,  a  lovely  form, 
He  comes  and  makes  her  glad. 

"  Poems  on  Several  Occasions,"  327. 

s  Duyckinck,  "Cyclopaedia  of  American  Literature,"  ed.  by  M.  L.  Simons, 
i.  349- 


i;8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION, 

Now  on  the  grass-green  turf  he  sits, 

His  tasseled  horn  beside  him  laid  ; 
Now  o'er  the  hills  in  chase  he  flits — 

The  hunter  and  the  deer — a  shade  !  " ' 

The  truth  of  history  compels  us  to  mention  that  the  last  line 
in  that  exquisite  passage,  which  is  also  its  best  line,  had 
already  appeared  in  print  several  years  before,  in  a  little 
poem  of  Freneau's  entitled  "  The  Indian  Burying  Ground," 
and  in  this  fine  stanza: 

"  By  midnight  moons,  o'er  moistening  dews, 

In  vestments  for  the  chase  arrayed, 
The  hunter  still  the  deer  pursues, 

The  hunter  and  the  deer — a  shade."  * 

Moreover,  a  similar  depredation  was  committed  upon  Fre- 
neau  by  a  writer  of  far  greater  genius  than  Campbell,  and 
under  far  less  need  than  he  to  help  himself  in  that  way  to 
other  people's  property.  Every  reader  of  "  Marmion  "  will 
have  noticed  a  certain  fine  stroke  in  the  "  Introduction  to 
Canto  Third,"  where  the  poet,  in  his  apostrophe  to  the 
heroic  Duke  of  Brunswick,  exclaims, — 

"  Lamented  chief  ! — not  thine  the  power 
To  save  in  that  illustrious  hour, 
When  Prussia  hurried  to  the  field, 
And  snatched  the  spear — but  left  the  shield."  ' 

Here,  again,  the  last  and  the  best  line  of  the  passage  is  bor- 
rowed— with  the  change  of  a  single  word,  and  also  without 
acknowledgment — from  a  poem  of  Freneau's  entitled  "  To 
the  Memory  of  the  Brave  Americans,  under  General  Greene, 
who  fell  in  the  Action  of  September  8,  1781,"  4  a  poem  of 
which  Sir  Walter  Scott  long  afterward  said,  that  it  was 

i     !  "  The  Complete  Poetical  Works  of  Thomas  Campbell,"  58. 
*  "  Poems  on  Several  Occasions,"  89. 
8  "  The  Poetical  Works  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,"  ii.  '130. 
4  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  203-204. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  179 

as  fine  a  thing  as  there  is  of  the  kind  in  the  language."  ' 
Perhaps,  however,  in  all  the  record  that  might  be  made 
of  these  oblique  transmarine  tributes  to  the  poetic  worth  of 
Philip  Freneau,  nothing  is  more  notable  for  its  generous 
largeness  of  furtive  appreciation,  than  the  homage  which 
was  paid  to  him  by  a  high-born  British  lady — a  sister  of  Sir 
Everard  Home — one  Mistress  Anne  Hunter,  who,  in  1802, 
published  a  volume  of  poems  wherein  she  gave  prominence 
to  a  plaintive  ballad  which  she  entitled  "  The  Death  Song," 
and  which,  putting  it  forward  as  her  own,  she  described  as 
having  been  "  written  for,  and  adapted  to,  an  original 
Indian  air."  In  an  ingenuous  note,  the  good  lady  sweetly 
tells  us  just  how  the  idea  of  writing  the  poem  had  first 
occurred  to  her,  and  just  what  was  her  artistic  purpose  in 
writing  it,  namely,  "  to  give  something  of  the  characteristic 
spirit  and  sentiment  of  those  brave  savages."  *  Twenty-five 
years  afterward,  among  the  verses  chosen  by  Alexander 
Dyce  to  represent  her  work  in  his  "  Specimens  of  British 
Poetesses,"  a  place  was  given  to  "The  Death  Song"; 
whereupon,  the  editor  of  "  Blackwood's  Magazine  "  singled 
out  this  particular  poem  of  hers  as  the  one  most  worthy  of 
praise.  "  Her  '  Death  Song,'  "  said  he,  "  is  a  noble  strain, 
almost  worthy  of  Campbell  himself."  '  Would  any  British 
critic,  in  that  acrimonious  time,  have  bestowed  such  ap- 
plause on  Mrs.  Hunter's  "  Death-Song,"  had  he  known 
that,  except  for  a  few  mutilations,  it  was  not  Mrs.  Hunter's 
at  all,  but  Philip  Freneau's,  by  whom  it  had  been  published 
in  an  American  magazine 4  many  years  before,  over  his  own 
name,  and  under  the  full  title  of  "  The  Death-Song  of  a 
Cherokee  Indian  "  ?  At  any  rate,  the  poet  who  was  capa- 
ble of  producing  lines  fit  to  be  thus  blended  with  their  own 

'  This  was  said  to  Mr.  Henry  Brevoort,  who  reported  the  conversation  to  the 
brothers  Duyckinck.  "  Cyclopaedia  of  American  Literature,"  i.  349. 

s  Mrs.  Hunter's  volume  I  have  not  seen.  These  sentences  are  cited  by 
Duyckinck,  ibid.  355  n,  from  Maria  Edgeworth's  "  Rosamond,"  where  once 
more  poor  Freneau's  work  is  quoted — and  the  honor  given  to  some  one  else. 

8  "  Blackwood's  Magazine,"  xli.  409. 

4  "  The  American  Museum,"  i.  77,  in  1787. 


180  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

by  Thomas  Campbell  and  Walter  Scott,  and  of  such  true 
lustre  as  to  catch  the  eye  of  any  critical  reader,  as  they 
sparkled  among  those  gems  of  poetic  strass  with  which  they 
were  intermingled  by  the  honorable  lady  who  had  conde- 
scended to  claim  them  as  her  own,  was  not  forced  into  the 
field  of  satire  for  lack  of  genius  to  succeed  in  some  higher 
sphere  of  poetry. 

IX. 

It  is  a  striking  proof  of  the  genuine  poetic  life  then  begin- 
ning to  spring  up  in  America — though  soon  to  be  crushed 
down  again  by  the  turbulence  of  the  times — that  the  year 
1770 — the  year  in  which  Wordsworth  was  born — proved  to 
be  for  Philip  Freneau,  then  a  college  lad  of  eighteen,  a  year 
of  uncommon  prolificacy  in  the  production  of  verse,  and  of 
verse  which,  like  Wordworth's,  and  of  course  long  before 
Wordsworth's,  was  emancipated  from  the  poetic  manner- 
isms of  that  age.  For  example,  "  The  Power  of  Fancy,"  in 
rhymed  tetrameters — alert,  elastic,  full  of  music  and  motion 
- — wholly  discards  the  sing-song,  the  artificial  phraseology, 
and  the  stilted  movement  then  so  common  in  English 
poetry,  and  breathes  out  a  lively  and  sweet  note,  at  once 
reminiscent  of  the  minor  verse  of  Milton  in  the  century 
before,  and  prophetic,  also,  of  some  strains  of  the  Lake 
Poets  in  the  century  after  : 

"  Wakeful,  vagrant,  restless  thing, 
Ever  wandering  on  the  wing, 
Who  thy  wondrous  source  can  find, 
FANCY,  regent  of  the  mind  ! 

On  the  surface  of  the  brain 

Night  after  night  she  walks  unseen  ; 

Noble  fabrics  doth  she  raise 

In  the  woods  or  on  the  seas, 

On  some  high,  steep,  pointed  rock, 

Where  the  billows  loudly  knock, 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  j8l 

And  the  dreary  tempests  sweep 
Clouds  along  the  uncivil  deep. 


'  Lo  !  she  walks  upon  the  moon, 
Listens  to  the  chimy  tune 
Of  the  bright  harmonious  spheres, 
And  the  song  of  angels  hears  ; 
Sees  this  earth  a  distant  star, 
Pendent,  floating  in  the  air  ; 
Leads  me  to  some  lonely  dome, 
Where  Religion  loves  to  come, 
Where  the  bride  of  Jesus  dwells, 
And  the  deep-toned  organ  swells 
In  notes  with  lofty  anthems  joined — 
Notes  that  half  distract  the  mind. 

Now  like  lightning  she  descends 
To  the  prison  of  the  Fiends, 
Hears  the  rattling  of  the  chains, 
Feels  their  never-ceasing  pains — 
But,  O  never  may  she  tell 
Half  the  frightfulness  of  hell. 

Lo  !  she  leads  me  wide  and  far, 

Sense  can  never  follow  her — 

Shape  thy  course  o'er  land  and  sea, 

Help  me  to  keep  pace  with  thee, 

Lead  me  to  yon  chalky  cliff, 

Over  rock  and  over  reef, 

Into  Britain's  fertile  land 

Stretching  far  her  proud  command  : 

Look  back  and  view,  through  many  a  year, 

Caesar,  Julius  Caesar,  there. 

FANCY,  thou  the  Muses'  pride, 
In  thy  painted  realms  reside, 
Endless  images  of  things^ 
Fluttering  each  on  golden  wings, 


182  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION.. 

Ideal  objects,  such  a  store, 
The  universe  could  hold  no  more  : 
FANCY,  to  thy  power  I  owe 
Half  my  happiness  below  ; 
By  thee  Elysian  groves  were  made, 
Thine  were  the  notes  that  Orpheus  played  ; 
By  thee  was  Pluto  charmed  so  well 
/        While  rapture  seized  the  sons  of  hell ; 
Come,  O  come,  perceived  by  none, 
You  and  I  will  walk  alone."  ' 

So,  too,  in  Freneau's  little  poem  called  "  Retirement," 
written  probably  a  year  or  two  after  Wordsworth  was  born, 
one  catches  tones  that  anticipate  the  poetic  and  spiritual 
traits  of  that  mighty  maker  and  master  of  the  new  era  of 
English  song, — his  love  of  nature  and  of  solitude,  his  moral 
independence,  his  serenity,  his  joyous  unworldliness,  even 
his  simplicity  of  form  : 

"  A  hermit's  house  beside  a  stream, 
With  forests  planted  round, 
Whatever  it  to  you  may  seem, 
More  real  happiness  I  deem 
Than  if  I  were  a  monarch  crowned. 

"  A  cottage  I  could  call  my  own, 
Remote  from  domes  of  care  ; 
A  little  garden,  walled  with  stone, 
The  wall  with  ivy  overgrown, 
A  limpid  fountain  near, 

"Would  more  substantial  joys  afford, 
More  real  bliss  impart, 
Than  all  the  wealth  that  misers  hoard, 
Than  vanquished  worlds,  or  worlds  restored, — 
Mere  cankers  of  the  heart  ! 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  21-25. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  183 

Vain  foolish  man  !  how  vast  thy  pride, 
How  little  can  thy  wants  supply  ! — 
'T  is  surely  wrong  to  grasp  so  wide — 
To  act  as  if  we  only  had 
To  triumph — not  to  die  ! "  ' 

1  "The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  52. 


CHAPTER   IX. 

BEGINNINGS  OF  NEW    LIFE    IN    VERSE    AND  PROSE:     NEW 
ENGLAND.        1763-1775. 

I. — The  intellectual  activity  of  New  England  expressed  in  religious  discourse, 
in  historical  narrative,  and  in  controversy — The  lack  of  poetic  life  there 
— Benjamin  Church — Phillis  Wheatly. 

II. — The  promise  of  higher  work  in  American  letters  centres  in  two  young  men, 
Philip  Freneau  at  Princeton,  and  John  Trumbull  at  New  Haven — Trum- 
bull's  ancestry — His  intellectual  precocity. 

III. — Trumbull  as  an  undergraduate  at  Yale  College  from  1763  to  1767 — 
As  a  graduate-student  from  1767  to  1770 — The  range  and  character  of  his 
scholarship — A  group  of  clever  young  men  of  letters  associated  with  him 
there — Their  admiration  for  the  Queen  Anne  writers. 

IV. — Trumbull's  first  publication,  a  series  of  ten  essays  called  "  The  Meddler," 
1769  to  1770. 

V. — Trumbull  publishes  the  first  eight  of  the  essays  of  "  The  Correspondent," 
February  to  July,  1770 — The  new  tone  in  American  letters. 

VI. — Trumbull's  plea  in  1770  for  the  fine  arts  in  America,  especially  for  the 
aesthetic  quality  in  literature. 

VII. — Recognition  of  Trumbull's  poetic  promise  in  1770 — A  tutor  at  Yale  from 
1771  to  1773 — Tries  to  give  a  more  modern  and  literary  tone  to  its  studies 
— His  own  models  in  English  verse — His  "  Ode  to  Sleep,"  in  1773. 

VIIT. — Trumbull  publishes,  in  1773,  a  new  series  of  the  essays  of  "The  Cor- 
respondent." 

IX. — Trumbull's  place  as  a  social  satirist  in  verse — The  quality  of  his  satire — 
His  satirical  trilogy,  "  The  Progress  of  Dullness." 

I. 

FROM  the  earliest  colonial  days,  the  town  of  Boston  had 
been  the  chief  seat  of  intellectual  activity  in  New  England ; 
but  such  activity  had  there  found  its  favorite  employment 
in  religious  discourse,  in  historical  narrative,  and  in  contro- 
versy— theological  or  political.  This  was  particularly  the 
case  during  the  period  of  the  Revolution.  Able  sermon- 
writers  there  were  then  in  eastern  Massachusetts,  clever 
184 


JIOS'J'ON  POE'J'S.  185 

political  essayists,  and  two  or  three  historians  of  no  con- 
temptible ability ;  but  the  most  persevering  search  into 
what  has  survived  of  the  writings  produced  in  that  neigh- 
borhood, between  the  years  1763  and  1783,  has  thus  far 
failed  to  reveal  to  our  eyes  any  token  of  promise  for  genu- 
ine work  in  poetry  in  that  part  of  the  world.  Even  those 
highly-wrought  fabrications  in  the  nature  of  classical  trag- 
edy, which  were  elaborated  by  Mercy  Otis  Warren  during 
the  anguish  of  that  time,  furnish  no  materials  for  an  excep- 
tion to  the  statement  just  made.  Indeed,  the  depth  of  the 
poetic  poverty  into  which  that  very  cultivated  community 
had  then  fallen,  can  perhaps  be  indicated  in  no  more  con- 
clusive way  than  by  a  frank  mention  of  the  two  most  con- 
spicuous verse-writers  whom  Boston  has  to  offer  to  our 
notice  for  the  entire  period  now  under  consideration. 

One  of  these  was  Benjamin  Church,  physician,  politician, 
essayist,  and  poet, — a  man  of  glib  and  fervid  expression, 
with  numerous  showy  gifts,  but  shallow,  volatile,  false.  He 
was  born  in  1734;  he  was  graduated  at  Harvard  in  1754;  he 
was  thereafter  for  some  time  a  student  of  medicine  in  Lon- 
don ;  and  from  the  date  of  his  return  to  Massachusetts, 
about  the  year  1756,  to  that  of  his  enforced  and  ignominious 
departure  from  it,  about  twenty  years  later,  he  was  lavish 
in  his  literary  tributes  to  the  public, — the  chief  of  them 
being,  in  1757,  a  didactic  poem,  entitled  "  The  Choice"; 
in  1761,  a  poem  in  "  Pietas  and  Gratulatio  " ;  in  1765, 
"  The  Times,  a  Poem  by  an  American,"  being  a  rather 
toothless  satire  on  the  Stamp  Act  and  other  political  atroci- 
ties';  in  1766,  an  "  Elegy  on  the  Death  of  the  Reverend 
Jonathan  Mayhew  "  ;  in  1769,  a  poem  in  vituperation  of  Sir 
Francis  Bernard,  entitled  "  An  Address  to  a  Provincial 
Bashaw  "  ;  in  1770,  "  An  Elegy  to  the  Memory  of  ... 
the  Reverend  Mr.  George  Whitefield  ";  and,  in  1773,  the 
municipal  oration  on  the  Boston  massacre.*  No  complete 

1  A  full  reprint  of  this  satire  may  be  found  in  Kettell,  "  Specimens  of  Ameri- 
can Poetry,"  i.  149-156. 

8  Reprinted  in  Niles,  "  Principles  and  Acts,"  etc.,  8-12. 


1 86  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

report  can  now  be  made,  or  would  be  worth  making,  of  this 
man's  other  scribblements, — beyond  number  or  recognition, 
in  prose  and  verse,  argumentative,  sentimental,  comic,  eulo- 
gistic, abusive, — the  writer  himself  masquerading  under 
various  pseudonyms,  and  advocating  with  equal  zeal  the 
opposite  sides  of  the  same  political  question.  Finally,  of 
all  the  productions  of  this  loquacious  charlatan,  nothing 
seems  deserving  of  further  recall,  unless  it  be  two  stanzas  in 
his  tribute  to  Jonathan  Mayhew,  wherein,  apparently 
unconscious  of  the  possible  application  to  himself  of  the 
latter  part  of  them,  he  gives  it  as  the  function  of  the  Muse: 

"  Deep  into  times  rolled  by,  to  dart  her  ken  ; 

At  the  tribunal  of  the  lordly  mind, 
T'  arraign  the  conduct  of  the  mightiest  men, 
Acquit,  or  doom,  the  Nimrods  of  mankind  ; 

"  To  sift  the  motive  stript  of  wily  glare, 

And  through  each  cell  the  lurking  guilt  pursue, — 
The  heart  dissecting,  till  the  bottom  bare 
Betrays  the  villain  to  the  naked  view."  ' 

The  other  prominent  representative  of  the  town  of  Bos- 
ton in  the  poetry  of  this  period  is  Phillis  Wheatley,  a  gentle- 
natured  and  intelligent  slave-girl,  whose  name  still  survives 
among  us  in  the  shape  of  a  tradition  vaguely  testifying  to 
the  existence  of  poetic  talent  in  this  particular  member  of 
the  African  race.  Unfortunately,  a  glance  at  what  she 
wrote  will  show  that  there  is  no  adequate  basis  for  such 
tradition,  and  that  the  significance  of  her  career  belongs 
rather  to  the  domain  of  anthropology,  or  of  hagiology,  than 
to  that  of  poetry — whether  American  or  African.  Her 
verses,  which  were  first  published  in  a  collected  form  in 
London  in  1773,  under  the  title  of  "  Poems  on  Various 
Subjects,  Religious  and  Moral,"  attracted  for  a  time  consid- 

1  "  Elegy  on Mayhew,"  4.     By  the  courtesy  of  the   Boston  Athenaeum 

I  had  the  use  of  its  copy  of  this  poem, — a  copy  which  once  belonged  to  A.  Eliot, 
and  in  which  the  poem  is  attributed  to  Church. 


PHILLIS    WHEATLEY.  1 87 

crable  curiosity,  both  in  England  and  in  America, — not  at 
all,  however,  because  the  verses  were  good,  but  because 
they  were  written  by  one  from  whom  even  bad  verses  were 
too  good  to  be  expected.  In  1784,  under  her  new  name  of 
Phillis  Peters,  she  published  in  Boston  a  poem  entitled 
Liberty  and  Peace,"  suggested  by  the  happy  ending  of 
the  Revolutionary  war.  This  production,  however,  makes 
no  change  in  the  evidence  touching  her  poetic  gifts.1 

II. 

To  any  one  who  may  care  to  bring  together  and  to  scru- 
tinize the  multitudinous  productions  of  American  writers 
for  the  period  now  under  review,  it  will  become  plain  that, 
at  about  the  year  1770,  the  chief  hope  for  a  new  and 
stronger  life  among  us,  either  in  poetry  or  in  prose,  lay  in 
the  destinies  of  two  very  young  men,  one  of  them,  Philip 
Freneau,  an  undergraduate  at  Princeton,  the  other,  John 
Trumbull,  a  graduate-student  still  in  residence  at  Yale; 
both  of  them  at  about  that  time  doing  things  that  denoted 
the  presence  here  of  finer  poetic  genius  than  had  yet  spoken 
out  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic ;  both  of  them,  also,  after- 
ward driven  by  the  storms  of  the  Revolution,  at  first  reluc- 
tantly and  under  protest,  into  the  service  of  the  country  as 
political  satirists.  In  a  previous  chapter,  some  account  has 
been  given  of  the  early  training  and  equipment,  and  of  the 
early  poetic  work,  of  Freneau.  A  similar  account  has  now 
to  be  given  of  Trumbull,  especially  for  the  period  of  his 
literary  life  prior  to  his  engulfment  in  the  ferocious  contro- 
versies of  the  Revolution.1 

1  A  little  book,  entitled  "Letters  of  Phillis  Wheatley,  the  Negro-Slave  Poet 
of  Boston,"  and  edited  by  Charles  Deane,  was  privately  printed  in  Boston  in 
1864, — at  a  time  when  testimony  as  to  the  intellectual  capacity  of  the  negro  race 
was  much  desired.  But  poor  Phillip's  efforts  in  prose  have  no  more  value  in 
that  direction  than  have  her  efforts  in  verse, — these  letters  being  little  else  than 
pious  and  almost  infantile  platitudes  expressed  in  extremely  stilted  English. 

9  For  his  livelihood,  Trumbull  early  adopted  the  profession  of  the  law, — a 
profession  which,  in  America,  has  thus  far  been  the  receptacle  and  the  tomb  for 
much  talent  that  under  other  conditions  would  have  found  a  more  congenial 


1 88  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

John  Trumbull  was  born  in  Waterbury,  Connecticut,  on 
the  24th  of  April,  1750.  Both  on  his  father's  side  and  on 
his  mother's  he  was  of  the  pure  Brahmin  stock  of  New  Eng- 
land,— a  stock  prolific  of  scholars,  teachers,  magistrates,  and 
divines.  Moreover,  the  very  name  of  Trumbull,  if  we  may 
yield  our  faith  to  a  picturesque  tradition,  was  originally  the 
coinage  and  the  grateful  gift  of  an  English  king,  who  owed 
his  life  to  the  valor  of  the  earliest  perceptible  ancestor  of 
this  family.  As  King  Henry — the  tradition  very  properly 
shuns  the  vulgarity  of  being  too  specific — was  one  day 
walking  in  the  park,  a  mad  bull,  which  had  escaped  from 
Smithfield  and  was  filled  with  a  diabolical  spirit  of  murder, 
made  at  his  majesty,  and  was  about  to  gore  his  sacred  per- 
son, when  a  yeoman  of  his  guard  rushed  upon  the  scene, 
and,  at  the  peril  of  his  own  life,  saved  that  of  the  king.  For 
this  good  deed,  the  king  gave  his  yeoman  a  pension  of  one 
hundred  marks  a  year;  also  the  expressive  name  of  Turn- 
bull  ;  likewise  a  coat-of-arms  copiously  enriched  with  the 
appropriate  taurine  imagery,  to  wit,  "  three  bulls'  heads, 
with  their  fronts  displayed,  and  a  bull's  head  for  the  crest. "  ! 

and  a  more  illustrious  employment  in  literature.  In  spite  of  frequent  interrup- 
tions from  frail  bodily  health,  Trumbull  became  an  eminent  lawyer.  In  due 
time,  he  was  made  State  Attorney  for  the  County  of  Hartford,  member  of  the 
legislature,  a  Judge  of  the  Superior  Court  of  the  State,  and  finally  a  Judge  of 
its  Supreme  Court  of  Errors.  In  the  year  1825,  being  then  seventy-five  years 
of  age,  he  went  to  live  with  his  daughter,  Mrs.  William  Woodbridge,  at  Detroit 
— at  that  time  a  petty  though  ancient  post  in  the  depths  of  the  American  wil- 
derness. Soon  after  setting  forth  upon  that  long  and  arduous  journey,  the  old 
lawyer  and  poet  tarried  awhile  in  New  York,  where  he  was  entertained  at  a 
great  banquet  given  in  his  honor  by  the  lawyers  and  men  of  letters  of  that  city. 
In  Detroit  he  remained  until  his  death  in  1831  ;  and  his  grave,  marked  by  a 
fitting  monument,  is  in  the  beautiful  cemetery  of  Elmwood,  near  that  city. 
Through  the  friendship  of  his  grandson,  Mr.  Dudley  Bradstreet  Woodbridge, 
— a  friendship  which  began  between  us  in  my  own  boyhood, — I  have  had  access 
to  the  private  papers  of  John  Trumbull  ;  and  from  these  I  have  been  enabled, 
in  the  present  volume,  to  make  considerable  additions  to  what  has  hitherto  been 
known  in  our  time  concerning  the  very  striking  early  work,  both  in  prose  and 
in  verse,  of  the  author  of  "  M'Fingal."  To  these  papers  I  shall  refer  in  my 
footnotes  as  Trumbull  MSS. 
1  Trumbull  MSS. 


JOHN    TRUMBULL,  189 

Sometime  afterward,  one  of  this  yeoman's  posterity,  having 
married  an  heiress  in  the  west  of  England,  and  being 
anxious  to  disguise  the  plebeian  suggestiveness  of  his  name, 
— which  in  sooth  might  bespeak  an  ancestral  butcher  or 
herdsman  quite  as  well  as  hero, — procured  the  same  to  be 
changed  to  Trumbull.  Although  the  most  noted  American 
branch  of  the  family  wear  their  patronymic  in  this  trans- 
posed form,  something  of  the  fearlessness  which  gained  for 
the  original  Turn-bull  his  valor-breathing  name,  seems  to 
have  survived  in  that  particular  member  of  the  family, 
whose  acquaintance  we  are  now  about  to  make,  and  who,  as 
a  social  and  political  satirist,  went  forth  betimes  and  defied 
the  horns  of  many  a  monster,  madder  perhaps,  and  more 
dangerous,  than  the  mad  bull  of  Smithfield. 

Should  John  Trumbull  cease  to  be  remembered  among  us 
for  his  achievements  as  a  grown-up  man,  it  may  be  safe  to 
say  that  he  will  still  deserve  some  sort  of  renown  for  the 
prodigies  he  wrought  while  yet  in  his  babyhood,  and  imme- 
diately after  that  brilliant  epoch  in  his  career.  In  the  rec- 
ords of  intellectual  precocity,  scarcely  anything  can  be  cited 
more  remarkable  than  some  of  the  things  that  are  recorded 
of  this  amazing  little  creature  at  a  period  of  life  when  ordi- 
nary mortals  are  sufficiently  employed  in  absorbing  and 
digesting  a  lacteal  diet  and  in  getting  forward  with  their 
primary  set  of  teeth.  Before  he  was  two  years  old,  he  could 
say  by  heart  all  the  verses  in  the  "  Primer,"  and  all  of 
Watts's  "  Divine  Songs  for  Children."  As  soon  as  he.  had 
reached  the  considerable  age  of  two,  he  began  to  learn  to 
read ;  which  mystery  he  acquired  within  the  next  half-year. 
Even  prior  to  the  age  of  four,  he  had  read  the  entire  Bible 
through ;  and  by  that  year  he  had  also  read  all  of  Watts's 
"  Lyrics,"  *  and  was  able  to  repeat  them  all  without  book. 
Emulous,  no  doubt,  of  the  laurels  of  the  heavenly  and 
much  desired  Watts,  he  began  at  about  the  age  of  four  to 

1  Stiles,  "Itinerary,"  iv.  204,  MS.  Probably  an  American  selection  from 
the  "  Horse  Lyricae"  is  meant. 


190  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

make  verses  for  himself,  as  much  as  possible  in  the  true 
Wattsian  manner;  but  not  having  as  yet  advanced  so  far  in 
learning  as  to  be  able  to  write,  he  could  only  preserve  these 
valuable  productions  by  storing  them  away  in  his  memory. 
At  five,  being  still  unable  to  write,  he  hit  upon  the  device 
of  transcribing  his  verses  by  imitating  printed  letters.  His 
first  attempt  of  this  kind  consisted  of  four  stanzas  of  an 
original  hymn,  and  his  "  scrawl  of  it  filled  a  complete  sheet 
of  paper."  '  Having  perceived  a  want  of  connection 
between  the  third  and  the  fourth  lines  of  one  of  his  stanzas, 
this  weird  urchin  was  greatly  perplexed  thereby;  but  "  after 
lying  awake  some  nights,"  meditating  upon  the  problem, 
he  finally  solved  it  by  the  proper  verbal  corrections.  Near 
the  end  of  his  fifth  year,  his  father,  who  was  the  village- 
pastor  at  Waterbury,  received  into  his  house  as  a  pupil,  to 
be  instructed  for  admission  to  Yale  College,  a  lad  of  seven- 
teen years,  one  William  Southmayd.  At  the  outset,  this 
lad  was  required  to  learn  both  the  Latin  Accidence  and 
Lilly's  Latin  Grammar;  also,  with  the  help  of  a  translation, 
to  construe  the  Select  Colloquies  of  Corderius.  While  the 
anguish  of  this  task  was  in  progress,  the  pastor's  little  boy, 
loitering  unobserved  in  the  study,  was  accustomed  to  listen 
to  the  Latin  words  which  were  spoken  by  teacher  and 
pupil;  and  in  this  way,  before  his  father  knew  of  it,  he  had 
learned  one  half  of  Lilly's  Grammar.  For  example,  he 

learned  '  Quae  genus  '  by  heart  in  a  day."  When  at  last 
the  pastor  became  aware  of  these  secret  depredations  upon 
classical  knowledge  on  the  part  of  his  son,  he  allowed  the 
little  fellow  to  join  regularly  in  the  work,  in  which  indeed 
the  youngster  "soon  outstripped  the  elder  student;  and  in 
September  of  the  following  year,  1757,  the  two  lads,  one 
being  nineteen  years  of  age,  and  the  other  seven,  "  were 
presented  at  college,  examined  by  the  tutors,  and  ad- 
mitted as  members."  "  On  this  occasion,  a  boy  of  twelve 
years,  Nathaniel  Emmons,  afterward  famous  as  a  theo- 
logian, held  the  little  candidate  on  his  lap,  while  the  exam- 

1  Trumbull  MSS.          2  Trumbull,  "  Poetical  Works,"  ed.  1820,  Mem.  10. 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  191 

ination  proceeded.1  What  were  the  requirements  at  that 
time  exacted  for  admission  to  Yale  College  may  be  seen  in 
the  following  statute  printed  in  the  year  1759:  "  Admis- 
sionem  in  hoc  Collegium  Nemo  expectet,  nisi  qui  £  Praesidis 
et  Tutorum  Examine,  Tullium,  Virgilium  et  Testamentum 
Graecum  extempore  legere,  ad  Unguem  redere,  ac  gram- 
matice  resolvere,  et  Prosa  veram  Latinitatem  scribere 
potuerit ;  et  Prosodiae  ac  Arithmetices  vulgaris  Regulas 
perdidicerit :  atque  Testimonium  idoneum  de  Vita  ac  Mori- 
bus  inculpatis  exhibuerit. "  a  Long  afterward,  Trumbull 
himself  stated  to  President  Stiles  that  within  the  year  and  a 
half  now  referred  to  he  had  "  learned  Cordery,  Tully's  XII 
Select  Orations,  Virgil's  Eclogues,  and  all  the  ^Eneid  (not 
Georg.),  and  4  Gospels  in  Greek." 

It  need  not  surprise  us  that  the  success  of  so  young  a  boy 
in  passing  these  requirements,  seemed  at  that  time  a  mar- 
vel fit  to  be  chronicled  in  the  newspapers.  "  The  Connecti- 
cut Gazette,"  for  September  24,  1757,  mentions  it  in  these 
words:  "  At  the  Commencement  in  this  Town  the  I4th 
Instant,  .  .  .  among  those  that  appear'd  to  be  exam- 
ined for  Admission,  was  the  Son  of  the  Rev'd  Mr.  Trumble, 
of  Waterbury,  who  passed  a  good  Examination,  altho'  but 
little  more  than  seven  Years  of  Age ;  but  on  account  of  his 
Youth  his  Father  does  not  intend  he  shall  at  present  con- 
tinue at  College."  4 

In  consequence  of  this  sensible  decision  on  the  part  of 
the  "  Rev'd  Mr.  Trumble,"  our  juvenile  phenomenon  was 
kept  at  home  six  years  longer;  during  which  period,  of 
course,  his  brain  could  not  remain  idle.  For  one  thing,  he 
then  made  a  still  more  extended  reading  of  the  Greek  and 
Roman  authors,  especially  of  Homer,  Horace,  and  Cicero. 

1  E.  A.  Park,  in  "  Works  of  Emmons,"  i.  page  clxviii. 

*  For  a  copy  of  this* statute,  I  am  indebted  to  Professor  F.  B.  Dexter,  M.A., 
Registrar  of  the  Faculty,  and  author  of  "  Sketch  of  the  History  of  Yale  Univer- 
sity," and  of  two  volumes  of  "  Biographical  Sketches  of  the  Graduates  of  Yale 
College." 

3  Stiles,  "  Itinerary  1785-8,"  iv.  204-5,  MS. 

4  J.  Hammond  Trumbull,  "  The  Origin  of  M'Fingal,"  6  n. 


IQ2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Not  many  books  in  English  literature  were  to  be  found  in 
his  father's  library,  which  consisted  chiefly  of  theological 
writings  and  of  the  ancient  classics.  At  the  age  of  eight, 
however,  the  boy  read  for  the  first  time  "  Paradise  Lost," 
Thomson's  "  Seasons,"  an  English  version  of  "  Telema- 
chus,"  and,  above  all,  "  The  Spectator";  and  upon  this 
not  ill-assorted  stock  of  modern  literature,  he  continued  to 
nourish  his  spirit  until  he  went  to  college.1  Before  he 
reached  the  age  of  nine,  he  had  put  into  English  verse  one 
half  of  "  The  Psalms  of  David  ";  but  in  the  midst  of  this 
labor,  he  happened  to  fall  in  with  Watts's  version,  where- 
upon, in  despair,  he  "laid  aside  and  burnt  his  own."* 
Moreover,  he  had  a  memory  so  quick  and  tenacious  that, 
even  as  a  child,  he  was  sometimes  induced  to  test  its  powers 
by  feats  performed  for  a  wager.  Thus,  when  nine  years 
old,  he  attempted  under  such  stimulus  to  commit  to  mem- 
ory in  a  quarter  of  an  hour  the  Hungarian  version  of  the 
Lord's  Prayer,  as  given  in  Salmon's  "  Geographical  and 
Historical  Grammar."  He  more  than  won  the  bet;  for, 
after  learning  the  Lord's  prayer  in  the  Hungarian  language, 
he  had  time  enough  left  over  to  learn  it  in  Malabar  also ; 
and  both  versions  he  retained  in  memory  as  late  as  twenty- 
nine  years  afterward,  when  he  repeated  one  of  them  to 
President  Stiles.3 

III. 

In  September,  1763,  being  then  thirteen  years  of  age,  he 
was  deemed  old  enough  to  take  up  his  residence  at  the  col- 
lege ;  but  as  he  had  by  that  time  read  nearly  all  the  Greek 
and  Latin  authors  studied  there,  he  was  advised  by  his 
tutor  to  give  his  chief  attention  to  algebra,  geometry,  and 
astronomy,  which  he  did  during  the  first  three  years  of  his 
course  as  an  undergraduate.4  In  his  senior  year,  however, 
he  went  back  to  his  earlier  studies  in  English  literature, 
having,  of  course,  access  to  a  much  wider  range  of  authors 

1  Stiles,  "  Itinerary,"  M.S.  J  Ibid.  » Ibid. 

4Trumbull,  "  Poetical  Works,"  ed.  1820,  Mem.  n. 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  193 

than  he  had  enjoyed  at  his  father's  house.  Taking  his  first 
degree  in  1767,  he  continued  to  reside  at  the  college  as 
Dean's  Scholar  until  1770,  in  which  year  he  received  the 
degree  of  Master. 

Those  years,  from  1767  to  1770,  were  for  him  a  period  of 
the  most  delightful  and  the  most  fruitful  activity  in  literary 
culture.  His  time  was  his  own ;  he  had  the  stimulus  of 
congenial  literary  companionship ;  and  he  seems  to  have 
given  himself  up,  with  unbounded  enjoyment,  to  a  pro- 
longed and  critical  study  of  what  was  then  called  "  polite 
literature."  During  those  years  he  read,  in  some  cases  for 
the  second  or  third  time,  "  all  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics, 
especially  the  poets  and  orators  "  ;  while  to  the  writers  then 
dominant  in  English  literature,  he  surrendered  himself  with 
great  zest,  delighting  in  their  gayety  of  tone  and  in  their 
lightness  of  touch,  and  trying  to  reproduce  their  manner  in 
literary  experiments  of  his  own.  It  should  be  mentioned, 
too,  that  there  were  among  his  contemporaries  at  Yale  sev- 
eral young  fellows  of  unusual  ability,  and  with  literary  tastes 
not  unlike  his  own, — such  as  Joseph  Howe,  Buckingham  St. 
John,  Timothy  Dwight,  Joseph  Buckminster,  and  David 
Humphreys, — young  fellows  of  Puritan  ancestry  and  of 
Puritan  nurture,  and  with  an  ineradicable  strain  of  Puritan 
earnestness,  yet  elate  like  himself  with  brilliant  gifts,  full  of 
the  fire,  mirth,  and  ambition  of  youth,  and  all  aglow  with 
enthusiasm  for  the  later  English  poets,  essayists,  and  satir- 
ists, whose  writings  brought  to  them  the  spell  of  a  higher 
and  a  finer  literary  method  than  had  hitherto  been  known 
in  America;  and  sent  the  unwonted  charm  of  urbane  crit- 
icism and  of  high-bred  playfulness  down  into  the  ponderous 
and  uncouth  erudition,  the  grimness,  the  provincialism, 
the  controversial  truculence,  then  to  some  degree  character- 
istic of  the  intellectual  life  of  New  England. 

IV. 

Trumbull's  earliest  literary  undertaking  was  a  series  of 
essays,  the  form  and  tone  of  which  he  caught  from  the 


I94 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


Queen  Anne  writers,  particularly  Addison  and  Steele. 
These  essays,  which  bore  the  happy  title  of  "  The  Med- 
dler," and  were  "  chiefly  of  the  moral,  critical,  and  poetical 
kind,  upon  miscellaneous  and  mostly  disconnected  sub- 
jects," '  made  their  appearance  in  "  The  Boston  Chronicle," 
beginning  with  the  4th  of  September,  1769,  and  ending  with 
the  22d  of  January,  1770."  Each  number  is  decorated  with 
a  Latin  quotation,  usually  from  Persius,  or  Horace,  or  Ver- 
gil. Under  the  masque  of  his  pseudonym,  the  author 
makes  playful  allusion  to  his  own  pretended  foibles,  and  to 
those  of  a  few  literary  friends  whom  he  meets  at  his  club, — 
such  as  Mr.  Thomas  Freeman,  John  Manly,  Esq.,  and  "  the 
youthful  gay  Jack  Dapperwit,  who  is  lineally  descended 
from  the  famous  Tom  Dapperwit."  Moreover,  in  this  lit- 
erary undertaking,  he  frankly  avows  an  aesthetic  purpose,  as 
something  quite  aside  from  that  practical,  strenuous,  and 
hortatory  function  to  which  literature  had  been  commonly 
subjected  in  that  quarter  of  the  world.  "  My  essays,"  says 
he,  "  are  chiefly  designed  for  the  entertainment  of  those 
who  have  some  acquaintance  with  polite  literature  ;  but 
among  the  various  subjects  I  shall  discuss,  I  hope  every 
person  may  find  something  of  humor,  instruction,  or  amuse- 
ment, that  will  repay  the  trouble  of  a  perusal.  In  the 

1  Trumbull,  MSS.     My  citations  from  the  early  prose  essays  of  Trumbull  are 
made  from  copies  which  he  left  in  his  own  handwriting,  and  which  are  now  in 
my  possession. 
9  The  following  are  the  dates  of  the  publication  of  the  entire  series : — 

No.  i,  Sep.  4-7,  1769  ; 

No.  2,  Sep.  14-18  ; 

No.  3,  Oct.  23-26  ; 

No.  4,  Oct.  30-Nov.  2  ; 

No.  5,  Nov.  9-13  ; 

No.  6,  Nov.  3o-Dec.  4  ; 

No.  7,  Dec.  18-21  ; 

No.  8,  Dec.  28,  1769-Jan.  i,  1770  ; 

No.  9,  Jan.  11-15  I 

No.  10,  Jan.  18-22. 

Numbers  4,  6,  and  9  are  probably  not  by  Trumbull,  but  by  one  or  more  of  his 
literary  associates.  In  ascertaining  the  foregoing  dates,  I  used  the  file  of  "  The 
Boston  Chronicle  "  belonging  to  the  library  of  Yale  University. 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  195 

meantime,  I  think  myself  well  employed  in  contributing  my 
assistance  (how  trifling  soever  it  may  be)  towards  instruct- 
ing the  ignorant,  diverting  and  improving  the  learned,  rec- 
tifying the  taste  and  manners  of  the  times,  and  cultivating 
the  fine  arts  in  this  land." 

His  aptitude  for  the  work  of  censor  of  conversation  and 
manners,  is  well  shown  in  the  second  essay,  which  is  an 
exposition  of  true  and  false  wit.  "True  wit  is  always 
accompanied  with  good  nature,  politeness,  and  a  fine  taste; 
the  false,  with  the  grossest  offenses  against  modesty,  good 
manners,  and  good  sense.  I  shall  not  say  much  at  present 
concerning  wit  in  writing.  We  are  happily  passed  the  age 
or  era  of  Pun,  Crambo,  Anagram,  and  Acrostic.  Yet  I 
cannot  but  observe  that  the  magazines  and  such  miscel- 
laneous repositories  have  lately  been  stuffed  with  a  new  kind 
of  vermin,  begotten  between  the  Anagram  and  Riddle, 
called  the  Rebus,  which  is  the  most  pure,  refined,  and  sub- 
limated kind  of  nonsense  that  hath  appeared  in  any  age." 
Among  the  several  kinds  of  false  wit  then  often  displayed 
in  conversation,  is  that  special  form  of  raillery  "  which  con- 
sists in  putting  modest  people  to  the  blush,  by  insulting 
and  exposing  them  for  every  folly  or  defect  that  is  reported 
of  them,  of  their  relations,  or  the  town  or  country  to  which 
they  belong.  Whosoever  would  succeed  in  this  way,  must 
be  possessed  of  the  most  matchless  and  unparalleled  impu- 
dence; must  be  a  perfect  master  of  scandal  and  defamation; 
and  must  apply  himself  with  the  greatest  assiduity  to  study- 
ing the  noble  art  of  lying.  .  .  .  When  by  these  means 
he  has  attained  to  perfection,  I  will  engage  that  his  practice 
shall  be  crowned  with  the  laughter  of  fools,  the  blushes  of 
the  modest,  and  the  contempt  of  the  wise." 

In  the  fifth  number  is  introduced  a  contributor  who 
describes  himself  "  as  a  member  of  the  fraternity  of  au- 
thors." "  I  have  for  a  long  time,"  he  adds,  "  been  a 
retailer,  or  rather  a  peddler,  in  wit ;  but  my  stock  is  so  small 
and  my  credit  so  low,  that  I  am  in  danger  of  bankruptcy. 

1  Trumbull  MSS.  *  Ibid- 


196  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

I  have  published  essays,  songs,  jests,  satires,  almanacs,  con- 
troversy, politics,  prophecies,  and  letters  to  a  friend;  all 
which  the  ungrateful  world  have  neglected  and  despised ; 
so  that  I  must  abandon  the  trade,  unless  I  obtain  your 
speedy  assistance. "  "  In  my  productions,"  he  goes  on  to 
say,  "  I  shall  assume  the  title  of  a  Schemer, — for  which  I 
think  myself  pretty  well  qualified  ;  having  always  been 
obliged  to  live  by  my  wits,  and  employ  myself  in  contriving 
schemes  for  the  payment  of  an  old  debt,  or  the  contraction 
of  a  new  one.  ...  I  have  in  writing  innumerable 
schemes  on  all  subjects,  having  in  happier  days  been 
schemer  to  one  general,  two  prime  ministers,  several  misers, 
and  many  neglected  marriage-seekers  of  both  sexes,  for 
whom  I  have  invented  infallible  schemes  to  win  a  place,  an 
estate,  a  battle,  a  husband,  or  a  wife,  according  to  the 
respective  wants  of  each  petitioner.  I  have  farther,  as 
became  my  circumstances,  deeply  studied  the  rules  of  praise 
and  commendation,  and  read  critically  the  productions  of 
flattery  in  all  ages.  .  .  .  From  these,  especially  from 
the  poetical  addresses  of  Dryden,  the  odes  of  Boileau  in 
praise  of  the  French  king,  the  ministerial  writers  of  the 
present  day,  and  the  whole  herd  of  moneyless  poets,  I  have 
extracted  and  compounded  an  essay  which  I  esteem  the 
quintessence  of  panegyric  and  the  very  marrow  of  dedica- 
tion. This,  if  a  few  blanks  were  filled  with  the  name  and 
titles  of  some  person  of  quality,  would  make  a  splendid 
appearance  at  the  beginning  of  your  '  Meddler,'  if  ever 
those  papers  should  be  published  in  a  volume  by  them- 
selves." * 

In  the  essays  which  follow,  this  lively  and  versatile  contrib- 
utor makes  his  appearance  more  than  once,  and  each  time 
with  something  which  adds  to  their  piquant  flavor.  Here, 
for  example,  is  an  advertisement  which  he  has  prepared  for 
the  use  of  a  young  lady  at  the  successful  close  of  a  series  of 
four  annual  campaigns  which  she  had  conducted  for  the 
capture  of  a  husband  : 

1  Trumbull  MSS. 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  197 

"  Advertisement. 
To  Be  Sold  At  Public  Vendue, 

The  Whole  Estate  Of 

Isabella  Sprightly,  Toast  and  Coquette, 

(Now  retiring  from  Business). 

"  Imprimis,  all  the  Tools  and  Utensils  necessary  for 
carrying  on  the  Trade,  viz.  Several  bundles  of  Darts  and 
Arrows,  well-pointed,  and  capable  of  doing  great  execu- 
tion; A  considerable  quantity  of  Patches,  Paint,  Brushes, 
and  Cosmetics,  for  plastering,  painting  and  whitewashing 
the  face ;  a  complete  set  of  caps,  '  a  la  mode  a  Paris, '  of  all 
sizes  from  five  to  fifteen  inches  in  height ;  With  several 
dozens  of  Cupids,  very  proper  to  be  stationed  on  a  ruby  lip, 
a  diamond  eye,  or  a  roseate  cheek. 

"  Item,  as  she  proposes  by  certain  ceremonies  to  trans- 
form one  of  her  humble  servants  into  an  husband,  and  keep 
him  for  her  own  use,  she  offers  for  sale,  Florio,  Daphnis, 
Cynthio,  and  Cleanthes,  with  several  others,  whom  she  won 
by  a  constant  attendance  on  business  during  the  space  of 
four  years.  She  can  prove  her  indisputable  right  thus  to 
dispose  of  them,  by  certain  deeds  of  gifts,  bills  of  sale,  and 
attestations,  vulgarly  called  love-letters,  under  thein  own 
hands  and  seals.  They  will  be  offered  very  cheap,  for  they 
are  all  of  them  either  broken-hearted,  consumptive,  or  in  a 
dying  condition.  Nay,  some  of  them  have  been  dead  this 
half  year,  as  they  declare  and  testify  in  the  above-mentioned 
writings. 

"  N.B.  Their  hearts  will  be  sold  separately." 

In  another  essay,  the  same  vivacious  contributor  enters 
into  that  great  controversy  between  the  moderns  and  the 
ancients,  which  was  one  of  the  burning  questions  of  the 

1  Trumbull  MSS. 


198  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

eighteenth  century:  "  The  moralists  of  our  time  . 
complain  that  men  are  dwindling  down  in  arithmetical 
progression  from  the  gigantic  size  of  our  forefather  Goliath, 
towards  a  pygmean  stature,  to  which  they  expect  posterity 
will  in  a  few  centuries  arrive.  But  they  more  especially 
maintain  that  we  fall  short  of  the  ancients  in  the  height, 
length,  and  breadth  of  our  understandings;  and  seem  to 
think  that  nature  at  first  dealt  out  the  stock  of  brains, 
designed  for  man,  with  too  lavish  a  hand,  and  that  we  are 
now  forced  to  take  up  with  the  scrapings  of  the  dish.  I 
have  always  wondered  that  this  opinion  hath  been  so  long 
maintained;  and  that  for  two  very  substantial  reasons: 
first,  because  I  have  observed  that  no  one  will,  as  to  his 
particular  self,  allow  that  he  is  in  the  least  degree  less  wise 
than  his  ancestors ;  and,  secondly,  because  I  do  not  think 
the  opinion  itself  is  founded  either  in  truth  or  reason.  For 
I  cannot  discover  from  Scripture  or  tradition  that  Adam 
was  one  inch  above  six  feet  high,  or  had  more  wit  to  avoid 
being  cheated  than  thousands  of  the  present  generation." 
He  then  proceeds  to  demonstrate  that  the  moderns,  instead 
of  being  inferior  to  the  ancients,  are  actually  superior  to 
them  "  in  all  the  polite  arts  and  sciences."  "  By  these," 
he  continues,  "  I  mean  dress,  dancing,  compliments,  curses, 
drinking,  swearing,  gaming,  poetry,  fighting,  and  dying, 
and  in  a  word  every  qualification  of  a  gentleman  and  a  man 
of  ho'nor  in  the  modern  acceptation  of  those  titles."  Then 
follows  some  excellent  drollery  on  these  several  claims,  in 
the  course  of  which  he  has  a  capital  parody  on  the  pompous 
style  then  so  much  admired  in  Hervey's  "  Meditations." 
After  dealing  with  several  matters  of  dress  and  society,  in 
which  he  asserts  superiority  for  the  moderns,  he  comes  to 
"  the  art  of  cursing  and  swearing,"  which,  as  he  argues, 
"  is  almost  wholly  of  modern  invention.  Aristophanes, 
Plautus,  Terence,  Horace,  and  a  few  others  who  might  per- 
haps have  been  gentlemen,  had  they  lived  in  these  days,  do 
indeed  make  a  few  slight  attempts  at  the  practice;  but  they 
have  not  an  oath  or  a  curse  fit  for  the  mouth  of  a  modern 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  199 

gentleman.  I  cannot  but  congratulate  my  contemporaries 
on  their  improvements  in  this  art,  which  they  have  carried 
to  such  wonderful  length,  that  the  lowest  dregs  of  the 
people  have  attained  to  a  facility  and  perfection  that  cannot 
be  excelled  by  the  politest  of  the  nobility."  As  to  the 
single  item  of  poetry,  however,  he  is  obliged  to  confess  that 
the  superiority  of  the  moderns  is  not  quite  so  easy  to  prove : 
"  Poetry  being  looked  upon  as  the  lowest  qualification  of  a 
gentleman,  is  indeed  somewhat  neglected  in  this  age.  As 
advocate  for  the  moderns,  I  will  use  the  best  argument  I 
can  in  their  favor.  It  is  a  well  known  maxim,  that  every 
poet  is  a  fool.  If  this  be  true,  I  believe  no  one  who  has 
read  thus  far,  will  doubt  of  our  ample  qualifications  for  that 
office  As  to  the  duration  of  modern  poetry,  we  indeed  make 
no  great  pretensions.  The  ancient  art  of  embalming,  which 
extended  to  their  writings,  as  well  as  to  their  bodies,  hath 
been  for  many  ages  lost  and  unknown ;  and  our  works,  like 
the  good  man's,  follow  us  into  the  grave."  ' 

The  tenth  and  last  of  these  essays  has  for  its  motto  a  few 
words  from  Juvenal,* 

"  Nostri  farrago  libelli  est." 

As  might  be  expected  from  such  a  text,  the  discourse  which 
follows  is  itself  a  medley  of  disconnected  topics,  some  of 
which,  indeed,  have  a  very  sparkling  treatment.  "  My 
entertainments,"  says  the  author.  "  have  usually  consisted 
of  one  or  two  plain  dishes;  but  finding  some  people  desire  a 
greater  variety,  I  shall  at  present  furnish  out  my  table  with 
a  mixture  of  olios,  fricassees,  ragouts,  tarts,  and  sweet- 
meats, and  beg  of  the  reader,  without  making  any  wry  faces, 
to  sit  down  and  fall  on  without  any  ceremony."  One  of 
the  tarts  which  the  host  thus  sets  before  his  guests  is  this: 
Many  of  my  country  readers  have  wondered  at  my 
description  of  the  gentry  in  town,  in  my  last  essay,  where  I 
represented  them  as  rising  at  noon,  and  making  the  after- 

1  Trumbull  MSS.  *  "  Saturae."  i.  86 


200  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

noon  the  only  busy  part  of  the  day.  I  will  therefore  tell 
them,  for  their  further  information,  that  by  the  encourage- 
ment and  assistance  of  people  in  great  towns,  the  Afternoon 
hath  of  late  made  great  encroachments  upon  its  neighbors, 
and  strangely  justled  and  discomposed  the  other  parts  of 
the  day.  It  hath  driven  forward  the  Morning  from  its 
proper  station,  and  forced  it  to  take  refuge  in  the  habitation 
of  Noon ;  it  hath  made  Breakfast  and  Dinner  shake  hands, 
and  been  the  total  destruction  of  Supper;  it  hath  devoured 
a  large  portion  of  Night,  and  unless  a  speedy  stop  be  put 
to  its  motion,  may  probably  swallow  up  the  whole  four  and 
twenty  Hours."  And  here  is  one  of  the  sweetmeats: 
"  There  is  no  figure  more  employed  by  the  present  race  of 
wits  and  satirists  than  the  Periphrasis,  or,  in  modern  lan- 
guage, the  Circumbendibus.  To  call  a  man  a  hog,  is  by  no 
means  allowable ;  but  if  we  exalt  the  expression,  and  say  he 
is  that  animal  before  which  we  are  commanded  not  to  throw 
pearls,  it  becomes  extremely  witty,  polite  and  delicate,  and 
may  be  used  by  a  Doctor  of  Divinity  with  the  greatest 
facility  and  pleasure."  ' 

Stirred  by  the  new  forms  of  literary  expression  which 
Trumbull  and  his  friends  had  found  in  later  English  litera- 
ture, these  young  men  began  to  take  a  somewhat  con- 
temptuous and  even  a  revolutionary  attitude  toward  the 
narrow  scope  and  the  hard  jejune  methods  then  prevailing 
in  the  curriculum  at  Yale,  as  well  as  toward  the  tone  and 
spirit  of  nearly  the  entire  body  of  writers  who,  in  that 
neighborhood,  then  had  the  ear  of  the  public.  Indeed,  the 
whole  field  of  American  letters  seemed  at  that  time  to  be 
abandoned  to  controversy,  political,  theological,  and  other- 
wise. Such  controversy,  moreover,  was  carried  on  with  the 
absurd  pedantry,  the  unrelenting  partisanship,  the  extrava- 
gance of  misrepresentation,  the  anger,  the  coarseness,  the 
barbarous  incivility  with  which,  in  those  days,  even  culti- 
vated persons  thought  it  proper  to  convey  to  one  another 
their  ideas  on  subjects  concerning  which  they  happened  to 
1  Trumbull  MSS. 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  2OI 

disagree.  As  Trumbull  himself  long  afterward  described 
the  situation,  "  Every  pamphlet,  every  newspaper,  was 
filled  with  metaphysics ;  the  press  groaned  with  controversy ; 
and  the  world  was  stunned  with  Sermons,  Letters  of  De- 
bate, Replies  and  Rejoinders,  Dialogues  between  Ministers 
and  Parishioners,  and  such  like  weapons  of  this  spiritual 
warfare,  whose  names  it  would  tire  one  to  reckon  up."  * 


V. 


Here,  then,  as  it  seemed  to  the  young  satirist,  looking 
down  upon  it  from  his  cheery  watch-tower  in  the  college, 
was  a  situation  which  could  best  be  dealt  with  by  ridicule ; 
and  in  his  next  series  of  essays,  to  which  he  was  prompted 
by  his  recognition  of  this  fact,  we  may  once  more  observe 
something  of  the  new  tone  that  was  coming  into  American 
letters, — urbanity,  perspective,  moderation  of  emphasis, 
satire,  especially  satire  on  its  more  playful  side, — that  of 
irony.  It  was  in  February,  1770,  that  he  began  publishing 
in  "  The  Connecticut  Journal  and  New  Haven  Post-Boy, " 
a  series  of  essays  which  he  entitled  "  The  Correspondent." 
and  which  are  also  avowedly  framed  after  the  model  of 

The  Spectator."  Though  the  writer  was  then  but  a 
youth  of  twenty,  these  essays  show  in  him  no  inconsider- 
able maturity  of  thought  and  keenness  of  observation,  and 
no  slight  success  in  catching  the  method  of  his  literary 
masters.  Already  he  was  too  much  of  an  artist  to  flaunt  in 
the  face  of  his  readers  the  serious  motive  of  his  work ;  and 
they  who  should  find  it  out,  were  to  come  upon  it  unawares 
in  the  midst  of  the  light-hearted  mirth  which  pervades  his 
sentences. 

As  his  first  essay  is  devoted  chiefly  to  the  task  of  self- 
introduction,  it  opens  with  a  neatly  turned  explanation  of 
the  title  which  had  been  chosen  by  the  author  for  the  entire 
series.  "  There  is,"  he  says,  "  in  the  present  age  a  most 

1  Trumbull  MSS. 


202  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

wonderful  tendency  to  letter-writing.  Every  book  that 
outgrows  the  size  of  a  pamphlet,  is  ushered  into  the  world 
by  an  epistolary  dedication.  Party  and  politics  take  on  them 
the  form  of  Letters  to  Lords  and  Members  of  Parliament ; 
Religion  and  Morality,  of  Letters  to  a  Friend.  Nay,  so  far 
hath  this  humor  been  carried  that  the  writers  of  weekly- 
essay  s,  not  content  with  an  universal  correspondence,  have 
sometimes  on  particular  emergencies  condescended  to  com- 
pose Letters  to  Themselves. 

"  But  on  account  of  the  difficulties  which  some  have  met 
with  in  finding  out  proper  persons  to  patronize  their  letters, 
I  conceived  it  necessary  that  somebody  should  assume  the 
character  of  an  universal  Correspondent,  to  receive  letters 
from  all  the  world,  to  return  suitable  answers,  and  to  patron- 
ize such  writings  as  nobody  else  would  take  notice  of. 
Whether  I  am  qualified  for  this  post  or  not,  the  reader  will 
best  determine  by  giving  me  an  opportunity  to  display  my 
abilities.  I  therefore  do  hereby  send  greeting  to  all  Scrib- 
blers whatsoever,  to  whom  these  presents  shall  come,  whether 
Poets,  Politicians,  Almanack-Makers,  Metaphysicians,  or 
Writers  of  Advertisements,  whose  nightly  toils  for  their 
country's  edification  have  been  rewarded  only  by  the  con- 
tempt of  the  world,  promising  that  in  every  distress  or  per- 
plexity, they  shall  find  in  me  a  most  friendly  patron,  and  be 
favored  with  my  best  advice  and  assistance.  As  the  strong- 
est instance  of  my  universal  charity  and  disinterested  benev- 
olence, even  to  the  lowest  objects  of  literary  compassion,  I 
desire  the  '  Plain  Dealer,'  '  if  ever  he  writes  again,  to  dedi- 
cate his  next  essay  to  me;  and  on  that  condition,  I  engage 
my  word  and  honor  to  read  over  every  sentence  of  it,  with- 
out one  smile  of  derision  at  the  unmeaning  flourish  of  his 
style,  or  the  barefaced  sophistry  of  his  reasoning:  desiring 
him,  however,  for  the  sake  of  my  credit  with  the  rest  of 


'  The  name  assumed  by  a  "disciple  of  the  metaphysical  party,"  who  had 
written  much  in  the  same  paper,  but  of  whom,  after  this,  no  more  was 
beard. 


JOHN    TRUMBULL.  20$ 

the  world,  to  avoid  the  usual  custom  of  dedicators,  and  not 
be  very  lavish  to  me  of  his  praise  and  panegyrics. 

"But  since  it  may  be  thought  proper  that  I  should  follow 
my  own  rule,  and  throw  my  essays  into  the  form  of  Letters, 
I  do  by  these  presents  constitute  the  World  for  my  Patron, 
and  shall  address  myself  to  it  in  the  following  epistle* 
Though  the  method  be  a  little  singular,  I  hope  it  will  give 
the  reader  as  much  satisfaction,  as  if  it  had  been  inscribed 
to  a  Member  of  Parliament,  to  my  Lord  What-d'-ye-call- 
him,  to  Messieurs  Printers,  to  J.  W.,  Esq.,  or  from  A 
Gentleman  in  the  East  to  his  Friend  in  the  West :  premis- 
ing, in  the  first  place,  that  if  the  reader  find  in  it  anything 
obscure  and  unintelligible,  I  desire  him  to  suppose  it  very 
deep  and  mysterious,  and  to  believe  me  a  great  genius  and 
profound  reasoner,  and  the  matter  far  above  his  compre- 
hension ;  by  which  means  he  may  have  an  opportunity  of 
extending  his  charity  to  me,  in  the  same  manner  as  it  hath 
been  often  extended  to  other  candidates  for  the  meta- 
physical laurel."  ' 

The  essays  which  he  thus  began  were  continued  from 
the  23d  of  February,  until  the  6th  of  July,  1770,  at  which 
date  they  had  reached  eight  numbers;  but  few  as  they  were, 
they  attracted  great  attention,  and  were  read  with  vast 
relish  by  a  public  unaccustomed  to  so  sprightly  a  mode  of 
discussion ;  and  to  the  end  of  his  life  Trumbull  himself  felt 
pride  in  the  fact  that  he  had  been  the  first  in  that  neighbor- 
hood "  who  dared  by  satire  to  oppose  the  party  of  contro- 
versial scribblers,"  and  to  "  set  this  part  of  America  an 
example  of  the  use  of  ridicule  and  humor"  in  controlling 
"  the  whims  of  dogmatical  enthusiasts."  *  The  very  titles 
of  the  books  of  these  dogmatical  writers  he  parodies  in 
sundry  droll  announcements  of  pretended  works  which  he 
was  about  to  give  to  the  world,  such  as: 

"  Creeds  and  Catechisms  Made  and  Mended  by  D.D.'  & 

1  Trumbull  MSS.  *  Ibid. 

8  Rev.  Joseph  Bellamy,  D.D. 


2O4  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Company:  Being  the  Substance  of  many  Treatises 
that  have  lately  made  a  Noise  in  the  World." 

"  The  Art  of  Quarreling;  Being  a  Curious  and  Enter- 
taining History  of  Some  late  Transactions." 

"  An  Essay  on  Dancing l ;  Proving  from  the  Examples  of 
King  David  and  others  that  it  is  a  most  grievous 
Iniquity,  and  directly  contrary  to  the  Eternal  Fitness 
of  Things.  By  the  Pious ." 

"  An  Easy  and  Compendious  Method  of  becoming  a 
Great  Man ;  With  a  few  Hints  on  the  Art  of  Climb- 
ing." 

"  The  Art  of  Second-Sight,  Shewing  an  Easy  and  Infal- 
lible Method  of  Discovering  any  Person's  Character, 
Principles,  Practices,  State  of  Body  and  Soul,  future 
Happiness  or  Misery,  &c. ;  far  Superior  to  Palmistry, 
Astrology,  or  any  other  Method  of  Fortune-telling : 
First  introduced  by  a  renowned  Stage  Player,*  and 
since  brought  to  Perfection  by  the  united  Labors  of 
a  certain  Set  of  Philosophers. ' '  * 

Some  of  the  devices  for  self-display  and  for  defamation, 
which  were  often  resorted  to  by  authors  in  the  construc- 
tion of  the  title-pages  and  advertisements  of  their  books, 
he  satirizes  in  the  following  kind  and  helpful  suggestions 
addressed  by  him  to  his  brethren  of  the  literary  guild : 

"  As  to  the  decorations  of  your  book,  be  sure  to  frame  a 
very  pompous  title;  for  I  can  assure  you  there  is  much 
virtue  in  a  title-page,  and  I  have  often  known  it,  when  duly 
managed,  to  contain  all  the  wit  and  the  greatest  part  of  the 
arguments  in  the  book.  If  you  choose  to  answer  some 
former  writer,  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  advertize  him  in  the 
newspapers,  after  this  manner : 

1  A  great  outcry  had  just  then  been  raised  against  this  sinful  practice. 
"  The  Rev.  George  Whitefield. 
'  Trumbull  MSS. 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  2Q$ 

'  Now  in  the  Press 

and  will  speedily  be  published, 

A  VINDICATION  OF  TRUE   RELIGION, 

FROM   THE  CAVILS  OF  IGNORANCE  AND   HERESY; 

Being  an  Answer  to  the  remarks  of 

The  Rev'd  Dunscotus: 

4  Wherein  is  clearly  proved  that  the  Remarker  is  clearly 
unacquainted  with  the  true  Spirit  of  the  Gospel,  that  he 
hath  wholly  mistaken  the  subject  of  controversy,  and  hath 
been  guilty  of  the  most  palpable  blunders  and  absurdities : 
Concluding  with  a  Catalogue  of  his  Contradictions,  and  an 
Appendix  shewing  the  coincidence  of  his  opinions  with 
those  of  Hobbes,  Spinoza,  and  the  Atheists  and  Deists  in 
all  ages.' 

Then,  too,  as  a  satire  on  the  self-complacence  and  the 
self-stultification  often  exhibited  by  those  charming  writers 
whose  traits  he  has  subjected  to  such  careful  study,  he  offers 
to  the  public  "  A  New  System  of  Logic,"  of  which  the  two 
grand  principles  are:  "  First,  That  the  common  sense  and 
reason  of  mankind  is  so  weak  and  fallacious  a  guide,  that 
its  dictates  ought  never  to  be  regarded;  Secondly,  That 
nevertheless  nothing  is  so  great  that  it  can  surpass,  or  so 
perplexing  that  it  can  entangle,  the  understanding  of  a  true 
metaphysician."  "  I  take  these  points  to  be  so  nearly 
self-evident,"  he  continues,  "  that  although  I  can  say  very 
little  in  proof  of  them,  the  reader  ought  for  this  very  reason 
the  more  firmly  to  believe  them.  For  such  is  the  nature  of 
every  self-evident  proposition  that  no  arguments  can  be 
brought  to  prove  it.  ...  Hence,  it  is  plain  (if  I  have 
any  skill  in  metaphysics)  that  when  a  point  is  very  difficult 

1  MSS.  This  burlesque  has  allusion  to  Dr.  Samuel  Hopkins,  whose  answer 
to  Mills  gives  a  catalogue  of  about  forty  contradictions  he  professes  to  find  in 
the  work  of  the  latter ;  also,  to  Dr.  James  Dana,  whose  answer  to  Jonathan 
Edwards's  treatise  on  the  Will  contains  several  pages  of  extracts  from  Hobbes, 
Gordon,  and  other  deistical  writers,  collated  with  extracts  from  Edwards. 


206  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

to  be  proved,  and  all  the  arguments  you  can  urge  in  its  favor 
very  weak  and  little  to  the  point,  it  is  not  far  from  being  a 
self-evident  proposition." 

Furthermore,  still  personating  the  character  of  a  dispu- 
tatious metaphysician,  and  speaking  in  the  name  of  his 
entire  class,  he  goes  on  to  explain  the  feud  existing  between 
themselves  and  that  vulgar  standard  of  opinion  for  which  a 
superstitious  esteem  was  still  cherished  among  the  non- 
metaphysical  rabble :  "A  great  enmity  hath  in  all  ages 
subsisted  between  metaphysics  and  common  sense.  They 
were,  indeed,  partly  reconciled  some  years  ago  by  a  certain 
great  author  *  among  us,  and  continued  pretty  good  friends 
for  a  considerable  time.  By  these  means,  metaphysics  was 
introduced  into  the  best  company,  and  was  greatly  esteemed 
by  the  most  sensible  part  of  the  world  ;  but  having  naturally 
a  disposition  to  ramble  and  change  sides,  it  hath  been  again 
seduced  to  revolt  from  common  sense,  and  they  are  now  at 
greater  variance  than  ever.  Therefore,  by  all  the  rules  of 
justice,  we  who  fight  under  the  banner  of  metaphysics  have 
a  right  to  treat  common  sense  as  a  common  enemy,  to 
speak  all  the  ill  we  can  of  it,  and  to  regard  it  as  little  as 
possible,  both  in  conversation  and  writing."  3 

Finally,  he  reaches  the  culmination  of  his  satirical  eulogy 
upon  his  literary  brethren,  by  showing  the  great  and  peculiar 
service  they  are  constantly  rendering  to  the  bewildered  race 
of  mortals :  "  Though  the  world  of  itself  be  in  a  state  of  dark- 
ness and  chaos,  yet  it  is  not  destitute  of  every  spark  and 
glimmering.  The  metaphysicians,  those  burning  and  shining 
lights,  to  our  great  advantage,  are  kindled  up  in  various  parts 
of  our  land  ;  and  to  their  praise  be  it  spoken,  they  do  not  seem 
disposed  to  hide  their  candle  under  a  bushel,  but  very  gen- 
erally set  it  up  in  the  most  conspicuous  places,  to  lead  the 
lonely  and  benighted  traveler  on  his  journey.  I  am  not 

1  Trumbull  MSS. 

8  Probably  refers  to  Berkeley,  whose  "  Alciphron  "  was  written  in  New  Eng- 
land. 

3  Trumbull  MSS. 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  2O/ 

ignorant  that  some  evil-minded  persons  will  pretend  that 
they  deserve  rather  to  be  compared  to  an  '  ignis  fatuus,' 
or  one  of  those  vapory  fires  that  appear  by  night  in  the 
meadows, — affirming  that  the  cold  marshes  where  the  latter 
is  generated,  are  a  type  of  a  metaphysician's  brain;  that 
each  of  them  hath  the  faculty  of  shining  only  in  the  dark; 
and  that  they  serve  their  followers  alike,  leading  them  into 
ponds  and  quagmires,  from  which  they  may  thank  their 
stars  if  they  ever  get  out  again.  Much  might  be  said  in 
answer  to  these  malicious  insinuations;  but  as  my  time  is 
too  precious  to  be  employed  in  such  trifles,  I  desire  the 
reader  to  get  rid  of  the  objection  as  well  as  he  is  able,  and 
attend  to  certain  points  of  far  greater  importance,  which  I 
am  now  preparing  to  discuss."  ' 

In  the  course  of  the  first  seven  numbers  of  "  The  Cor- 
respondent," the  author  had  perhaps  sufficiently  diverted 
the  public  at  the  expense  of  his  too  pugnacious  literary 
brethren ;  but  it  was  not  at  all  needful  that  he  should  now 
stay  his  hand,  merely  for  lack  of  other  objects  worthy  of  his 
satirical  attention.  Accordingly,  in  the  eighth  number  he 
turns  toward  an  entirely  different  class  of  his  fellow-citizens, 
— those  noble-minded  American  philanthropists  and  Chris- 
tians who  were  deriving  large  wealth  from  an  active  partici- 
pation in  the  African  slave-trade.  This  essay,  which  closed 
the  series,  is  a  fusillade  of  witty  and  stinging  satire,  and 
deserves  attention  in  any  study  of  anti-slavery  opinion  in 
America  prior  to  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  * 

1  Trumbull  MSS. 

2  This  first  series  of  "  The  Correspondent  "  appeared  in  "  The  Conn.  Journal 
and  New  Haven  Post-Boy, "  at  the  following  dates  : 

No.  i,  Feb.  23,  1770  ; 
No.  2.  March  2  ; 
No.  3,  March  9  ; 
No.  4,  March  23  ; 
No.  5,  April  6  ; 
No.  6,  April  27  ; 
No.  7,  June  I  ; 
No.  8,  July  6. 
In  ascertaining  the  dates  of  these  essays,  I  have  had  the  privilege  of  using  thr 


2o8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

VI. 

From  the  task  of  writing  this  satire  against  the  American 
traffic  in  African  slaves,  Trumbull  must  have  turned  to  that 
of  writing  "  An  Essay  on  the  Use  and  Advantages  of  the 
Fine  Arts,"1  a  composition  partly  in  prose  and  partly  in 
verse,  which  he  delivered  at  the  commencement  in  New 
Haven  on  the  I2th  of  September,  1770,  on  taking  his  mas- 
ter's degree.  Giving  to  literature  the  highest  place  among 
the  fine  arts,  he  points  to  the  unhappy  neglect  of  them  in 
America  :  "  They  are  considered  as  matters  of  trifling 
amusement,  and  despised  in  comparison  with  the  more 
solid  branches  of  learning."  Nevertheless,  "  they  ennoble 
the  soul,  purify  the  passions,  and  give  the  thoughts  a 
better  turn.  They  add  dignity  to  our  sentiments,  delicacy 
and  refinement  to  our  manners.  They  set  us  above  our 
meaner  pursuits,  and  make  us  scorn  those  low  enjoyments, 
which  perhaps  we  once  esteemed  as  the  perfection  of  human 
felicity.  .  .  .  These  are  the  delights  which  humanize 
the  soul,  and  polish  away  that  rugged  ferocity  of  manners, 
which  is  natural  to  the  uncultivated  nations  of  the  world."  ' 

But  why  bring  forward  a  theme  so  untimely  ?  In  this 
crisis  of  desperate  controversy,  when  Americans  are  con- 
tending for  those  primary  rights  without  which  the  fine  arts 
are  but  the  diversions  and  gew-gaws  of  slaves,  why  inter- 
rupt serious  business  by  so  inopportune  a  plea  ?  Nay, 
retorts  our  juvenile  champion  of  aesthetic  culture,  in  every 
land,  in  every  age,  these  arts  have  most  bloomed  and  flour- 
ished in  conjunction  with  "  the  unconquered  spirit  of  free- 
dom "  and  with  the  ambition  for  "  heroic  deeds."  "  Learn- 
ing and  glory  walk  hand  in  hand  through  the  world." 
"  The  same  ardor  of-  ambition,  the  same  greatness  of 

exceedingly  rare  file  of  "  The  Conn.  Journal,"  in  the  possession  of  Miss  Eliza- 
beth Lyon  Linsley,  Elmwood,  Stratford,  Conn. 

'  New  Haven,  printed  by  T.  &  S.  Green.  The  copy  in  my  possession  was 
Tnimbull's,  and  has  corrections  in  his  handwriting. 

""An  Essay,"  etc.,  3-4. 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  209 

thought,  which  inspires  the  warrior  to  brave  danger  in  the 
conquering  field,  when  diffused  among  a  people  will  call 
forth  genius  in  every  station  of  life,  fire  the  imagination  of 
the  artist,  and  raise  to  sublimity  the  aspiring  muse."  ' 

This,  then,  was  the  burden  of  the  young  poet's  message 
to  his  fellow-countrymen,  on  that  September  day  in  1770, 
while  the  air  all  about  them  was  vibrant  with  the  clangor  of 
political  debate,  and  trembling  with  whispered  premoni- 
tions of  some  earth-shaking  strife.  And  to  justify  his 
message,  he  then  sketches  the  history  of  the  fine  arts, 
particularly  of  literature,  in  ancient  and  in  modern  times, 
closing  it  with  a  masterly  outline  of  the  great  periods  of 
English  literature. 

From  this  survey  of  literature  in  other  times  and  among 
other  peoples,  he  next  turns  to  his  own:  "  America  hath  a 
fair  prospect  in  a  few  centuries  of  ruling  both  in  arts  and 
arms.  It  is  universally  allowed  that  we  excel  in  the  force 
of  natural  genius;  and  although  but  few  among  us  are  able 
to  devote  their  whole  lives  to  study,  perhaps  there  is  no 
nation  in  which  a  larger  portion  of  learning  is  diffused 
through  all  ranks  of  the  people."  "  The  heroic  love  of 
liberty,  the  manly  fortitude,  the  generosity  of  sentiment, 
for  which  we  have  been  so  justly  celebrated,  seem  to  prom- 
ise the  future  advancement  and  established  duration  of  our 
glory.  Many  incidents,  unfortunate  in  themselves,  have 
tended  to  call  forth  and  sustain  these  virtues.  Happy,  in 
this  respect,  have  been  our  late  struggles  for  liberty !  They 
have  awakened  the  spirit  of  freedom ;  they  have  rectified 
the  manners  of  the  times;  they  have  made  us  acquainted 
with  the  rights  of  mankind,  recalled  to  our  minds  the  glori- 
ous independence  of  former  ages,  fired  us  with  the  views  of 
fame,  and  by  filling  our  thoughts  with  contempt  of  the 
imported  articles  of  luxury,  have  raised  an  opposition,  not 
only  to  the  illegal  power,  but  to  the  effeminate  manners  of 
Britain."  "  This  land  hath  already  begun  to  distinguish 
itself  in  literature.  .  .  .  Our  late  writers  in  the  cause 
1  "An  Essay,"  etc.,  5-6. 


2IO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

of  liberty  have  gained  the  applause  of  Europe.  Many  ele- 
gant essays  have  been  produced  in  the  style  of  wit  and 
humor;  nor  hath  poetry  been  entirely  uncultivated  among 
us."  Then,  rising  prophet-like  into  metrical  utterance,  he 
foretells  the  day  when  American  poets  shall 

"  with  lofty  Milton  vie  ; 

Or  wake  from  nature's  themes  the  moral  song, 
And  shine  with  Pope,  with  Thomson,  and  with  Young. 
This  land  her  Steele  and  Addison  shall  view, 
The  former  glories  equal'd  by  the  new  ; 
Some  future  Shakespeare  charm  the  rising  age, 
And  hold  in  magic  chains  the  list'ning  stage  ; 
Another  Watts  shall  string  the  heav'nly  lyre, 
And  other  muses  other  bards  inspire."  ' 

VII. 

Soon  after  the  occasion  on  which  young  Trumbull  had 
thus  pleaded  the  cause  of  the  fine  arts  in  America,  and 
especially  of  good  letters,  he  removed  to  Wethersfield, 
probably  for  the  purpose  of  beginning  the  study  of  the  law ; 
but  the  impression  which  his  own  work  as  a  man  of  letters 
had  already  made  upon  his  readers  is  indicated  by  some 
lines  of  verse  which,  at  about  that  time,  greeted  the  publi- 
cation of  his  commencement  address : 

"  All  that  for  future  times  he  bids  us  hope, 
We  see  in  him,  as  England  saw  in  Pope."* 

After  twelve  months  passed  in  Wethersfield,  he  was 
recalled  to  Yale  College  as  a  tutor,  and  entered  upon  his 
duties  there  in  the  autumn  of  1771.  There  were  but  two 
other  tutors  in  the  college  at  that  time,  Joseph  Howe  and 
Timothy  Dwight ;  and  all  three  were  agreed  in  enthusiasm 
for  English  literature,  and  in  the  purpose  of  giving  a  more 
modern  and  a  more  literary  tone  to  the  studies  of  the  place. 

1  "  An  Essay,"  etc.,  11-15. 

1  "  Connecticut  Journal,"  for  Nov.  30,  1770. 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  211 

In  this  employment,  Trumbull  continued  for  the  next  two 
years, — a  period  standing  out  in  his  life  not  only  as  the  last 
one  passed  by  him.  in  academic  retirement,  but  as  in  itself 
very  fruitful  in  literary  products  which  denote  his  diligent 
self-training  as  a  scholar,  as  well  as  his  struggle  to  keep 
alive  some  function  for  letters  apart  from,  and  above,  that 
rage  for  political  controversy  that  was  then  drawing  all 
thoughts  into  its  bitter  service.  His  interest  in  philosoph- 
ical '  udies  during  this  period  is  seen  in  seven  "  Speculative 
Assays "  on  such  subjects  as  "  The  Limits  of  Human 
Reason,"  "  Our  Idea  of  Infinity,"  and  so  forth.1  As  a 
writer  of  verse,  the  work  he  then  did  shows  how  carefully 
he  was  studying  the  models  at  that  time  most  admired  in 
English  literature.  Thus,  in  December,  1771,  he  wrote 
some  twenty  pentameter  quatrains,  "  On  the  Vanity  of 
Youthful  Expectations:  an  Elegy,""  which  is  little  else 
than  a  succession  of  echoes  of  Goldsmith  and  of  Gray.  In 
"  The  Owl  and  the  Sparrow:  a  Fable,"  3  written  in  1772, 
one  traces  the  influence  of  John  Gay  and  of  Samuel  Butler, 
• — this  being  perhaps  the  earliest  example  of  his  use  of  that 
Hudibrastic  verse  which  afterward  became  his  favorite 
weapon  as  a  satirist.  To  this  period,  also,  belongs  his 
"  Ode  to  Sleep,"  4  written  in  1773,  a  composition  resonant 
of  noble  and  sweet  music,  and  making,  if  one  may  say  so,  a 
nearer  approach  to  genuine  poetry  than  had  then  been 
achieved  by  any  American,  excepting  Freneau : 

I. 

"  Come,  gentle  Sleep  ! 

Balm  of  my  wounds  and  softner  of  my  woes, 
And  lull  my  weary  heart  in  sweet  repose, 
And  bid  my  sadden'd  soul  forget  to  weep, 

And  close  the  tearful  eye  ; 
While  dewy  eve  with  solemn  sweep, 

Hath  drawn  her  fleecy  mantle  o'er  the  sky, 

1  Trumbull  MSS.  a  "  Poetical  Works,"  ed.  1820,  ii.  165-168. 

3  Ibid.  149-154.  4 Ibid.  113-120. 


212  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

And  chased  afar,  adown  th'  ethereal  way, 
The  din  of  bustling  care  and  gaudy  eye  of  day. 

II. 

"  Come,  but  thy  leaden  sceptre  leave, 
Thy  opiate  rod,  thy  poppies  pale, 

Dipp'd  in  the  torpid  fount  of  Lethe's  stream, 
That  shroud  with  night  each  intellectual  beam, 
And  quench  th'  immortal  fire,  in  deep  Oblivion's  wave. 

Yet  draw  the  thick  impervious  veil 
O'er  all  the  scenes  of  tasted  woe  ; 

Command  each  cypress  shade  to  flee  ; 
Between  this  toil-worn  world  and  me, 
Display  thy  curtain  broad,  and  hide  the  realms  below. 

III. 

"  Descend,  and  graceful  in  thy  hand, 
With  thee  bring  thy  magic  wand, 
And  thy  pencil,  taught  to  glow 
In  all  the  hues  of  Iris'  bow. 
And  call  thy  bright,  aerial  train, 

Each  fairy  form  and  visionary  shade, 
That  in  the  Elysian  land  of  dreams, 
The  flower-enwoven  banks  along, 
Or  bowery  maze  that  shades  the  purple  streams, 

Where  gales  of  fragrance  breathe  th'  enamor'd  song, 
In  more  than  mortal  charms  array'd, 
People  the  airy  vales  and  revel  in  thy  reign. 

IV. 

"  But  drive  afar  the  haggard  crew, 

That  haunt  the  guilt-encrimson'd  bed, 

Or  dim  before  the  frenzied  view 

Stalk  with  slow  and  sullen  tread  ; 
While  furies  with  infernal  glare, 
Wave  their  pale  torches  through  the  troubled  air  ; 
And  deep  from  Darkness'  inmost  womb, 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  313 

Sad  groans  dispart  the  icy  tomb, 
And  bid  the  sheeted  spectre  rise, 
'Mid  shrieks  and  fiery  shapes  and  deadly  fantasies. 

V. 

"  Come  and  loose  the  mortal  chain, 

That  binds  to  clogs  of  clay  th'  ethereal  wing  ; 

And  give  th'  astonished  soul  to  rove, 
Where  never  sunbeam  stretch'd  its  wide  domain  • 

And  hail  her  kindred  forms  above, 
In  fields  of  uncreated  spring, 
Aloft  where  realms  of  endless  glory  rise, 
And  rapture  paints  in  gold  the  landscape  of  the  skies. 

VI. 

"  Then  through  the  liquid  fields  we  '11  climb, 

Where  Plato  treads  empyreal  air, 
Where  daring  Homer  sits  sublime, 

And  Pindar  rolls  his  fiery  car  ; 
Above  the  cloud-encircled  hills, 

Where  high  Parnassus  lifts  his  airy  head, 
And  Helicon's  melodious  rills 

Flow  gently  through  the  warbling  glade  ; 
And  all  the  Nine,  in  deathless  choir  combined, 
Dissolve  in  harmony  th'  enraptured  mind, 
And  every  bard,  that  tuned  th'  immortal  lay, 
Basks  in  th'  ethereal  blaze,  and  drinks  celestial  day." 

Surely,  the  poetic  apprentice  who  was  capable  of  such 
work  as  this,  was  not  far  from  Apollo's  kingdom. 

VIII. 

Trumbull's  continued  fondness  for  Steele  and  Addison  is 
shown  by  his  activity,  during  the  second  year  of  his  tutor- 
ship at  Yale,  in  the  writing  of  many  prose  essays  after  their 
sprightly  manner,  on  current  topics  in  society,  letters,  and 


214  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

politics.  For  these  new  essays,  he  revived  the  old  title  of 
"  The  Correspondent,"  which  he  had  already  made  so 
popular;  and  counting  the  later  series  as  a  mere  continua- 
tion of  the  earlier  one,  he  kept  up  the  publication  in  "  The 
Connecticut  Journal  and  New  Haven  Post-Boy, "  from  the 
1 2th  of  February,  1773,  to  the  3d  of  the  following  Septem- 
ber. About  three-fourths  of  the  entire  number  were  written 
by  himself,  the  remainder  by  his  literary  friends.1  As  may 
be  imagined,  much  inequality  of  merit  is  noticeable  in  these 
essays;  but  the  hand  of  Trumbull  is  easily  traced  in  the 
nth  number,  whicji  contains  a  ludicrous  burlesque  on  the 
prevailing  New  England  fashion  as  to  obituary  notices;  in 
the  1 8th  and  iQth  numbers,  which  satirize  medical  quackery 
as  then  and  there  practised ;  in  the  2 1st  number,  which  deals 
caustically  with  common  beggary  and  its  proper  treatment ; 
in  the  33d  number,  which  gives  to  the  public  a  sad  warning 
of  the  approaching  demise  of  their  benefactor  and  friend, 
"  The  Correspondent";  in  the  37th  number,  which  duly 
chronicles  that  melancholy  event ;  and,  finally,  in  the  38th 
number,  which  closes  the  series  with  the  last  will  and 
testament  of  the  deceased,  and  a  full  recantation  of  every 
opinion  hitherto  expressed  by  him  which  had  given  the 
slightest  disturbance  to  anybody's  mental  repose." 

IX. 

The  most  remarkable  fact  respecting  this  period  of  Trum- 
bull's  residence  at  Yale  College  is  that  he  seems  then  to  have 

1  His  own  statement.     MSS. 

*  This  second  series  of  "The  Correspondent "  appeared  in  "The  Conn. 
Journal  and  New  Haven  Post-Boy  "  at  the  following  dates,  for  the  opportunity 
of  tracing^vhich  I  was  also  indebted  to  the  courtesy  of  Miss  Linsley,  of  Stratford  : 
No.  9,  Feb.  12,  1773;  No.  10,  Feb.  19  ;  No.  n,  Feb.  26  ;  No.  12,  March  5  ; 
No.  13,  March  12  ;  No.  14,  March  19  ;  No.  15,  March  26  ;  No.  16,  April  2  ; 
No.  17,  April  9;  No.  18,  April  16  ;  No.  19,  April  23  ;  No.  20,  April  30;  No. 
21,  May  7;  No.  22,  May  14  ;  No.  23,  May  21  ;  No.  24,  May  28  ;  No.  25, 
June  4  ;  No.  26,  June  it  ;  No.  27,  June  18  ;  No.  28,  June  25  ;  No.  29,  July 
2  ;  No.  30,  July  9  ;  No.  31,  July  16 ;  No.  32,  July  23  ;  No.  33,  July  30 ;  No. 
34,  Aug.  6  ;  No.  35,  Aug.  13  ;  No.  36,  Aug.  20  ;  No.  37,  Aug.  27  ;  No.  38, 
Sep.  3. 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  21$ 

found  out  his  final  place  and  function  in  letters, — that  of 
satirist.  Long  afterward,  he  expressed  the  opinion  that  his 
vocation  to  satire  was  but  the  accident  of  circumstances. 
"  Formed,"  said  he,  "  with  the  keenest  sensibility  and  the 
most  extravagantly  romantic  feelings,  ...  I  was  born 
the  dupe  of  imagination.  My  satirical  turn  was  not  native. 
It  was  produced  by  the  keen  spirit  of  critical  observation, 
operating  on  disappointed  expectation,  and  avenging  itself 
on  real  or  fancied  wrongs."  Whether  or  not  this  account 
of  the  matter  be  anything  more  than  an  old  man's  conjec- 
ture operating  on  a  supposed  reminiscence,  it  is  plain  that 
Trumbull's  satirical  turn  dicj  manifest  itself  very  early  in 
his  life,  in  the  midst  of  the  gayety  of  his  undergraduate 
days,  and  before  he  could  have  known  much  of  disappointed 
expectation,  or  of  the  sombre  passion  for  avenging  himself 
either  on  real  or  on  fancied  wrongs.  In  actual  result,  too, 
his  satire  ranged  over  almost  every  form, — playful,  delicate, 
broad,  coarse,  ludicrous,  severe,  scathing,  savage,  pitiless.* 
Finally,  his  satirical  turn  was  cultivated  not  only  by  abun- 
dant exercise,  in  prose  and  in  verse,  on  every  sort  of  subject, 
but  by  an  intense  and  critical  study  of  the  great  masters  of 
satire,  particularly  in  English,  French,  and  Latin. 

His  first  deliberate  and  elaborate  publication  as  a  satirist 
inverse,  was  "  The  Progress  of  Dullness,"3  consisting  of 
three  separate  poems  under  that  single  title.  Of  this  satiri- 
cal trilogy,  the  first  part,  "  On  the  Adventures  of  Tom 
Brainless,"  was  written  during  the  first  year  of  his  tutorship, 
and  was  evidently  begotten  of  sundry  observations  made  by 
him  under  the  advantages  of  that  position.  It  is  simply  a 
satire  on  collegiate  education  as  then  practised  in  New 
England — its  shams,  incongruities,  stupidities — especially  as 
to  the  qualifications  required  for  the  sacred  ministry. 

In  a  New  England  farm-house,  Farmer  Brainless  is  talk- 
ing with  his  wife  concerning  the  future  of  their  son  Tom, 
who  is  really  a  drone  and  a  dunce.  The  conclusion  of  the 

1  Trumbull  MSS.  *  Many  examples  of  these  are  among  his  MSS. 

3  "  Poetical  Works,"  ii.  7-90. 


2l6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

whole  matter  is  this :  Tom  shall  not  follow  his  father  in  that 
hard  vocation — a  long  anguish  in  plucking  subsistence  from 
a  rocky  and  barren  soil.  No,  he  shall  go  to  college ;  he 
shall  seize  hold  of  life  by  a  pleasanter  handle ;  he  shall  have 
a  profession.  First  of  all,  then,  Tom  must  be  fitted  for 
college : 

"  So  to  the  priest  in  form  he  goes, 
Prepared  to  study  or  to  doze." 

After  two  years  thus  spent  in  sham  preparation,  dieting 
"  on  husks  of  Lily,"  murdering  Vergil,  turning  Tully  into 
farce,  and  gaining  just  skill  enough  to  blunder  through  a 
chapter  of  the  Greek  Testament,  Tom  goes  to  college, 
where  he  passes  triumphantly  a  sham  examination,  and 
settles  down  within  its  learned  walls  to  four  years  of  sham 
study.  Very  soon  he  is  seized  by  "  the  college-evil,"  to 
wit,  indisposition — an  indisposition  to  do  any  manner  of 
work — a  mysterious  delicacy  of  health  which  is  offended  by 
all  labor  in  the  preparation  of  lessons,  or  in  attendance  upon 
lectures : 

"  Then  every  book  which  ought  to  please, 
Stirs  up  the  seeds  of  dire  disease  ; 
Greek  spoils  his  eyes,  the  print  's  so  fine, 
Grown  dim  with  study,  or  with  wine  ; 
Of  Tully's  Latin  much  afraid, 
Each  page  he  calls  the  doctor's  aid  ; 
While  geometry,  with  lines  so  crooked, 
Sprains  all  his  wits  to  overlook  it. 
His  sickness  puts  on  every  name, 
Its  cause  and  uses  still  the  same, — 
'T  is  tooth-ache,  colic,  gout,  or  stone, 
With  phases  various  as  the  moon  ; 
But  though  through  all  the  body  spread, 
Still  makes  its  cap'tal  seat,  the  head. 
In  all  diseases,  't  is  expected, 
The  weakest  parts  be  most  infected. 
Kind  Head-Ache,  hail  !  thou  blest  disease, 


JOHN   TRUMBLLL.  217 

The  friend  of  idleness  and  ease  ; 
Who,  mid  the  still  and  dreary  bound 
Where  college  walls  her  sons  surround, 
In  spite  of  fears,  in  justice'  spite, 
Assum'st  o'er  laws  dispensing  right, 
Set'st  from  his  task  the  blunderer  free, 
Excused  by  dullness  and  by  thee. 
Thy  vot'ries  bid  a  bold  defiance 
To  all  the  calls  and  threats  of  science, 
Slight  learning,  human  and  divine, 
And  hear  no  prayers,  and  fear  no  fine."  * 

Such  are  the  achievements  of  drones  and  of  dunces  at 
Yale  !  But  as  to  those  who  are  neither  dunces  nor  drones  ? 
Ah,  surely,  true  scholars  do  exist  there,  and  they  perform 
most  famous  work,  with  their  dead  and  deadening  erudi- 
tion !  These  be  the  mighty  book-worms  who 

"  Despising  such  low  things  the  while, 
As  English  grammar,  phrase,  and  style, 
Despising  every  nicer  art 
That  aids  the  tongue  or  mends  the  heart, 
Read  ancient  authors  o'er  in  vain, 
Nor  taste  one  beauty  they  contain, 

And  plodding  on  in  one  dull  tone, 

Gain  ancient  tongues  and  lose  their  own." ' 

With  a  like  audacity  does  this  irrepressible  young  reformer 
then  proceed  to  hold  up  to  derision  other  outworn  notions 
and  methods  of  education  then  prevailing  in  the  college  of 
which  he  is  tutor, — the  preposterous  ways,  for  example,  in 
which  they  there  teach  logic,  rhetoric,  mathematics,  and 
metaphysics.  Returning  from  his  irreverent  raid  into  the 
field  of  collegiate  reform,  the  satirist  resumes  the  history  of 
his  typical  dunce,  Tom  Brainless: 


"  Poetical  Works,"  ii.  15-16.  *  Ibid.  17. 


2l8  THE  AME'RICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  Four  years  at  college  dozed  away 
In  sleep  and  slothfulness  and  play, 
Too  dull  for  vice,  with  clearest  conscience, 
Charged  with  no  fault  but  that  of  nonsense, 
(And  nonsense  long,  with  serious  air, 
Has  wandered  unmolested  there,) 
He  passes  trial,  fair  and  free, 
And  takes  in  form  his  first  degree."  ' 

Armed  with  his  diploma,  Tom  now  goes  forth  to  prey 
upon  a  much-enduring  world.  First,  that  he  may  put  imme- 
diate money  into  his  purse,  he  begins  his  career  by  taking  a 
school,  where, 

.     .     .     "  throned  aloft  in  elbow  chair, 

With  solemn  face  and  awful  air, 

He  tries  with  ease  and  unconcern, 

To  teach  what  ne'er  himself  could  learn  ; 

Holds  all  good  learning  must  depend 
Upon  his  rod's  extremest  end, 
Whose  great  electric  virtue  's  such, 
Each  genius  brightens  at  the  touch  ; 

Thinks  flogging  cures  all  mortal  ills, 

And  breaks  their  heads  to  break  their  wills." " 

At  the  end  of  a  year,  Tom  gives  up  the  school,  and  enters 
upon  his  professional  studies.  In  the  house  of  a  famous 
minister,  he  undertakes  to  learn  the  art  of  preaching ;  he 

.     .     .     "  settles  down  with  earnest  zeal 
Sermons  to  study,  and  to  steal  ; 

Learns  with  nice  art,  to  make  with  ease 
The  Scriptures  speak  whate'er  he  please  ; 
With  judgment,  unperceived  to  quote 
What  Poole  explained,  or  Henry  wrote  ; 


"  Poetical  Works,"  23-24.  »  Ibid.  26. 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  219 

To  give  the  gospel  new  editions, 
Split  doctrines  into  propositions, 
Draw  motives,  uses,  inferences, 
And  torture  words  in  thousand  senses  ; 
Learn  the  grave  style  and  goodly  phrase, 
Safe  handed  down  from  Cromwell's  days, 
And  shun,  with  anxious  care,  the  while, 
The  infection  of  a  modern  style." 

At  length,  Tom  stalks  abroad  a  grave  divine,  having  re- 
ceived a  license  to  preach ; — for 

.     .     .     "  though  his  skull  be  cudgel-proof, 
He  's  orthodox,  and  that 's  enough." 

Next  follows  a  period  during  which  this  would-be  heaven- 
expounder  roves  and  raves  as  a  candidate : 

"  Now  in  the  desk,  with  solemn  air, 
Our  hero  makes  his  audience  stare  ; 
Asserts  with  all  dogmatic  boldness, 
Where  impudence  is  yoked  to  dullness  ; 

Two  hours  his  drawling  speech  holds  on, 
And  names  it  preaching  when  he  's  done." 

At  last  established  for  life  in  a  town  which  is  sufficiently 
described  by  saying  that  its  mental  condition  was  happily 
suited  to  his  own,  he 

.     .     .     "  deals  in  preaching  and  in  prayer, 
And  starves  on  sixty  pounds  a  year  ; 
And  culls  his  texts,  and  tills  his  farm, 
Does  little  good,  and  little  harm  ; 
On  Sunday,  in  his  best  array, 
Deals  forth  the  dullness  of  the  day  ; 
And  while  above  he  spends  his  breath, 
The  yawning  audience  nod  beneath." 


22O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION, 

The  first  part  of  "  The  Progress  of  Dullness  "  '  was  pub- 
lished at  New  Haven,  probably  in  August,  1772.  This  was 
followed,  in  January,  1773,  by  the  second  part, — "  On  the 
Life  and  Character  of  Dick  Hairbrain,"  * — an  effective 
delineation  of  the  career  of  a  rich  and  vulgar  New  England 
fop  of  the  period,  from  his  pampered  boyhood,  his  unstudi- 
ous  and  ruffianly  years  in  college,  and  the  sensual  frivolities 
of  his  foreign  tour,  onward  to  that  terribly  accelerated  stage 
of  existence,  when,  for  him, 

"  Lone  age  with  hasty  step  comes  on," 

and  when,    elbowed   aside   by  younger   fops,    the  palsied 
dandy 

"  sinks  forlorn — 
Of  all,  and  even  himself,  the  scorn." 

This  powerful  satire  was  followed  in  July,  1773,  by  the 
third  part  of  the  trilogy, — "  On  the  Adventures  of  Miss 
Harriet  Simper,"  " — a  satire  on  the  wrong  and  the  folly  of 
excluding  women  from  the  higher  education, — portraying 
the  world  of  shallow  thought,  of  frivolous  occupation,  of 
blighting  disappointment,  to  which  women  in  fashionable 
life  are  doomed,  if  without  the  dignity  and  the  consolations 
conferred  by  intellectual  pursuits. 

No  wonder  that  a  notable  stir  was  made  by  these  three 
satires,  so  fresh  and  ruddy  with  the  tints  of  real  life,  so 
fearless  in  their  local  tone  and  color,  so  pungent  with  con- 
temporary and  local  criticism,  and  coming  as  they  did  in  so 
rapid  succession  from  the  academic  solitude  of  that  porten- 
tous young  tutor.  They  seemed  to  announce  the  arrival  of 
a  rather  uncomfortable  inhabitant, — a  satirist  from  whose 
glance  no  folly  or  obliquity  would  be  likely  to  hide  itself. 
And  even  yet,  and  for  us,  the  whole  work  has  a  masterful 
aspect.  Though  far  less  subtle  than  his  later  and  greater 
satire,  "  M'Fingal,"  it  deals  with  subjects  more  universal 
and  more  permanent.  Moreover,  like  all  of  Trumbull's 
work,  it  shows  the  training  of  the  scholar,  the  technical 
1  "  Poetical  Works,"  ii.  27-33.  s  Ibid.  35-57.  3  Ibid.  59-90. 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  221 

precision  of  the  literary  artist.  Each  poem  has  a  unity 
of  its  own,  and  holds  up  to  laughter  the  despicable  or 
the  detestable  traits  of  a  single  type  of  character.  To 
all  three  poems  an  artistic  unity  is  given,  by  a  correla- 
tion, not  only  of  topics,  but  of  incidents,  the  latter  of 
which  just  sufficiently  entangle  their  chief  personages  at 
the  end.  Here,  also,  one  finds  ample  facility  and  variety 
of  literary  allusion,  unblinking  observation  of  the  follies  and 
vices  of  society,  an  eye  for  every  sort  of  personal  foible,  a 
quick  sense  of  the  ludicrous,  a  sure  command  of  the  vocab- 
ulary of  ridicule  and  invective.  Then,  too,  the  genuine 
power  of  these  satires  was  shown  by  evidence  that  could 
not  be  contradicted, — the  outcry  of  punctured  vanity  with 
which  they  were  greeted, — an  outcry  so  vociferous,  so  sibi- 
lant, from  so  many  quarters,  as  to  prove  how  well  each 
arrow  had  found  its  mark.  Finally,  the  author  then  began 
to  let  the  public  know  something  of  his  remarkable  gift 
for  epigram  in  verse — for  those  neat  forth-puttings  of  shrewd 
humor  which  have  carried  so  many  of  Trumbull's  lines  far 
out  into  the  current  of  popular  proverbs.  Then  Jt.  was  -that 
people  began  to  pass  from  one  to..apetiier  some  sayings  of 
his,  which,  though  they  soon  forgot  the  fact,  they  had 
gathered  from  th-^.pigcs  of  "  The  Progress  of  Dullness," 
such  -as"  this— 

"  For  metaphysics,  rightly  shown, 

But  teach  how  little  can  be  known  "  '  ; 
or  this — 

"  Whoe'er  at  college  points  his  sneer, 

Proves  that  himself  learn'd  nothing  there  "  * ; 
or  this — 

"  First  from  the  dust  our  sex  began, 

But  woman  was  refined  from  man  "  *  ; 
or  this — 

"  For  weighty  works  men  show  most  sloth  in, 

But  labor  hard  at  doing  nothing  "  4  ; 
or  this — 

"  Good  sense,  like  fruits,  is  rais'd  by  toil. 
But  follies  sprout  in  every  soil."  * 


"  Poetical  Works,"  ii.  22.     *  Ibid.  52.     3  Ibid.  65.     4  Ibid.  69.     5  Ibid.  70. 


CHAPTER   X. 

THE   REKINDLING  OF  THE   GREAT  DISPUTE:     1766-1769. 

I.— The  study  of  American  political  writings  resumed— Happiness  of  the 
colonies  over  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  in  the  Spring  of  1766. 

II. — Commencement  exercises  at  the  College  of  Philadelphia,  20  May,  1766 — 
The  prize  by  John  Sargent  for  the  best  essay  on  "  A  Perpetual  Union  be- 
tween Great  Britain  and  her  American  Colonies  " — Provost  Smith's  con- 
gratulations on  the  news  of  repeal  received  the  day  before — Publication  of 
the  four  essays  written  for  the  Sargent  prize — Their  political  note — Francis 
Hopkinson's  avowal  of  American  identity  with  England. 

III. — American  political  confidence  disturbed  by  the  Declaratory  Act — Political 
anxiety  as  uttered  in  "  Virginia  Hearts  of  Oak,"  May,  1766. 

IV. — A  great  stride  in  American  theories  as  to  the  legislative  authority  of  parlia- 
ment— The  new  doctrine  as  set  forth  by  Richard  Bland,  in  his  "  Enquiry 
the  Rights  of  the  British  Colonies,"  1766 — Jefferson's  praise  of  this 
par" 

V. — American  distnisF  great  Jj>~iar'-eased  by  the  proceedings  of  parliament  in 
1767  under  the  lead  of  Charles  1  c-wnshend— His  three  measures  reviving 
the  American  controversy — Their  effects  iu-  /*  merica  as  described  by  Lecky 
—Great  stimulus  thus  given  to  American  political  literal uv°-.  "**  :>s  of  this 
literature.  ' 

VI.— The  supreme  significance  of  John  Dickinson's  "  Letters  from  a  Farmer 
in  Pennsylvania,"  December,  1767,  to  February,  1768— Purpose  and 
method  of  these  essays— Their  unrivaled  stfccess  in  America  and  Europe— 
The  renown  thus  won  by  Dickinson — His  enormous  popularity. 

VII.— The  arrival  of  the  customs  commissioners  at  Boston— They  are  driven  by 
the  populace  to  take  refuge  on  an  island  in  the  harbor,  June,  1768— British 
troops  summoned  from  Halifax  to  quell  American  resistance— Dickinson's 
"  Liberty  Song,"  in  response  to  these  proceedings,  July,  1768. 

VIII.— The  gravity  of  the  situation  as  revealed  in  other  writings  of  this  year- 
Speech  at  the  dedication  of  a  Tree  of  Liberty  at  Providence— A  New  York 
pamphlet  entitled  "  The  Power  and  Grandeur  of  Great  Britain  founded  on 
the  Liberty  of  the  Colonies  "—The  political  tension  prolonged  into  the 
year  1769—"  Liberty,  a  Poem  lately  Found  in  a  Bundle  of  Papers  said  to 
be  Written  by  a  Hermit  in  New  Jersey." 

!X.— American  writers  then  resident  abroad— Their  sympathy  with  their  coun- 
trymen at  home— Arthur  Lee— His  chief  political  writings. 

222 


REPEAL   OF   THE   STAMP  ACT.  22$ 

I. 

THE  interval  of  rest  from  the  strife  of  political  tongues, 
which  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  brought  to  the  Americans 
in  the  spring  of  1766,  has  thus  been  used  by  us  for  the  pur- 
pose of  forming  some  acquaintance  with  the  several  groups 
of  non-political  writings  which  belong  to  the  first  decade  of 
the  Revolutionary  period,  and  which  may  give  us  a  clew  as 
to  the  course  which  American  literature  would  have  taken 
during  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  had  not  its 
method  and  tone,  as  well  as  its  topics,  been  roughly  turned 
aside  by  the  inrushing  flood  of  Revolutionary  passion.  It 
is  now  time  for  us  to  come  back  to  those  political  writings 
which,  if  not  the  most  delightful,  were  at  least  the  most 
characteristic,  expression  of  the  thought  and  life  of  the 
period  we  are  dealing  with,  and  which,  after  this  brief  lull  in 
the  storm  of  controversy,  once  more  spoke  out  with  accents 
of  wounded  affection,  of  alarm,  of  remonstrance,  finally  of 
wrath,  and  scorn,  and  defiance. 

We  should  find  it  hard  to  overstate  the  happiness  which, 
for  a  few  weeks,  filled  the  hearts  of  the  American  people  at 
the  news  that  the  detested  Stamp  Act  had  been  repealed. 
As,  in  1765,  through  the  bond  of  a  common  fear,  the  thirteen 
colonies  had  been  brought  for  the  first  time  into  some  sort 
of  union,  so  in  1766,  that  union  was  for  a  while  prolonged 
through  the  bond  of  a  common  joy.  Certainly,  never 
before  had  all  these  American  communities  been  so  swept  by 
one  mighty  wave  of  grateful  enthusiasm  and  delight.  As 
the  news  passed  up  and  down  the  land,  business  was  sus- 
pended, bells  were  set  a  ringing,  bonfires  were  lighted,  the 
imperial  colors  were  unfurled ;  and  thus,  with  processions, 
and  banquets,  and  barbecues,  and  even  with  more  sedate 
assemblages  crowding  their  places  of  worship,  they  gave 
themselves  up  for  a  time  to  their  own  spontaneous  mani- 
festations of  pleasure  at  having  been  delivered  from  a 
humiliating  political  stigma,  from  an  appalling  political 
peril.  Statues  were  voted  to  the  king  and  to  the  great 


224  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

commoner;  and  to  them,  as  well  as  to  the  ministry,  and  to 
Barre,  and  Conway,  and  Lord  Camden,  were  sent  addresses 
all  aglow  with  loyalty  and  love. 

"  The  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,"  wrote  an  American 
politician,'  in  his  diary  for  the  third  of  November,  1766, 
"  has  hushed  into  silence  almost  every  popular  clamor,  and 
composed  every  wave  of  popular  disorder  into  a  smooth  and 
peaceful  calm."  "  I  am  bold  to  say,"  declared  Edmund 
Burke,"  "  that  so  sudden  a  calm,  recovered  after  so  violent 
a  storm,  is  without  a  parallel  in  history." 

II. 

The  true  note  of  this  universal  joy  may  still  be  heard  by 
us  as  then  uttered  in  its  most  refined  and  most  discriminat- 
ing form,  at  an  academic  festival,  the  commencement  exer- 
cises of  the  College  of  Philadelphia,  on  the  2Oth  of  May, 
1766, — which  happened  to  be  only  one  day  after  the  con- 
firmation there  of  the  news  of  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act. 
Some  months  before,  a  noble-minded  Englishman,  a  mem- 
ber of  parliament,  John  Sargent  of  London,  being  desirous 
of  helping  to  check  the  growth  of  discord  between  the  two 
great  branches  of  the  English  race,  had  offered  a  gold  medal 
to  be  given  to  any  graduate  or  undergraduate  of  the  college, 
for  the  best  essay  on  "  The  Reciprocal  Advantages  of  a 
Perpetual  Union  between  Great  Britain  and  her  American 
Colonies."  Near  the  close  of  his -address  bestowing  this 
medal  and  saying  the  usual  farewell  words  to  the  young 
graduates,  the  provost  of  the  college,  William  Smith, 
paused  for  an  instant,  and  then  added:  "  And  here  I  ought 
to  conclude — but  the  joyous  occasion  calls  me  to  return 
particular  thanks  to  this  splendid  audience  for  the  counte- 
nance they  have  given  us  this  day,  and  to  congratulate 
them  on  the  glorious  and  happy  turn  in  the  affairs  of 
America,  whereof  yesterday  gave  us  the  certain  and  con- 
firmed accounts.  When  I  look  back  on  the  dreadful  state 
of  suspense,  in  which  these  colonies  have  been  so  long 

1  John  Adams,  "  Works,"  ii.  203.  »  Burke,  "  Works,"  ii.  61. 


UNION    WITH  GREAT  BRITAIN.  22 5 

agitated;  when,  in  the  room  of  foreboding  doubt  and 
painful  solicitude,  I  behold  joy  in  every  look,  the  clouds 
dispersed,  the  sun  breaking  in  upon  us  again,  and  an  assem- 
bly around  me,  in  which  every  man  rejoices  to  salute  his 
neighbor  as  free,  I  feel, — I  feel,  a  sympathy  unutterable, 
and  an  exultation  of  soul  never  felt  before.  O  glorious 
day !  O  happy  America !  if  now  we  but  know  how  to  prize 
our  happiness!  The  unguarded  sallies  of  intemperate  zeal 
will  soon  be  forgotten ;  but  the  steadfast,  the  noble,  the 
patriotic  efforts  of  cool  and  good  men,  in  the  vindication  of 
native  and  constitutional  rights,  will  more  and  more  claim 
the  regard  of  all  the  free,  in  every  clime  and  age,  and  per- 
haps be  consecrated  by  time  into  one  of  the  brightest  trans- 
actions of  our  story ;  asserting  our  pedigree  and  showing 
that  we  were  worthy  of  having  descended  from  the  illustri- 
ous stock  of  Britons." 

So  perfectly  did  the  theme  of  the  prize-essay  suit  the 
feeling  of  the  time,  that,  along  with  the  three  other  essays 
which  had  been  written  on  the  same  subject,  it  was  imme- 
diately published  both  in  Philadelphia  and  in  London.1 
These  four  papers  on  behalf  of  the  perpetual  unity  of  the 
English-speaking  race,  furnish  to  us  now  a  striking  exhibition 
of  the  most  cultivated  American  thought  and  sentiment  at 
that  moment, — a  firm  resolve  for  civil  rights,  this  resolve  be- 
ing blended  with  passionate  love  for  the  mother  country  and 
with  pride  and  happiness  in  the  fact  of  American  member- 
ship of  the  British  empire.  "  Were  it  possible,"  wrote  one 
of  these  essayists,  "  for  Great  Britain,  with  an  high  and  arbi- 
trary hand,  to  think  of  snatching  from  her  colonies  the 
essential  privileges  of  Englishmen,  .  .  .  it* would  be 
to  dress  her  slaves  in  livery,  and  deck  America  in  robes  of 
paper,  to  make  her  the  contempt  and  derision  of  every 
other  nation."  "  But  why  should  the  mutual  connection 
between  the  parent  country  and  her  colonies  ever  come  into 

"  Four  Dissertations."  etc.,  9-10. 

9  "  Four  Dissertations  on  the  Reciprocal  Advantages  of  a  Perpetual  Union 
between  Great  Britain  and  her  American  Colonies." 


226  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

question  ?  Are  we  not  one  nation  and  one  people  ?  And 
do  we  not  own  obedience  to  one  common  king  ?  . 
We  of  America  are  in  all  respects  Englishmen,  notwith- 
standing that  the  Atlantic  rolls  her  waves  between  us  and 
the  throne  to  which  we  all  own  allegiance.  Nor  can  we, 
though  in  ever  so  flourishing  a  state,  throw  off  our  depend- 
ence, or  dissolve  this  union,  without  breaking  the  very 
bonds  of  nature."  "  How  detestable,  then,  must  the  poli- 
tician be,  who  shall  ever  attempt  to  kindle  the  destructive 
flames  of  jealousy  between  two  friends,  whom  nature  seems 
to  have  united  in  the  closest  bonds,  and  whose  hearts  and 
interests  are  and  ever  ought  to  be  one  !  Should  any  one 
ever  succeed  in  this  (which  God  forbid)  I  doubt  not  but 
that,  after  much  cruel  contention  and  unnatural  bloodshed, 
each  would  rush  into  the  other's  arms,  and  emphatically 
cry  out — '  We  are  both  in  the  wrong  !  '  ' 

III. 

Nevertheless,  through  all  the  exclamations  of  joy  with 
which,  in  the  spring  and  early  summer  of  1766,  the  Ameri- 
cans everywhere  welcomed  the  news  of  the  repeal  of  the 
.Stamp  Act,  one  may  still  detect  a  note  of  disquietude. 
As  so  often  before  and  since,  the  British  government  had 
then  chosen  to  do  a  gracious  act  in  an  ungracious  way. 
The  repeal  of  the  law  had  been  accompanied  by  what 
seemed  to  the  Americans  to  be  a  lurking  menace, — namely, 
the  declaration  that  parliament  had  the  right  "  to  bind  the 
colonies  in  all  cases  whatsoever."  This  declaration — which, 
indeed,  merely  expressed  a  sound  constitutional  principle  in 
a  form  needlessly  harsh — had  the  effect  which  was  afterward 
well  described  by  Lord  Shelburne  when,  in  a  letter  to  Pitt, 
he  said  that  it  had  kept  alive  "  an  unfortunate  jealousy  and 
distrust  of  the  English  government  throughout  the  colo- 
nies." Accordingly,  before  many  months  the  joy  of  the 
gratified  colonists  began  to  die  away  into  a  gloomy  sus- 
picion that  the  government  had  then  drawn  back  its  arm 

"Four  Dissertations,"  etc.,  108,  log,  111-112.     These  sentences  are  from 
the  dissertation  by  Francis  Hopkinson. 

8  Quoted  in  Bryant  and  Cay,  "  A  Popular  History  of  the  U.  S.,"  iii.  351. 


"VIRGINIA   HEARTS  OF  OAK."  227 

from  smiting  them,  only  to  gain  the  opportunity  for  giving 
them  a  more  stunning  blow.  It  was  a  most  distressing 
doubt.  To  one  who  now  reads  the  writings  of  that  period, 
nothing  is  plainer  than  that  the  colonists  then  loved  Eng- 
land, not  only  sincerely  but  passionately, — giving  to  her,  in 
fact,  an  inordinate  and  a  thoroughly  provincial  reverence. 
It  was,  therefore,  a  terrible  pang  which  they  experienced  in 
this  unrevoked  need  of  distrusting  her;  and  the  deep  solici- 
tude of  all  that  time  during  which  even  exultation  had  to 
keep  room  for  suspicion,  is  vividly  interpreted  for  us  in  an 
anonymous  political  song  that  then  rose  from  the  loyal  but 
troubled  heart  of  Virginia.  This  crude  lyric  was  entitled 
"  Virginia  Hearts  of  Oak  ";  and  it  is  of  special  interest  to 
us  now,  not  only  for  its  own  sake,  but  as  being,  perhaps,  the 
first  of  a  considerable  series  of  political  and  military  songs 
written  during  the  Revolution  after  the  same  model, — that 
model  being  David  Garrick's  famous  sailor-song  called 
"  Hearts  of  Oak," — a  song  of  British  freedom,  of  British 
pluck,  and  especially  of  the  pride  of  Britain  in  her  sailors 
and  in  her  sovereignty  of  the  sea.  At  least  two  stanzas  of 
Garrick's  song  we  must  here  recall,  as  being  quite  necessary 
to  the  appreciation  of  this  and  every  subsequent  American 
echo  of  it : 

"  Come,  cheer  up,  my  lads  !  't  is  to  glory  we  steer, 
To  add  something  more  to  this  wonderful  year  : 
To  honor  we  call  you,  not  press  you  like  slaves, 
For  who  are  so  free  as  the  sons  of  the  waves  ? 
Hearts  of  oak  are  our  ships, 
Gallant  tars  are  our  men, 
We  always  are  ready  ; 
Steady,  boys,  steady  !  " 

"  Britannia  triumphant,  her  ships  sweep  the  sea  ; 
Her  standard  is  Justice, — her  watchword,  '  Be  Free  ! ' 
Then  cheer  up,  my  lads  !  with  one  heart  let  us  sing, 
'  Our  soldiers,  our  sailors,  our  statesmen,  our  king.' 
Hearts  of  oak,"  etc.  ' 


1  The  whole  song  is  given  by  James  T.   Fields  and  Edwin  P.  Whipple,  in 
their  "Family  Library  of  British  Poetry,"  388. 


228  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Remembering  the  troubled  mood  which  still  lingered  in 
the  hearts  of  the  Americans  through  all  their  joy  over  the 
several  steps  in  the  progress  of  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp 
Act,  and  how,  even  then,  beneath  all  other  purposes,  was 
their  purpose  to  obey  their  English  instincts  which  disdained 
cowardice  even  toward  England,  and  which  disdained  to 
be  enslaved  even  by  England,  we  shall  not  fail  to  notice 
how  perfectly,  with  what  neat  implications,  all  this  com- 
plexity and  tumult  of  emotion  finds  itself  uttered  in  the 
"  Virginia  Hearts  of  Oak,"  wherein,  indeed,  the  sturdy 
sentiment  of  Garrick's  song  is  simply  transplanted  and 
Americanized,  and  its  very  nobility  of  enthusiasm  for  cour- 
age, for  freedom,  for  patriotism,  is  turned,  like  a  captured 
battery,  against  any  and  all  aggressions  on  the  part  of  the 
British  ministry : 

"  Sure  never  was  picture  drawn  more  to  the  life, 
Or  affectionate  husband  more  fond  of  his  wife, 
Than  America  copies  and  loves  Britain's  sons, 
Who,  conscious  of  freedom,  are  bold  as  great  guns. 
Hearts  of  oak  are  we  still  ; 
For  we  're  sons  of  those  men 
Who  always  are  ready — 
Steady,  boys,  steady — 
To  fight  for  their  freedom  again  and  again. 

"  Though  we  feast  and  grow  fat  on  America's  soil, 
Yet  we  own  ourselves  subjects  of  Britain's  fair  isle  ; 
And  who  's  so  absurd  to  deny  us  the  name  ? — 
Since  true  British  blood  flows  in  every  vein. 
Hearts  of  oak,  etc. 

"  Then  cheer  up,  my  lads,  to  your  country  be  firm  ! 
Like  kings  of  the  ocean,  we  '11  weather  each  storm  : 
Integrity  calls  out,  fair  Liberty,  see, 

Waves  her  flag  o'er  our  heads,  and  her  words  are — '  Be  Free  ! ' 
Hearts  of  oak,  etc. 


RICHARD  BLAND.  229 

"  To  King  George,  as  true  subjects,  we  loyal  bow  down, 
But  hope  we  may  call  Magna  Charta  our  own  : 
Let  the  rest  of  the  world  slavish  worship  decree, 
Great  Britain  has  ordered  her  sons  to  be  '  Free ' ! 
Hearts  of  oak,  etc. 

"  On  our  brow  while  we  laurel-crowned  liberty  wear, 
What  Englishmen  ought,  we  Americans  dare  : 
Though  tempests  and  terrors  around  us  we  see, 
Bribes  nor  fears  can  prevail  o'er  the  hearts  that  are  '  Free.' 
Hearts  of  oak,  etc. 

"  With  Loyalty,  Liberty  let  us  entwine, 
Our  blood  shall  for  both  flow  as  free  as  our  wine  ; 
Let  us  set  an  example  what  all  men  should  be, 
And  a  toast  give  the  world, — '  Here  's  to  those  who  'd  be  '  Free.' 
Hearts  of  oak,  etc."  ' 

IV. 

Moreover,  how  immense  was  the  stride  which  political 
suspicion  then  prompted  some  of  the  colonial  leaders  to 
take  in  the  development  of  opinion  touching  the  authority 
of  the  general  government,  may  be  seen  in  the  fact  that 
in  this  very  year  of  pacification  was  first  promulgated  the 
startling  doctrine  that  the  British  colonies  in  America  were 
united  to  the  empire  only  through  the  British  crown,  and 
not  at  all  through  the  British  parliament,  and  that  to  the 
acts  of  the  latter  they  owed  no  more  obedience  than  did  the 
king's  dominion  of  Hanover.  Although  not  many  Ameri- 
cans were  then  ready  for  this  prodigious  innovation  in  con- 
stitutional doctrine,  yet  as  a  working  theory,  first,  for  the 
preservation  of  the  union  with  Great  Britain,  and,  after- 
ward, as  it  proved,  for  the  dissolution  of  that  union,  it 
seems  to  have  occurred  almost  at  the  same  time  to  three 
different  chiefs  of  American  opposition,  and  in  three  widely 

1  This  ballad  was  first  printed  in  the  "Virginia  Gazette"  for  May  2,  1766. 
It  contains  seven  stanzas,  and  is  given  in  full  in  Duyckinck,  "  Cyclopaedia  of 
American  Literature,"  i.  451.  In  that  copy,  the  toast  given  in  the  last  line 
reads  :  "  Here  's  to  those  dare  be  free." 


230  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

separated  places, — to  Joseph  Hawley  in  Massachusetts,1  to 
Benjamin  Franklin  in  London,2  and  to  Richard  Bland  in 
Virginia. 

From  the  aspect  of  immediate  publicity  as  well  as  of 
elaborateness  of  presentation,  special  notice  may  be  claimed 
for  the  plea  then  put  forward  by  the  last  of  these  three  poli- 
ticians,— a  man  of  substance  and  renown  in  his  own  colony, 
who  for  his  supposed  learning  in  Anglo-American  history 
was  then  styled  "  the  Antiquary."  It  was  in  his  pamphlet 
bearing  the  title  of  "  An  Enquiry  into  the  Rights  of  the 
British  Colonies,"  first  published  in  1766,  that  Richard 
Bland  boldly  announced  the  proposition  that,  though  a  part 
of  the  British  empire,  "  America  was  no  part  of  the  king- 
dom of  England,"  and  that,  having  been  "  settled  by  Eng- 
lishmen at  their  own  expense,  under  particular  stipulations 
•with  the  crown,"  3  it  was  under  no  obligation  to  receive  laws 
from  the  parliament.  It  was  to  the  crown  alone  that  the 
colonies  owed  their  existence;  it  was  to  the  crown  alone 
that  they  owed  allegiance. 

The  surname  of  this  writer  by  no  means  describes  his 
style,  which,  besides  being  somewhat  jerky  and  harsh,  is 
tinged  by  the  acerbity  of  a  high-spirited  man  keeping  angry 
vigil  over  those  enemies  of  his  country  who,  as  he  thought, 
were  trying  "  to  fix  shackles  upon  the  American  colonies- 
shackles  which,  however  nicely  polished,  can  by  no  means 
sit  easy  upon  men  who  have  just  sentiments  of  their  own 
rights  and  liberties."  Forty-nine  years  after  the  publica- 
tion of  this  brochure,  it  received  from  Jefferson  the  extrava- 
gant praise  of  being  "  the  first  pamphlet  on  the  nature  of 
the  connection  with  Great  Britain  which  had  any  pretension 
to  accuracy  of  view  on  that  subject."  5  It  is  evident  that 
by  "  accuracy  of  view  "  Jefferson  meant,  as  usual,  conform- 
ity to  his  own  view.  Without  doubt,  Eland's  pamphlet  is 

1  W.  M.  Sloane,  "  The  French  War  and  the  Revolution,"  147. 
"  Works  of  Franklin,"  Bigelow  ed.,  iii.  483,  485,  490-491. 
1  "  An  Enquiry,"  etc.,  16.  *  Ibid.  5. 

' "  Writings  of  Jefferson,"  H.  A.  Washington  ed.,  vi.  485. 


TA XA  TION  RESUMED.  2 3 1 

both  acute  and  ingenious;  but  accurate  it  is  not,  even  as  to 
the  facts  of  history,  and  probably  not  as  to  the  principles  of 
constitutional  law.  Finally,  the  argument  is  lacking  both 
in  unity  and  in  consistency;  and,  in  the  case  of  well-read 
persons,  it  could  hardly  have  been  convincing  except  to 
those  who  were  convinced  already  or  were  already  deter- 
mined to  be.1 

V. 

The  returning  political  distrust  which  in  America  soon 
mastered  and  silenced  the  "jocund  strains"  of  the  year 
1766,  was  constantly  nourished  and  inflamed  by  the  tidings 
which  kept  coming  from  England  during  the  year  1767;  as 
that,  so  early  as  in  January,  Charles  Townshend,  chancellor 
of  the  exchequer,  had  openly  avowed  in  the  house  of 
commons  his  purpose,  through  some  form  of  taxation,  to 
procure  from  America  a  revenue  sufficient  to  support  a  mili- 
tary establishment  there  * ;  and  that,  a  few  months  later, 
and  at  a  time  "  when  Chatham  was  completely  incapacitated, 
and  when  all  other  statesmen  had  sunk  before  the  ascend- 
ency of  Townshend,"  3  this  brilliant  but  reckless  leader  had 
carried  through  parliament  three  drastic  measures  admirably 
contrived,  as  Pownall  then  said  of  one  of  them,  to  be  "  the 
beginning  of  a  series  of  mischiefs."  4  These  three  measures 
were,  first,  the  famous  act  for  laying  a  port-duty  in  America 
on  several  prominent  articles  of  Anglo-American  commerce, 
to-wit,  glass,  red  lead,  white  lead,  paper,  paint,  and  tea5; 
secondly,  "  an  act  to  enable  his  majesty  to  put  the  customs 
and  other  duties  in  the  British  dominions  in  America,  and 
the  execution  of  the  laws  relating  to  trade  there,  under  the 
management  of  commissioners  to  be  appointed  for  that  pur- 

1  Other  writings  by  Bland  are  "  A  Fragment  of  the  Pistole  Fee  Claimed  by 
the  Governor  of  Virginia,"  1753,  edited  from  the  original  manuscript  by  W.  C. 
Ford,  and  published  in  1891  ;  also,  "  A  Letter  to  the  Clergy  of  Virginia,"  1760. 

*  Lecky,  "  A  History  o*f  England."  iv.  107.  S  Ibid-  IO9- 
4  Hansard,  "  The  Parliamentary  History  of  England,"  xvi.  341. 

*  "  The  Statutes  at  Large,"  7  Geo.  iii.  c.  46,  56. 


232  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

pose,  and  to  be  resident  in  the  said  dominions"1;  and, 
thirdly,  the  act  suspending  the  functions  of  the  legislature 
of  New  York  until  it  should  be  ready  to  provide  British 
troops  stationed  there,  not  only  with  suitable  quarters,  but 
with  "  fire,  candles,  .vinegar,  and  salt,  bedding,  utensils  for 
dressing  victuals,  and  small  beer,  cider,  or  rum."  : 

If,  as  Lord  Chatham  then  facetiously  said  of  the  Ameri- 
cans, "  the  Stamp  Act  of  most  unhappy  memory"  had 
"  frightened  those  irritable  and  umbrageous  people  quite 
out  of  their  senses,"3  it  should  not  have  required  super- 
natural gifts  for  the  king  and  his  ministers  to  foresee  that 
these  new  acts  of  parliamentary  aggression  were  likely  to 
produce  in  America  even  more  serious  effects — for  a  descrip- 
tion of  which  we  may  safely  depend  upon  the  great  English 
historian  who  in  our  time  has  so  fairly  reviewed  the  several 
stages  of  the  American  Revolution.  "  A  period  of  wild  and 
feverish  confusion  followed.  Counsels  of  the  most  violent 
kind  were  freely  circulated,  and  for  a  time  it  seemed  as  if 
the  appointment  of  the  new  board  of  commissioners  would 
be  resisted  by  force ;  but  Otis  and  some  of  the  other  popu- 
lar leaders  held  back  from  the  conflict,  and  in  several  colo- 
nies a  clear  sense  of  the  serious  nature  of  the  struggle  that 
was  impending  exercised  a  sobering  influence.  Georgia, 
which  had  been  inclined  to  follow  the  example  of  New 
York,  was  brought  to  reason  by  the  prospect  of  being  left 
without  the  protection  of  English  troops  in  the  midst  of  the 
negroes  and  the  Indians.  The  central  and  southern  colonies 
hesitated  for  some  time  to  follow  the  lead  of  New  England. 
Hutchinson  wrote  to  the  government  at  home  that  Boston 
would  probably  find  no  other  town  to  follow  her  in  her 
career  of  violence;  and  DeKalb,  the  secret  agent  of  Choi- 
seul,  who  was  busily  employed  in  fomenting  rebellion  in  the 
colonies,  appears  for  a  time  to  have  thought  it  would  all 
end  in  words,  and  that  England,  by  keeping  her  taxes  with- 

1  "  The  Statutes  at  Large,"  7  Geo.  iii.  c.  46,  56. 
*  Ibid.  c.  59 ;  also  5  Geo.  iii.  c.  33. 
"  The  Correspondence  of  William  Pitt,"  etc.,  iii.  193. 


TAXA  TION  RESUMED.  233 

in  very  moderate  limits,  would  maintain  her  authority. 
Massachusetts,  however,  had  thrown  herself  with  fierce 
energy  into  the  conflict,  and  she  soon  carried  the  other 
provinces  in  her  wake.  Non-importation  agreements,  bind- 
ing all  the  inhabitants  to  abstain  from  English  manufac- 
tures, and  especially  from  every  article  on  which  duties  were 
levied  in  England,  spread  from  colony  to  colony,  and  the 
assembly  of  Massachusetts  issued  a  circular  addressed  to  all 
the  other  colonial  assemblies  denouncing  the  new  laws  as 
unconstitutional,  and  inviting  the  different  assemblies  to 
take  united  measures  for  their  repeal.  The  assembly  at  the 
same  time  drew  up  a  petition  to  the  king  and  addresses  to 
the  leading  English  supporters  of  the  American  caus'e. 
These  addresses,  which  were  intended  to  act  upon  English 
opinion,  were  composed  with  great  ability  and  moderation; 
and  while  expressing  the  firm  resolution  of  the  Americans 
to  resist  every  attempt  at  parliamentary  taxation,  they 
acknowledged  fully  the  general  legislative  authority  of  par- 
liament, and  disclaimed  in  the  strongest  language  any  wish 
for  Independence."  ' 

The  quick  and  ever-deepening  excitement  thus  created  in 
America  through  the  abrupt  abandonment  by  the  British 
government  in  1767  of  the  statesmanlike  colonial  policy  it 
had  proclaimed  only  twelve  months  before,  found  a  most 
vivid  expression  in  the  prodigious  crop  of  political  writings, 
in  prose  and  verse,  which  then  came  into  life  under  such 
stimulus.  Thenceforward,  for  at  least  eight  years,  the 
colonial  printing-presses  had  to  toil  hard  in  order  to  deliver 
to  the  public  the  pamphlets,  broadsides,  handbills,  and 
other  fugitive  productions  which  dealt  with  the  terrible 
problem  once  more  thrust  upon  the  country,  some  of  them 
doing  so,  no  doubt,  in  language  almost  profligate  in  its  vio- 
lence. Even  now  the  reader  who  has  access  to  so  rare  and 
precious  a  souvenir  of  those  times  as  a  file  of  American 
newspapers  for  any  portion  of  the  period  between  the  years 
1767  and  1775,  may  almost  feel  for  himself  the  thrill  of  that 
1  Lecky,  "  A  History  of  England,"  iv.  113-114. 


234  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

fiery  passion — noble  and  ignoble — which  seems  yet  to  throb 
and  burn  along  the  dingy  pages  of  these  old  journals, — 
astonishment,  wounded  affection,  grief,  anger,  resentment, 
disdain,  defiance,  with  here  and  there,  also,  the  dema- 
gogue's mean  joy  in  popular  disquiet,  and  the  demagogue's 
lust  for  notoriety  and  profit  to  be  got  by  him  out  of  the 
general  breaking  up  of  the  ancient  bonds  of  popular  faith 
and  order.  "It  is  mournful  to  notice,"  says  the  English 
critic  from  whom  we  have  just  quoted,  "  how  the  field  of 
controversy  had  widened  and  deepened,  and  how  a  quarrel 
which  might  at  one  time  have  been  appeased  by  slight 
mutual  concessions,  was  leading  inevitably  to  the  disruption 
of  the  empire."  ' 

VI. 

Among  all  the  political  writings  which  were  the  immedi-\ 
ate  offspring  of  this  baleful  revival  of  a  dispute  that  had 
been  so  recently  and  so  well  set  at  rest,  there  stand  out,  as 
of  the  highest  significance,  certain  essays  which  began  to 
make  their  appearance  in  a  Philadelphia  newspaper  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  year  1767.  These  essays  very  soon  became 
celebrated,  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  under  the  short 
title  of  the  "  Farmer's  Letters."  Their  full  title  was  "  Let- 
ters from  a  Farmer  in  Pennsylvania  to  the  Inhabitants  of 
the  British  Colonies."  Though  published  without  the 
author's  name,  they  were  instantly  recognized  as  the  work 
of  John  Dickinson;  and  their  appearance  may  perhaps  fairly 
be  described  as  constituting,  upon  the  whole,  the  most 
brilliant  event  in  the  literary  history  of  the  Revolution. 

One  distinction  attaching  to  them  is  that  they  were  writ- 
ten by  a  man  who  shared  in  the  general  excitement  over 
the  new  attack  upon  colonial  rights,  but  who  desired  to 
compose  it  rather  than  to  increase  it,  and  especially  to  per- 
suade his  countrymen  so  to  bear  their  part  in  the  new 
dispute  as  to  save  their  rights  as  men,  without  losing  their 
happiness  as  British  subjects.  However  it  may  have  been 

1  Lecky,  "  A  History  of  England,"  iv.  in. 


THE  FARMER'S  LETTERS.  235 

with  some  other  American  writers  of  that  period,  here  was 
no  reckless  declaimer,  no  frantic  political  adventurer,  pre- 
cipitating public  confusion  because  he  had  nothing  to  lose 
by  public  confusion,  and  eager  to  run  American  society 
upon  the  breakers  in  the  hope  of  gathering  spoils  from  the 
common  wreck.  On  the  contrary,  here  was  a  man  of  pow- 
erful and  cultivated  intellect,  with  all  his  interests  and  all 
his  tastes  on  the  side  of  order,  conservatism,  and  peace,  if 
only  with  these  could  be  had  political  safety  and  honor. 

The  dreadful  import  of  the  three  chief  measures  of  the 
British  government  in  1767  touching  the  American  colonies, 
no  man  saw  more  clearly,  or  felt  more  acutely,  than  did 
John  Dickinson;  and  under  the  guise  of  a  plain  Anglo- 
American  farmer  of  patriotic  instincts,  and  with  solid  pos- 
sessions at  stake,  he  proceeded  to  deal  with  this  new  problem 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  help  both  Americans  and  English- 
men to  solve  it  before  they  should  rush  any  nearer  to  the 
abyss  which  he  saw  yawning  between  them.  By  a  graceful 
bit  of  self-description,  he  cleverly  puts  himself,  at  the 
outset,  into  sympathy  with  his  readers,  and  then  proceeds 
to  take  up  for  consideration  the  recent  acts  of  parliament, 
trying  to  show  both  their  incompatibility  with  the  principles 
of  the  British  constitution,  and  their  fatal  bearing  upon  the 
liberties  of  America  and  the  well-being  of  the  whole  empire. 
His  chiej^objectj,  he.  declares,  is  "  to  convince  the  people  of 
these  colonies,  that  they  are,  at  this  moment,  exposed  to 

tHemOSt  immin^^r^^^g^'-g;  a"^  *n  pM-giiadf  fhpmr  irgp"^- 
diately,  vigorously,  and  unanimously,  to  exert  themselves, 
in  the  mostfirm  but  most  peaceable  manner,  for  obtaining 
rfliVf^1"1'  The  cause  of  liberty,  he  tells  them,  "  is  a  cause  of 
too  much  dignity,  to  be  sullied  by  turbulence  and  tumult. 
It  ought  to  be  maintained  in  a  manner  suitable  to  her 
nature.  Those  who  engage  in  it  should  breathe  a  sedate 
yet  fervent  spirit,  animating  them  to  actions  of  prudence, 
justice,  modesty,  bravery,  humanity,  and  magnanimity." 

1  "  The  Political  Writings  of  John  Dickinson,"  ed.  of  1801,  i.  167. 
1  Ibid.  168. 


236  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

He  expresses  a  hope  that  they  and  their  "  posterity,  to  the 
latest  ages,"  may  be  guided  by  such  a  spirit  "  that  it  will 
be  impossible  to  determine  whether  an  American's  character 
is  most  distinguishable  for  his  loyalty  to  his  sovereign,  his 
duty  to  his  mother  country,   his  love  of  freedom,   or  his 
affection  for  his  native  soil."  l     "  Let  us  behave  like  dutiful 
children,  who  have  received  unmerited  blows  from  a  beloved 
parent.     Let  us  complain  to  our  parent ;  but  let  our  com- 
plaints speak  at  the  same  time  the  language  of  affection  and 
veneration."2     He  protests  against  any  thought  of  Inde- 
pendence as  of  a  fatal  calamity.3     Nevertheless,  "  let  these 
truths  be  indelibly  impressed  on  our  minds :  that  we  cannot  ^ 
be  happy,  without  being  free ;  that  we  cannot  be  free,  with-  1  j 
out  being  secure  in  our  property;  that  we  cannot  be  secure  \ 
in  our  property,  if,  without  our  consent,  others  may,  as  by    \ 
right,  take  it  away;  that  taxes  imposed  on  us  by  parlia- 
ment, do  thus  take  it  away."  4     "  Let  us  take  care  of  our 
rights,  and  we  therein  take  care  of  our  prosperity.     '  Slavery 
is  ever  preceded  by  sleep.'     Individuals  may  be  dependent 
on   ministers,    if   they   please  :    states   should    scorn    it."  * 
"  Americans  have  that  true  magnanimity  of  soul,  that  can 
resent   injuries,    without    falling   into    rage."6      "Though: 
your  devotion  to  Great  Britain  is  the  most  affectionate,  yet 
you  can  make  proper  distinctions;  and  know  what  you  owe 
to  yourselves,  as  well  as  to  her."  7 

No  other  serious  political  essays  of  the  Revolutionary  era 
quite  equaled  the  "Farmer's  Letters"  in  literary  merit, 
including  in  that  term  the  merit  of  substance  as  well  as  of 
form ;  and,  excepting  the  political  essays  of  Thomas  Paine, 
which  did  not  begin  to  appear  until  nine  years  later,  none 
equaled  the  "  Farmer's  Letters"  in  immediate  celebrity, 
and  in  direct  power  upon  events.  As  they  first  came  forth, 
from  week  to  week,  in  the  Philadelphia  newspaper  that 
originally  published  them,  they  were  welcomed  by  the 

1  "  The  Political  Writings  of  John  Dickinson,"  ed.  of  1801,  i.  169. 

5  Ibid.  173.  s  Ibid    I7I  4  ibuj.  275. 

5  Ibid.  277.  «  ibid.  282.  '  Ibid.  282-283. 


THE    FARMER'S  LETTERS. 


237 


delighted  interest  and  sympathy  of  multitudes  of  readers  in 
that  neighborhood,  and  were  instantly  reproduced  in  all  the 
twenty-five  newspapers  then  published  in  America,  with  but 
four  known  exceptions.1  Within  less  than  four  weeks  after 
the  last  letter  had  made  its  appearance,  they  were  all  col- 
lected and  issued  as  a  pamphlet,  of  which  at  least  eight 
editions  were  published  in  different  parts  of  America."  In 
the  very  year  in  which  the  pamphlet  was  first  published  in 
America,  two  editions  of  it  were  published  in  London,  and 
one  edition  in  Dublin, — each  one  bearing  the  clever  preface 
written  by  Franklin.  In  the  year  following,  a  French  ver- 
sion, made  by  Jean  Barbeu  Dubourg,  was  published  at 
Amsterdam,  and  was  largely  circulated  upon  the  continent. 
On  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  therefore,  the  "  Farmer's 
Letters  "  gained  universal  attention  among  people  inter- 
ested in  the  rising  American  dispute.  The  name  of  John 
Dickinson  became  a  name  of  literary  renown  surpassing 
that  of  any  other  American,  excepting  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin. On  the  continent  of  Europe,  these  essays  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania Farmer  became,  for  a  time,  the  fashion:  they 
were  talked  of  in  the  salons  of  Paris ;  the  Farmer  himself 
was  likened  to  Cicero  s ;  and  almost  the  highest  distinction 
then  possible  for  any  man,  was  bestowed  upon  him  through 
the  notice  and  applause  of  Voltaire.4  Even  in  England, 
the  success  of  these  writings  was  remarkable,  and  was  shown 
quite  as  much  in  the  censures,  as  in  the  praises,  which. were 
lavished  upon  them.  They  received  the  compliment  of 
being  regarded  by  Lord  Hillsborough  as  "  extremely 
wild."5  The  "Critical  Review,"8  which  honored  them 

1  P.  L.  Ford,  "  The  Political  Writings  of  John  Dickinson,"  i.  283  ;  C.  R. 
Hildeburn,  "  The  Issues  of  the  Press  in  Pennsylvania,"  ii.  75  n. 

*  In  the  French  edition,  published  at  Amsterdam,  it  is  stated  that  thirty 
editions  had  appeared  in  America  within  the  first  six  months.  It  is  probable 
that  newspaper  reprints  were  included  in  this  estimate. 

3  George  Bancroft,  "  History  of  the  United  States,"  i6th  ed.,  vi.  149. 

4  Stille,  "  Life  of  Dickinson,"  92. 

5  "  The  Complete  Works  of  Benjamin  Franklin,"  Bigelow  ed.,  iv.  130. 

6  Volume  xxvi.  62.     A  considerable  portion  of  the  notice  is  given  by  P.  L. 
Ford,  "  The  Political  Writings  of  John  Dickinson,"  i.  282. 


238  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

with  its  scornful  disapprobation,  expressed  the  opinion  that 
Dickinson  "  would  have  proved  himself  a  much  better  mem- 
ber of  society  had  he  never  learned  either  to  read  or  write," 
and  that  his  book  was  "  seditious  in  its  principles,  super- 
ficial in  its  execution,  and  tending  to  the  perdition  of  the 
country  for  which  "  he  was  "  so  furious  an  advocate."  On 
the  other  hand,  among  the  English  admirers  of  the  "  Far- 
mer's Letters  "  was  Edmund  Burke,  who  gave  his  sanction 
to  their  principle  l;  while  the  "  Monthly  Review  "  closed  a 
long  notice  of  them  by  declaring  that,  if  reason  was  to 
decide  between  England  and  her  colonies,  the  author  of 
these  essays  would  ' '  not  perhaps  easily  meet  with  a  satis- 
factory refutation."  * 

In  America,  the  admiration  and  the  gratitude  of  the 
people  was  expressed  in  almost  every  conceivable  form.  To 
this  fact  we  have  valid  testimony,  in  the  complaint  of  the 
royalist  governor  of  Georgia,  who,  in  May,  1768,  wrote  to 
Lord  Hillsborough  that  by  the  Americans  the  Farmer  was 
"  adored,"  and  that  "  no  mark  of  honor  and  respect  "  was 
"  thought  equal  to  his  merit."  3  Thanks  were  voted  to  him 
by  political  associations,  by  town-meetings,  by  grand  juries. 
The  College  of  New  Jersey  conferred  on  him  the  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Laws.  He  became  the  favorite  toast  at  public 
banquets.  He  was  offered  the  membership  of  the  choicest 
social  clubs.  On  his  entrance,  one  day,  into  a  court  room, 
whither  business  called  him,  the  proceedings  were  stopped 
in  order  to  recognize  his  presence,  and  to  make  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  greatness  and  splendor  of  his  services  to  the 
country.  Songs  were  written  in  his  praise.  Even  in  the 
pedestrian  homeliness  of  prose,  the  resources  of  language 
were  strained  in  the  effort  to  celebrate  the  genius  and  the 
virtue  of  a  man,  who,  as  was  said  in  one  brochure,  had 
"  gloriously  distinguished  himself  by  asserting  the  rights 

1  George  Bancroft,  "  History  of  the  United  States,"  i6th  ed.,  vi.  148. 
*  Volume  xxxix.,  26. 

3  George  Bancroft,  "  History  of  the  United  States,"  i6th  ed.,  vi.   149.     The 
governor  of  Georgia  at  that  time  was  Sir  James  Wright. 


DICKINSON'S  LI8EXTY  SONG.  239 

and  liberties  of  America,  in  a  manner  that  renders  him  an 
honor  to  his  education,  a  public  blessing  to  his  country,  and 
will  immortalize  his  name  with  renown  to  the  latest  ages  of 
time."  ' 

VII. 

At  the  very  time  when  these  reverent,  cautious,  and  per- 
suasive essays  by  John  Dickinson  were  passing  into  print 
for  the  first  time,  events  were  in  progress  which  soon  gave 
an  almost  ghastly  tone  to  Dickinson's  avowals  of  faith  in 
the  justice  or  the  wisdom  of  the  British  government, — events 
which,  indeed,  pushed  Dickinson  himself  a  step  or  two 
nearer  to  the  doctrine  of  forcible  revolution.  The  last  of 
the  "Farmer's  Letters  "  was  published  in  February,  1768. 
In  the  following  May,  the  new  commissioners  of  customs 
arrived  at  Boston;  in  June,  these  commissioners,  attempt- 
ing to  execute  their  odious  office  on  John  Hancock's  sloop, 

Liberty,"  were  fiercely  assaulted  by  the  populace  of  Bos- 
ton, and  were  driven  for  refuge  to  Castle  William  in  Boston 
harbor;  whereupon  Governor  Bernard  summoned  thither 
General  Gage  with  his  troops  from  Halifax, — thus  replying 
to  all  the  reason,  and  the  moderation,  and  the  filial  tender- 
ness of  Dickinson's  arguments,  by  the  royal  syllogism  of 
gunpowder  and  cold  steel. 

Of  these  most  ominous  events  in  Boston,  John  Dickinson 
was  an  observer  from  his  distant  home  on  the  Delaware; 
and  even  he,  with  all  his  deep  loyalty  and  conscientious 
hesitation,  was  so  stirred  by  them  as  then  to  utter  what 
seems  almost  a  ringing  war-cry, — a  clarion  call  to  all  Amer- 
icans to  stand  forth  together  with  united  and  undaunted 
front,  and  to  the  men  over-sea  who  were  pushing  forward 
such  mad  measures,  a  stern  clear  undernote  of  warning. 
Taking  for  his  model  Garrick's  "Hearts  of  Oak  "—the  air 
of  which  was  then  so  familiar  to  every  one — he  wrote  the 

1  "  An  Elegy  to  the  Infamous  Memory  of  Sir  F.  B."  The  words  quoted  are 
from  the  dedication  to  the  author  of  the  "  Farmer's  Letters."  Boston,  1769. 


240  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

stanzas  which  he  christened  "  A  Song  for  American  Free- 
dom,"— a  bit  of  versification  obviously  the  work  of  a  man 
neither  born  nor  bred  to  that  business.  With  some  natural 
tremors  of  maidenly  coyness,  Dickinson  at  once  sent  the 
manuscript  of  his  poem  to  his  friend  James  Otis,  in  Boston ; 
and  by  Otis,  who  knew  real  poetry  when  he  saw  it,  the 
demerits  of  this  song  in  that  regard  were  freely  pardoned 
for  its  practical  value  in  giving  sonorous  voice  to  the  emo- 
tion which  was  then  beating  in  all  hearts.  At  the  instance 
of  Otis,  it  was  printed  for  the  first  time  in  the  "  Boston 
Gazette  "  for  July  18,  1768,  whence  it  was  reprinted  in 
nearly  all  the  newspapers  of  the  country ;  and  being  quickly 
caught  up  into  universal  favor  under  the  endearing  name  of 
the  "  Liberty  Song,"  its  manly  lines  soon  resounded  over 
all  the  land  ;  and  thenceforward,  for  several  years,  it  re- 
mained the  most  popular  political  song  among  us.  Inter- 
preted by  the  events  of  that  anxious  summer  of  1768,  with 
the  customs  commissioners  driven  off  by  the  populace  to  a 
fortified  island  in  Boston  harbor,  and  with  Gage's  troops 
hurrying  thither  to  introduce  on  behalf  of  the  government  a 
very  different  method  of  conducting  the  discussion,  the 
singing  of  that  rough  song  all  about  New  England  and  far 
back  along  the  wooded  slopes  of  the  western  frontier,  and 
all  the  way  down  the  coast  toward  the  Carolinas  and  Geor- 
gia, denoted  in  the  American  people  the  existence  of  a  spirit 
not  safe  for  kings  and  prime  ministers  to  tamper  with, — a 
spirit  before  which  even  a  royalist  governor  and  an  armed 
British  official  might  well  have  paused : 

"  Come  join  hand  in  hand,  brave  Americans  all, 
And  rouse  your  bold  hearts  at  fair  Liberty's  call ; 
No  tyrannous  acts  shall  suppress  your  just  claim, 
Or  stain  with  dishonor  America's  name. 

In  freedom  we  're  born,  and  in  freedom  we  '11  live  ; 

Our  purses  are  ready, — 

Steady,  friends,  steady, — 

Not  as  slaves,  but  as  freemen,  our  money  we  '11  give  ! 


A    TREE   OF  LIBERTY.  241 

"  How  sweet  are  the  labors  that  freemen  endure, 
That  they  shall  enjoy  all  the  profit  secure  ; 
No  more  such  sweet  labors  Americans  know, 
If  Britons  shall  reap  what  Americans  sow. 
In  freedom,  etc. 

"  Swarms  of  placemen  and  pensioners  soon  will  appear, 
Like  locusts  deforming  the  charms  of  the  year  ; 
Suns  vainly  will  rise,  showers  vainly  descend, 
If  we  are  to  drudge  for  what  others  shall  spend. 
In  freedom,  etc. 

"  All  ages  shall  speak  with  amaze  and  applause 
Of  the  courage  we  '11  show  in  support  of  our  laws  : 
To  die  we  can  bear — but  to  serve  we  disdain, 
For  shame  is  to  freemen^  more  dreadful  than  pain. 
In  freedom,  etc. 

"  This  bumper  I  crown  for  our  sovereign's  health,  • 

And  this  for  Britannia's  glory  and  wealth  ; 
That  wealth  and  that  glory  immortal  may  be, 
If  she  is  but  just,  and  we  are  but  free. 
x  In  freedom,  etc."  ' 

VIII. 

Just  seven  days  after  John  Dickinson's  "  Liberty  Song  " 
was,  through  the  columns  of  a  Boston  newspaper,  first  given 
to  the  public,  there  was  performed  at  Providence  a  symbol- 
ical and  somewhat  weird  ceremony  very  expressive  of  the 
spirit  which  had  begun  to  rule  the  time, — the  dedication  of 
a  Tree  of  Liberty.  The  discourse  which  was  spoken  at  this 
singular  function  reached  its  climax  in  a  few  words  which 
betokened  the  general  consciousness  of  the  gravity  of  the 
struggle  into  which  the  American  people  were  being  forced, 
and  their  sense  of  kinship  therein  with  all  free-minded  and 
resolute  people  in  other  parts  of  the  world:  "  We  do  there- 
fore, in  the  name  and  behalf  of  all  true  Sons  of  Liberty  in 

1  Given  in  full  by  F.  Moore,  in  "  The  Ballad  History  of  the  American  Revo- 
lution,"  20-21. 
16 


242  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

America,  Great  Britain,  Ireland,  Corsica,  or  wheresoever 
they  are  dispersed  throughout  the  world,  dedicate  and  sol- 
emnly devote  this  tree,  to  be  a  Tree  of  Liberty.  May  all 
our  counsels  and  deliberations  under  its  venerable  branches, 
be  guided  by  wisdom,  and  directed  to  the  support  and 
maintenance  of  that  liberty  which  our  renowned  forefathers 
sought  out  and  found  under  trees  and  in  the  wilderness. 
May  it  long  flourish,  and  may  the  Sons  of  Liberty  often 
repair  hither  to  confirm  and  strengthen  each  other.  When 
they  look  toward  this  sacred  Elm,  may  they  be  penetrated 
with  a  sense  of  their  duty  to  themselves,  their  country,  and 
their  posterity." 

The  look  of  bitter  joy,  the  shudder  of  proud  pain,  with 
which  many  noble-minded  Americans  then  began  to  dwell 
upon  the  possibilities  involved  in  all  these  hurrying  events, 
may  still  be  perceived  by  us  in  a  pamphlet,  published  in 
Hew  York  in  1768,  and  bearing  this  striking  title,  "The 
Power  and  Grandeur  of  Great  Britain  Founded  on  the  Lib- 
erty of  the  Colonies";  wherein  the  unknown  writer  de- 
scribes himself,  as  "  one  who  wishes  to  see  an  inviolable 
union  formed  between  his  majesty's  American  and  British 
subjects ;  to  see  the  British  empire  advanced  to  the  highest 
pinnacle  of  earthly  glory;  to  see  it  the  sovereign  of  the 
world,  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  protector  of  the  liberties 
of  mankind ;  to  see  her  an  example  and  encourager  of  every 
civil  and  religious  virtue;  to  see  America  enjoying  peace 
and  plenty  and  the  best  of  civil  governments  under  her 
protection.  .  .  .  But  if,  for  our  sins,  Providence  should 
suffer  pride,  party-spirit,  envy,  and  avarice  to  defeat  the 
measures  of  the  real  well-wishers  of  their  country,  I  see 
Britain  reduced  in  her  trade,  depopulated  by  the  transmi- 
gration of  her  people  to  America,  her  populous  trading  and 
manufacturing  cities  deserted,  her  nobles  for  want  of  ten- 


"  A  Discourse  delivered  in  Providence  .  .  .  upon  the  25th  Day  of 
July,  1768,  at  the  Dedication  of  the  Tree  of  Liberty,"  by  a  Son  of  Liberty. 
Providence,  1768,  p.  16.  I  met  with  this  pamphlet  at  the  library  of  the 
American  Antiquarian  Society. 


LIBERTY  A   BRITISH  RIGHT.  243 

ants  tilling  their  own  grounds,  and  calling  on  oppressed 
disaffected  America  to  relieve  and  defend  her  against  the 
power  of  her  enemies;  in  short,  I  see  Britain  in  America, 
and  America  in  Britain." 

The  political  tension  of  the  year  1768,  prolonged  into  the 
year  1769,  was  then  still  further  increased,  on  the  one  hand, 
by  several  resolutions  of  parliament  in  support  of  the  minis- 
terial policy,  one  of  them  directing  that  persons  accused  of 
treason  in  America  should  be  brought  to  England  for  trial ; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  by  several  resolutions  against  the 
ministerial  policy  passed  by  the  colonial  assemblies,  and 
especially  by  a  general  agreement  throughout  the  colonies 
to  boycott  all  British  commerce  until  the  ministry  and 
parliament  should  come  to  a  better  mind. 

In  the  vast  throng  of  American  writings  dealing  with 
these  harassing  topics,  we  may  find  it  to  our  purpose  to 
delay  a  moment  before  one  piece  of  vigorous  and  high- 
spirited  verse,  entitled  "  Liberty,  a  Poem:  Lately  Found 
in  a  Bundle  of  Papers  Said  to  be  Written  by  a  Hermit  in 
New  Jersey."  For  its  motto,  it  bore  the  noble  sentence 
which  during  all  that  period  was  quoted  in  America  more 
frequently,  perhaps,  than  any  other, — "  Whoever  would  give 
up  essential  liberty  to  purchase  a  little  temporary  safety, 
deserves  neither  liberty  nor  safety."  Nowhere  has  this 
poem  a  line  which  in  austerity  of  principle  falls  below  that 
legend.  The  thought  which  throughout  asserts  itself  most 
forcibly,  is  that  if  the  Americans  are  indeed  insubmissive  to 
the  base  lessons  which  would  teach  them  to  be  slaves,  it  is 
because  they  have  in  their  veins  the  blood  of  Britons,  and 
before  their  eyes  the  example  of  Britons  in  standing  up  for 
liberty  against  whatsoever  odds : 

"  And  shall  we  want  the  spirit  to  be  free  ? 
That  spirit,  Britain,  we  derived  from  thee. 
We  are  thy  offspring — and  we  '11  sooner  part 
With  every  drop  that  flows  around  the  heart, 

1  "  The  Power  and  Grandeur  of  Great  Britain,"  etc.,  23-24. 


244  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Than  tamely  yield  our  birthright.     If  it  must, 

Let  ruin  crush  our  cities  into  dust ; 

Let  madness  arm  thy  self-destroying  hand 

To  drench  with  civil  blood  this  peaceful  land, 

Or  make  us  fly  from  tyranny's  control, 

Beyond  the  limits  of  the  frozen  pole. 

We  are  thy  offspring.     Heavens  !  how  have  we  loved 

Our  mother's  name,  and  with  what  ardor  proved 

Our  duty  and  our  love  ;  and  were  she  still 

But  kind  and  just,  how  gladly  would  we  spill 

That  blood  for  her  which,  now,  at  freedom's  call, 

Perhaps  must  turn  to  bitterness  and  gall." ' 

IX. 

At  about  this  time,  also,  several  American  writers a  then 
resident  abroad  began  to  manifest  in  a  public  way  their 
sympathy  with  the  political  solicitude  that  had  once  more 
taken  possession  of  their  countrymen  at  home.  Notable 
among  such  transmarine  Americans  was  Arthur  Lee,  a 
writer  whose  high  literary  reputation  among  his  contempo- 
raries rests  upon  no  materials  which  can  justify  its  revival  at 
the  hands  of  posterity.  He  was  born  in  Virginia  in  1740, 
the  youngest  of  six  brothers,  all  of  whom  rose  to  distinction 
in  their  day.  He  was  a  scholar  of  Eton  College,  a  graduate 
in  medicine  of  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  then  a  member 
of  one  of  the  Inns  of  Court  in  London,  afterward  for  many 

1  "  Liberty,  a  Poem,"  etc.,  9. 

'Among  these  writers,  for  whom  I  do  not  think  it  necessary  to  make  room 
in  the  text,  may  here  be  named  Edward  Bancroft,  a  singularly  versatile  and 
successful  American  scoundrel  then  living  in  England,  who  in  later  years  made 
his  fortune  partly  by  the  process  of  compound  interest  from  well-paid  rascality, 
— now  selling  the  secrets  of  his  own  country  to  England,  and  then  selling  the 
secrets  of  England  to  his  own  country.  The  best  sketch  of  him  known  to  me, 
is  by  Paul  Leicester  Ford,  in  his  edition  of  Bancroft's  treacherous  "  Narrative 
of  the  Objects  and  Proceedings  of  Silas  Deane  as  Commissioner  of  the  United 
Colonies  to  France  :  Made  to  the  British  Government  in  1776."  This  is  the 
gentleman,  who,  in  1769,  published  in  London  a  rather  clumsy  piece  of  political 
statement  on  the  colonial  side  of  the  question,  entitled  "  Remarks  on  the  Re- 
view of  the  Controversy  bet%veen  Great  Britain  and  Her  Colonies." 


ARTHUR  LEE.  245 

years  active  in  the  foreign  service  of  the  American  Congress. 
A  man  of  ability,  integrity,  and  patriotism,  the  value  of  all 
that  he  did  or  said  was  constantly  hurt  by  an  inordinate 
and  a  fussy  sense  of  his  own  importance,  by  a  morbid  jeal- 
ousy of  others,  and  by  an  invincible  habit  of  suspicion, 
opposition,  and  disparagement.1  His  chief  contributions  to 
the  political  literature  of  the  Revolution  are,  first,  "  The 
Monitor,"  a  series  of  seven  essays,  published  in  London  in 
1768,  after  having  been  previously  published  in  Virginia*; 
secondly,  "  The  Political  Detection;  or,  the  Treachery  and 
Tyranny  of  Administration,  .both  at  Home  and  Abroad, 
displayed  in  a  Series  of  Letters  signed  Junius  Americanus," 
published  in  London  in  1770;  and,  thirdly,  "  An  Appeal  to 
the  Justice  and  Interests  of  the  People  of  Great  Britain,  in 
the  present  Disputes  with  America,"  published  in  London 
in  1774,  under  the  feigned  authorship  of  "  an  old  Member 
of  Parliament." 

1  It  was  difficult  for  him  to  agree  exactly  with  any  statement  on  any  subject 
as  made  by  anybody  but  himself.  Thus,  being  caught  in  a  shower,  Lee  met 
under  a  shed  a  gentleman  who,  by  way  of  affability,  ventured  upon  a  remark 
which  he  probably  thought  a  safe  one :  "It  rains  very  hard,  sir."  To  this, 
however,  Lee  replied  :  "  It  rains  hard,  sir  ;  but  I  don't  think  you  can  say  it 
rains  very  hard."  George  Tucker,  "  Life  of  Jefferson,"  i.  180. 

*  The  London  reprint  was  in  "  The  American  Gazette,"  number  ii.  189-218, 
and  is  of  the  date  as  given  above.     I  used  the  copy  in  the  Harvard  library. 
For  the  year  of  the  publication  of  "  The  Monitor,"  Jefferson,  in  his  "  Notes  on 
Virginia,"  happened  to  mention  1769  ;  and  most  writers  who  have  had  occasion 
to  refer  to  the  subject,— as  Allen,  Drake,  Allibone,  and  the  writer  of  the  article 
on  Arthur  Lee  in  "  Appleton's  Cyclopaedia  of  Am.  Biog.," — appear  to  have  fol- 
lowed one  another  back  to  this  wrong  date  as  started  by  Jefferson. 

*  Considerable  portions  of  Arthur  Lee's  personal  and  official  correspondence 
are  given  in  his  "  Life,"  by  Richard  Henry  Lee,  Boston,  1829.     A  "  Calendar 
of   the  Arthur  Lee  Manuscripts  in  the   library  of   Harvard    University  "  was 
published  in  1882,  and  forms  the  eighth  number  of  "  Bibliographical  Contribu- 
tions," edited  by  Justin  Winsor.     These  papers  were  given  to  the    Harvard 
library  by  Richard  Henry  Lee  in  1827,  and  are  bound  in  eight  volumes. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

BRITISH  TEA  AS  A  POLITICAL    INTOXICANT    IN  AMERICA: 
1770-17/4. 

I. — The  grotesque  prominence  given  to  Tea  in  the  Anglo-American  controversy 
— Outline  of  the  history  of  ministerial  measures  which  forced  on  this  result 
— These  measures  derided  by  Junius,  and  by  Edmund  Burke. 

II. — Jests  by  English  opponents  of  the  ministry  on  its  policy  of  forcing  the 
Americans  to  drink  Tea. 

III. — The  American  verse-writers  imprecating  Tea  as  the  bearer  of  political 
woes—"  Virginia  Banishing  Tea  "— "  The  Blasted  Herb  "—The  maledic- 
tion of  Tea  in  "The  American  Liberty  Song" — "The  Cup  infused  with 
Bane" — "  A  Lady's  Adieu  to  Her  Tea-Table  " — A  jocose  anathema  of  Tea 
in  "  A  New  Song  to  an  Old  Tune." 

IV. — A  humorous  version  of  the  Tea-troubles  given  in  "  The  First  Book  of  the 
American  Chronicles  of  the  Times." 

V. — How  the  controversy  over  Tea  brought  on  American  political  Union, 
through  the  First  Continental  Congress  in  1774. 

I. 

IN  our  effort  to  trace  the  development  of  thought  and 
emotion  behind  the  historic  events  which  form  the  outward 
framework  of  the  American  Revolution,  we  now  reach  a 
point  where  the  tragedy  of  this  most  bitter  race-quarrel 
enters  upon  a  phase  which  may  seem  not  only  comic  but 
even  frivolous, — as  though  the  gods  themselves,  coming 
down  from  Olympus  and  mixing  in  the  tumults  of  men, 
were  trying  to  show  us  the  absurdity  of  our-  grandiose 
attempts  at  important  business,  and  were  all  the  time  laugh- 
ing at  us  for  taking  ourselves  so  seriously. 

It  is  doubtful  if  anything  could  be  invented  more  effective 

as  burlesque  upon  the  supposed  rationality  and  dignity  of 

what  then  called  itself  statesmanship,  than  is  furnished  by 

the  bald  facts  embodying  the  successive  measures  of  minis- 

246 


MINISTERIAL  MEASURES.  247 

terial  policy  toward  the  American  colonies  during  the  dozen 
years  prior  to  that  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence. 
For,  in  1763,  having  then  greatly  enlarged  both  her  domin- 
ions and  her  debts,  England  gives  fair  notice  that,  in  her 
opinion,  the  time  has  come  for  us  Americans,  having  always 
shared  in  the  benefits  of  the  empire,  at  last  to  share  also  in 
its  general  costs.  To  this  reasonable  demand  we  make  no 
grave  objection,  only  insisting  that  the  amount  of  our  con- 
tribution for  imperial  expenses,  being  indicated  from  year  to 
year  by  royal  requisitions,  shall  be  raised  by  us  in  the  usual 
way — that  is,  in  the  constitutional  and  English  way — 
through  our  local  legislatures,  these  being  composed  of  per- 
sons chosen  by  ourselves  and  empowered  to  act  for  us  in 
the  public  expenditure  of  our  money.  Unhappily,  how- 
ever, upon  this  question  of  mere  method  in  the  doing  of  a 
thing  which  both  parties  deem  proper  and  right,  comes  the 
first,  and  also  the  fatal,  breach, — a  breach  which  through 
preposterous  mismanagement  grows  wider  and  wider  till  it 
divides  two  kindred  peoples  by  a  space  more  enormous 
than  that  of  the  sea  which  rolls  between  them.  Under  the 
American  revenue  act  of  1764,  and  in  order  to  enable  us 
to  do  what  we  are  already  quite  willing  to  do — to  pay  our 
fair  share  of  imperial  expenses — the  very  method  is  chosen 
which  we  are  obliged  to  regard  as  both  unconstitutional  and 
dangerous :  our  money  is  to  be  taken,  not  through  the  free 
action  of  our  own  legislatures,  but  under  the  imposition  of  a 
legislature  three  thousand  miles  away.  Having  thus  chosen 
an  improper  method  of  doing  a  proper  thing,  the  govern- 
ment naturally  proceeds  to  intensify  our  consciousness  of 
the  fact  by  a  second  and  a  more  accentuated  use  of  that 
method,  namely,  by  the  requirement  of  revenue  stamps  in 
America  for  nearly  all  professional  and  commercial  trans- 
actions between  civilized  men.  These  revenue  stamps, 
accordingly,  we  refuse  to  buy,  or  even  to  tolerate  in  the 
land  ;  and  in  giving  rather  animated  expression  to  this 
refusal,  we  cause  such  an  uproar,  that,  in  the  following  year, 
1766,  the  government  abandons  its  plan  for  taking  our 


248  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

money  in  that  particular  way,  at  the  same  time  declaring  to 
us  its  perfect  right  to  take  our  money  either  in  that  way  or 
in  any  other.  This  theoretical  assertion  of  right  we  could 
have  borne,  if  only  it  had  remained  theoretical ' ;  but,  in 
1767,  it  is  made  practical,  and  consequently  offensive  and 
even  alarming,  by  a  new  measure,  which  places  duties  on 
six  great  articles  of  import, — glass,  red  lead,  white  lead, 
paper,  painters'  colors,  and  especially  tea.  Whereupon  we 
proceed  to  bind  ourselves  to  an  agreement  that,  so  long  as 
this  law  remains  in  force,  we  will  endeavor  to  get  on  with- 
out purchasing  from  our  English  brethren  their  glass,  their 
red  lead,  their  white  lead,  their  paper,  their  painters'  colors, 
and  especially  their  tea.  Then  for  three  angry  years,  fol- 
lows much  debate,  recrimination,  hubbub, — all  the  while 
the  item  of  tea  becoming  more  and  more  prominent  in  the 
column  of  items  on  which  the  obnoxious  tax  is  levied ;  and,, 
at  the  end  of  that  time,  that  is,  in  the  spring  of  1770,  the 
ministry  inform  us  that,  in  view  of  our  objections,  they 
have  concluded  to  withdraw  the  offensive  tax  on  the  first 
five  articles,  leaving,  however,  the  same  offensive  tax  on  the 
sixth  article — the  article  of  tea — merely  to  mark  a  principle. 
Instead  of  relieving  the  strain,  this  announcement  only 
increases  it ;  since  it  never  was  either  the  subject  of  the  tax 
or  the  size  of  the  tax,  but  always  the  principle  of  the  tax, 
which  had  disturbed  us.  In  other  words,  these  Wise  Men 
in  the  East  undertake  to  pacify  a  loyal  and  a  generous  but 
a  proud  people  to  whom  the  revenue  act  of  1767  has  given 
serious  annoyance,  by  so  amending  that  Act  as  to  retain  in 
it  everything  that  was  ever  seriously  annoying.  In  1770,, 
therefore,  the  other  articles  of  taxation  being  withdrawn, 
the  dispute  respecting  the  mere  principle  of  taxation  is  left 
to  be  waged  around  this  single  article  of  tea.  Then,  against 
the  lovely  little  tea  plant  alone,  we  proceed  to  frame  our 
solemn  leagues  and  covenants;  and  we  make  and  take 
mighty  oaths  to  the  effect  that  we  will  not  import  it,  nor 
buy  it,  nor  sell  it,  nor  drink  it,  nor  have  anything  whatso- 

1  "  Works  of  Franklin,"  Bis^elow  ed.,  iii.  423. 


MINISTERIAL  MEASURES.  249 

ever  to  do  with  it  excepting  to  curse  it.  Then  pass  by 
three  years  more  of  ever-deepening  discord  and  exaspera- 
tion, after  which  time,  in  April,  1773,  upon  motion  of  Lord 
North,  the  government  falls  back  upon  its  favorite  and 
sovereign  remedy  of  a  bribe, — allowing  such  a  drawback  on 
all  tea  exported  from  England  to  America  as  will  enable  the 
Americans  to  buy  their  tea,  even  though  loaded  with  the 
three-penny  tax,  at  a  much  lower  price  than  the  same  tea  is 
sold  for  in  England.1  The  inventors  of  this  noble  piece  of 
political  chicanery  "  have  no  idea,"  says  Franklin,3  "  that 
any  people  can  act  from  any  other  principle  but  that  of 
interest ;  and  they  believe  that  three  pence  in  a  pound  of 
tea,  of  which  one  does  perhaps  drink  ten  pounds  in  a  year, 
is  sufficient  to  overcome  all  the  patriotism  of  an  Ameri- 
can." "  No  man  ever  doubted,"  exclaims  Burke,  in  the 
house  of  commons,  "  that  the  commodity  of  tea  could 
bear  an  imposition  of  three  pence.  But  no  commodity  will 
bear  three  pence,  or  will  bear  a  penny,  when  the  general 
feelings  of  men  are  irritated,  and  two  millions  of  people  are 
resolved  not  to  pay."  3  And  when,  in  accordance  with  this 
palpable  trick  for  accomplishing  by  an  appeal  to  our  avarice 
what  could  not  be  accomplished  by  an  appeal  to  any  other 
motive,  several  shiploads  of  the  tea  are  brought  hither  in 
the  latter  part  of  1773,  we  angrily  reject  the  bribe — all  the 
more  angrily,  perhaps,  because  we  half  suspect  the  stability 
of  our  own  virtue  in  rejecting  it ;  and  then  in  our  anger 
giving  way  to  lawlessness,  we  proceed  to  destroy  much  val- 
uable property  belonging  to  subjects  of  the  king.  We 
smash  the  tea-chests,  and  we  pitch  their  contents  overboard, 
in  one  place ;  from  two  other  places,  we  send  the  ships  with 
their  cargoes  back  to  England ;  we  burn  the  tea  to  ashes, 
in  another  place ;  we  deposit  it  in  a  damp  cellar  and  so  spoil 
it,  in  another  place.  Naturally,  the  boldest  and  the  most 
flagrant  of  these  acts  of  insubmission — that  which  occurred 

1  Lord  North's  resolutions  were  introduced  April  27,  1773'     Hansard,  "  Par- 
liamentary History,"  xvii.  840-841. 

*  "  Works,"  Bigelow  ed. ,  v.  147.  *  "  Works,"  ii.  17. 


2c|O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

in  the  harbor  of  Boston — is  selected  by  the  government  for 
its  most  conspicuous  measure  of  punishment :  that  port  is 
by  law  hermetically  sealed  up,  and  the  poorer  inhabitants  of 
a  city  dependent  on  maritime  commerce  are  given  over  to 
starvation.  Immediately,  the  doom  which  thus  falls  upon 
the  single  colony  of  Massachusetts,  is  accepted  by  her  sis- 
ters as  the  doom  of  all.  Then,  as  never  before,  the  Thir- 
teen Colonies  rally  to  one  common  standard,  and  face 
together  the  common  peril ;  then,  as  never  before,  are  very- 
busy  their  committees  of  correspondence;  then  comes  the 
Continental  Congress,  then  the  gathering  of  military  stores, 
the  mustering  of  armed  men,  and,  finally,  as  was  to  be 
expected,  the  accident  of  a  little  bloodshed ;  and  then,  of 
course,  over  land  and  sea  is  heard  the  song  of  the  weird 
sisters,  followed  by  eight  years  of  hurly-burly,  these  to  be 
followed  perhaps  by  endless  years  of  international  hate. 

Such  was  the  process  of  the  American  Revolution.  Was 
ever  statesmanship  so  blind  ?  Was  ever  the  birth  of  an 
implacable  race-feud  so  needless  ?  And,  indeed,  even  while 
these  measures  of  the  government  were  in  progress,  and 
before  they  had  reached  the  stage  of  fatal  culmination,  their 
fatuity  was  exposed  by  many  great  writers  and  orators  in 
England,  as  by  Junius,  who,  so  early  as  in  1769,  with  his 
most  bitter  wit  derided  them  as  pitifully  inconsistent,  as 
having  already  "  alienated  the  colonies,"  '  as  having  made 
the  reign  of  George  the  Third  "  a  reign  of  experiments."  " 
"  Nothing  in  all  the  world,"  said  Edmund  Burke,  in  1774, 
"  can  read  so  awful  and  so  instructive  a  lesson  .  .  . 
upon  the.  mischief  of  not  having  large  and  liberal  ideas  in 
the  management  of  great  affairs.  Never  have  the  servants  of 
the  state  looked  at  the  whole  of  your  complicated  interests 
in  one  connected  view.  They  have  taken  things  by  bits 
and  scraps,  some  at  one  time  and  one  pretense,  and  some 
at  another,  just  as  they  pressed,  without  any  sort  of  regard 

1  This  was  a  leading  topic  for  invective  in  the  first   letter  of  Junius,  dated 
January  21,  1769.     "Junius,"  i.  107-109. 
*  Ibid.  171. 


THE   QUARREL    OVER    TEA.  2$  I 

to  their  relations  or  dependencies.  They  never  had  any 
kind  of  system,  right  or  wrong;  but  only  invented  occa- 
sionally some  miserable  tale  for  the  day,  in  order  meanly  to 
sneak  out  of  difficulties  into  which  they  had  proudly 
strutted."  l  "  What  woful  variety  of  schemes  have  been 
adopted ;  what  enforcing,  and  what  repealing ;  what  bully- 
ing and  what  submitting;  what  doing  and  undoing;  what 
straining  and  what  relaxing;  what  assemblies  dissolved  for 
not  obeying,  and  called  again  without  obedience;  what 
troops  sent  out  to  quell  resistance,  and,  on  meeting  that 
resistance,  recalled;  what  shiftings,  and  changes,  and  jum- 
blings  of  all  kinds  of  men  at  home,  which  left  no  possibility 
of  order,  consistency,  vigor,  or  even  so  much  as  a  decent 
unity  of  color,  in  any  one  public  measurer"  '  "  By  such 
management,  by  the  irresistible  operation  of  feeble  councils, 
so  paltry  a  sum  as  three  pence  in  the  eyes  of  a  financier,  so 
insignificant  an  article  as  tea  in  the  eyes  of  a  philosopher, 
have  shaken  the  pillars  of  a  commercial  empire  that  circled 
the  whole  globe."  3 

II. 

The  latent  comedy  of  the  situation  flashes  upon  us  now 
from  the  grotesque  prominence  then  given,  in  the  politics 
of  the  British  empire,  to  this  coy  and  quiet-loving  tea 
plant — thus  selected  to  stand  alone  and  bear  the  whole 
brunt  of  colonial  enmity  to  parliamentary  taxation.  By  a 
sort  of  sarcasm  of  fate,  it  happened  that  between  the  years 
1770  and  1775,  this  ministress  of  gentleness  and  peace — this 
homelike,  dainty,  and  consolatory  shrub  of  Cathay — came 
to  be  regarded,  both  in  America  and  in  England,  as  the  one 
active  and  malignant  cause  of  nearly  all  the  ugly  and  disas- 
trous business  that  filled  up  those  years.  Perhaps  it  was 
not  altogether  in  jest,  that  an  explanation  of  the  American 
revolt  then  commonly  offered,  connected  it  with  England's 
seeming  determination  to  compel  her  colonial  children  to 
drink  tea — a  species  of  liquid  nourishment  for  which  they 

1 "  Works,"  ii.  14.  9  Ibid.  69.  3  Ibid.  14-15. 


252  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

were  ironically  said  to  have  an  extreme  dislike.  This  was 
the  view  frequently  presented  by  the  oppositionist  news- 
papers in  England,  which  delighted  to  chaff  the  ministry 
over  their  preposterous  policy  in  treating  the  Americans 
with  so  much  harshness  merely  for  their  alleged  disinclina- 
tion to  that  particular  beverage.  Not  long  after  the  arrival 
in  London  of  the  tidings  of  the  Bunker  Hill  fight,  the  "  St. 
James's  Chronicle  "  burlesqued  the  statesmanship  which 
had  brought  so  hideous  an  event  to  pass,  by  representing 
the  ministerial  troops  as  addressing  the  women  of  Boston 
in  these  bland  words : 

"  O  Boston  wives  and  maids,  draw  near  and  see 
Our  delicate,  Souchong  and  Hyson  tea  ; 
Buy  it,  my  charming  girls,  fair,  black,  or  brown, — 
If  not,  we  '11  cut  your  throats,  and  burn  your  town  ! " ' 

That  a  war  with  England  had  actually  broken  out  in  Massa- 
chusetts, seemed  to  be  the  effect  of  the  news  from  Lexing- 
ton, Concord,  and  Bunker  Hill;  but  just  what  the  war  was 
about,  and  especially  just  which  party  was  to  blame  for  it, 
was  tersely  set  forth  by  a  London  newspaper  in  some  half 
a  dozen  verses  which  seemed  to  put  the  American  Iliad  of 
that  time  into  a  nutshell: 

"  Rudely  forced  to  drink  tea,  Massachusetts  in  anger 
Spills  the  tea  on  John  Bull — John  falls  on  to  bang  her  : 
Massachusetts,  enraged,  calls  her  neighbors  to  aid, 
And  gives  master  John  a  severe  bastinade  ! 
Now,  good  men  of  the  law,  pray  who  is  in  fault, — 
The  one  who  begins,  or  resists  the  assault  ? "  * 

A  few  months  later,  a  newspaper  writer  in  London  sent 
over  to  New  York  the  important  information  that  the  min- 
istry,  having  found  among  the  Americans  so  great  a  repug- 

1  F.  Moore,  "  Diary  of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  i.  140. 

*  Republished,  from  "  a  London  newspaper,"  in  "  The  Constitutional 
Gazette"  for  Nov.  25,  1775  ;  and  reprinted  in  F.  Moore,  "Diary  of  the 
Am.  Rev.,"  i.  168. 


IMPRECATIONS  OF   TEA.  253 

nance  to  tea,  were  about  to  make  matters  right  by  supplying 
them  with  an  altogether  different  drink  :  "  Several  con- 
tractors have  set  off  for  Rome  for  a  fresh  supply  of  Jesuits' 
bark;  as  tea  does  not  agree  with  an  American  stomach, 
being  apt  to  produce  the  heartburn.  There  is  a  rumor 
the  new  parliament  intends  to  force  the  bark  upon  the 
Yankees,  especially  as  Doctor  Bute  recommends  it  as  a  great 
specific  for  the  Fever  of  Rebellion."  Even  the  English 
punsters  in  the  pay  of  the  ministry  may  have  supposed 
themselves  to  be  dealing  in  philosophy  as  well  as  wit,  when 
they  characterized  the  political  storm  then  rising  in  America, 
as  only  a  tempest  in  a  teapot ! 

III. 

In  this  way,  too,  it  happened  that  in  the  writings  pro- 
duced among  us  from  1767  to  1770,  and  especially  from  1770 
to  1775,  the  most  precious  interests  of  the  American  people 
seem  to  be  imperiled  and  the  peace  of  the  whole  world  to 
be  disturbed  by  this  hitherto  amiable  and  pacific  tea  plant. 
Through  a  ludicrous  metonomy  in  our  political  rhetoric, 
the  harmless  thing  comes  to  be  regarded  by  us  with  detes- 
tation as  the  very  embodiment  of  political  outrage  and 
shame ;  so  that  at  last  upon  it  alone  are  concentrated  and 
wreaked  all  the  suspicions  and  all  the  animosities  of  a 
quarrel  that  finally  broke  asunder  a  great  empire  and  smote 
two  continents  with  the  thunders  and  sorrows  of  war.  The 
innocent  shrub,  which  the  gentlest  of  English  poets  was 
soon  afterward  to  glorify  as  giving  to  its  devotees  those 

.    .     .     " cups 
That  cheer  but  not  inebriate,"8 

seldom  receives  in  our  literature  for  these  years  any  less 
lurid  description  than  that  of  "  the  detestable  plant,"  or 
"  the  pestilential  herb."  Just  south  of  the  Potomac,  a 

1  "  The  New  York  Packet,"  Jan.  4,  1776;  reprinted  in  F.  Moore,  "Diary 
of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  i.  190. 

*  ' '  The  Task,"  Book  ir.  lines  39-40.     This  poem  was  first  published  in  1783 . 


254  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

much-excited  young  woman,  addicted,  as  she  supposed,  to 
poetry  as  well  as  to  politics,  sends  forth  to  the  world  a  num- 
ber of  stanzas  entitled  "  Virginia  Banishing  Tea,"  wherein 
that  valorous  colony  exclaims, — 

"  Begone  !  pernicious,  baleful  Tea, 
With  all  Pandora's  ills  possessed  ; 
Hyson,  no  more  beguiled  by  thee 
My  noble  sons  shall  be  oppressed."  * 

A  rhymester  in  New  Hampshire  fires  at  it  a  tremendous 
broadside  of  poetical  hot  shot : 

"  Rouse,  every  generous  thoughtful  mind, 

The  rising  danger  flee  ; 
If  you  would  lasting  freedom  find, 
Now,  then,  abandon  Tea  !  "  * 

Another  rhyming  patriot,  whose  scorn  of  English  tyranny 
seems  to  extend  even  to  the  tyranny  of  English  grammar, 
vituperates  it  in  words  that  make  no  effort  to  seem  mild — 
words  that  bespeak  a  pent-up  rage  which  is  doubtless  noble, 
even  if  slightly  profane  : 

"  The  State-bunglers  shall  see 

We  despise  their  curs'd  Tea, 

Since  a  way  for  Oppression  it  paves. 

Vain  foolish  curmudgeons, 

To  think  we,  like  gudgeons, 
Swallow  baits  that  of  Freedom  bereaves  ; 

Tea,  nabobs,  and  minions, 

With  their  dire  opinions, 
May  be  damned — but  we  '11  not  be  slaves." ' 

1  The  entire  ballad  is  given  in  F.  Moore,  "  Ballad  History  of  the  Am.  Rev.," 
170. 

"The  Blasted  Herb,"  originally  published  in  "The  New  Hampshire 
Gazette,"  afterward  printed  in  broadside  and  sung  to  a  sacred  tune.  The  ten 
stanzas  composing  it  are  given  in  F.  Moore,  "  Ballad  History,"  etc.,  171-172. 

3  From  "The  American  Liberty  Song,"  in  thirteen  stanzas,  published  in 
broadside  without  date,  but  probably  about  1773.  The  only  copy  I  remember 
to  have  seen  is  in  the  library  of  the  Pa.  Hist.  Soc. 


IMPRECATIONS  OF   TEA.  255 

On  the  very  day  on  which  a  certain  agreement  for  total 
( abstinence  from  tea  was  to  go  into  effect,  another  poet, 
more  pensive  than  the  others,  salutes  it  in  these  words 
of  political  austerity,  written  with  a  diamond  on  a  pane 
of  glass: 

"  Ah,  fated  plant  of  India's  shore  ! 
Thy  wonted  steams  must  rise  no  more 

In  Freedom's  sacred  land. 
This  day  her  genuine  sons  ordain, 
To  dash  the  cup  infused  with  bane 

By  North's  insidious  hand. 
The  period  fixed — thy  banished  time — 
A  diamond  celebrates  in  rhyme, 

And  marks  the  patriot  day  ; 
While  Phoebus,  from  his  heavenly  arch, 
Sheds  lustre  on  the  first  of  March, 

And  points  it  with  a  ray." ' 

As  the  drinking  of  tea  was  supposed  to  be  a  peculiarly 
feminine  luxury,  the  Whig  ladies  in  most  of  the  colonies 
abjured  its  use  from  the  date  fixed  upon  by  public  resolu- 
tion ;  and  it  is  among  the  picturesque  traditions  of  the 
period  how  these  patriotic  housewives,  as  the  fatal  day 
drew  on,  sealed  up  their  stocks  of  tea  and  laid  them  away — 
not  to  be  touched  till  the  troubles  should  be  over.  Even 
then,  there  were  some  who  did  not  fail  to  see  a  certain 
ludicrous  quality  in  this  vast  continental  uprising  against 
the  delicate  and  blameless  beverage,  as  in  these  lines, 
entitled  "  A  Lady's  Adieu  to  her  Tea-Table,"  in  which  the 
melancholy  event  of  parting  with  it  is  set  forth  with  mock 
pathos  and  half-comic  gravity : 

"  Farewell  the  tea-board,  with  its  gaudy  equipage 
Of  cups  and  saucers,  cream-bucket,  sugar-tongs  ; 
The  pretty  tea-chest,  also,  lately  stored 
With  Hyson,  Congo,  and  best  Double-Fine. 


1  First  printed  in  "  The  New  York  Journal,"  March  23,   1775  ;  reproduced 
in  F.  Moore,  "  Ballad  History,"  etc.,  340. 


256  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Full  many  a  joyous  moment  I  've  sat  by  ye, 
Hearing  the  girls  tattle,  the  old  maids  talk  scandal, 
And  the  spruce  coxcombs  laugh — maybe — at  nothing  ! 
No  more  shall  I  dish  out  the  once-loved  liquor — 

Though  now  detestable  ; 
Because  I  'm  taught,  and  believe  it  true, 
Its  use  will  fasten  slavish  chains  upon  my  country  ; 
For  Liberty  's  the  goddess  I  would  choose 
To  reign  triumphant  in  America."  ' 

As  showing  how,  even  in  America,  and  even  after  the 
fighting  began,  the  same  dramatic  prominence  continued, 
in  the  popular  imagination,  to  be  given  to  tea  as  the  chief 
baleful  factor  in  the  fiercer  politics  of  the  year  1775,  may 
here  be  cited  a  sprightly  street  ballad,  "  A  New  Song  to  an 
Old  Tune,"  written  between  the  Lexington  and  Concord 
day  and  the  day  of  Bunker  Hill,  and  after  the  arrival  at 
Boston  of  the  three  famous  British  generals,  Clinton,  Howe, 
and  Burgoyne : 

f"  What  a  court  hath  Old  England  of  folly  and  sin — 

Spite  of  Chatham,   and   Camden,   Barre,  Burke,  Wilkes,  and 

Glynne  ! 

Not  content  with  the  Game  Act,  they  tax  fish  and  sea, 
nd  America  drench  with  hot  water  and  tea. 
Derry  down,  down,  hey  derry  down. 

"  Lord  Sandwich,  he  swears  they  are  terrible  cowards, 
Who  can't  be  made  brave  by  the  blood  of  the  Howards  ; 
And  to  prove  there  is  truth  in  America's  fears, 
He  conjures  Sir  Peter's  ghost  'fore  the  Peers. 

"  Now,  indeed,  if  these  poor  people's  nerves  are  so  weak, 
How  cruel  it  is  their  destruction  to  seek  ! 
Dr.  Johnson  's  a  proof,  in  the  highest  degree — 
His  soul  and  his  system  were  changed  by  tea. 

1  F.  Moore,  "  Ballad  History  of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  46. 


THE  AMERICAN  CHRONICLES.  2$? 

"  But  if  the  wise  council  of  England  doth  think, 
They  may  be  enslaved  by  the  power  of  drink, 
They  're  right  to  enforce  it, — but  then,  do  you  see  ? 
The  colonies,  too,  may  refuse,  and  be  free. 

"  There  's  no  knowing  where  this  oppression  will  stop  ; 
Some  say — '  There  's  no  cure  but  a  capital  chop  '  *  : 
And  that  I  believe  's  each  American's  wish, 
Since  you  've  drenched  them  with  tea,  and  deprived  'em  of  fish, 

"  The  birds  of  the  air,  and  the  fish  of  the  sea, 
By  the  gods,  for  poor  Dan  Adam's  use  were  made  free, 
Till  a  man  with  more  power  than  old  Moses  would  wish, 
Said — '  Ye  wretches,  ye  sha'n't  touch  a  fowl  or  a  fish  ! ' 

"  Three  Generals  these  mandates  have  borne  cross  the  sea, 
To  deprive  'em  of  fish  and  to  make  'em  drink  tea ; 
In  turn,  sure,  these  freemen  will  boldly  agree, 
To  give  'em  a  dance  upon  Liberty  Tree. 

"  Then  freedom  's  the  word,  both  at  home  and  abroad, 
And — every  scabbard  that  hides  a  good  sword  ! 
Our  forefathers  gave  us  this  freedom  in  hand, 
And  we  '11  die  in  defense  of  the  rights  of  the  land. 
Derry  down,  down,  hey  derry  down."  a 

IV. 

For  this  entire  phase  of  the  Revolutionary  conflict,  there 
•exists  a  somewhat  remarkable  piece  of  humorous  literature, 
entitled  "  The  First  Book  of  the  American  Chronicles  of 

1  If  this  jocose  expression  suggests  anything  more  than  the  decapitation  of  a 
•wicked  prime-minister,  it  must  be  the  cutting  of  the  cord  that  then  bound 
America  to  the  British  empire, — another  proof  of  the  fact  that  the  doctrine  of 
Independence  was  not  taken  up  and  advocated  by  responsible  statesmen  in 
America  until  many  months  after  it  had  found  more  or  less  open  championship 
among  the  song-writers  and  newspaper  humorists  who,  protected  by  their  ob- 
scurity, thus  flung  up  into  the  air  a  dangerous  thought  which  was  already  slowly 
fermenting  in  the  minds  of  the  people. 

9  F.  Moore,  "  Ballad  History,"  etc.,  176-177. 


258  THE  AMERICAN  RE  VOL  UTION. 

the  Times."  '  This  little  book,  itself  but  the  beginning  of 
an  unfinished  work,  consists  of  some  six  chapters  which 
seem  to  have  been  first  printed  serially  in  the  latter  part  of 
1774  and  in  the  early  part  of  1775.  It  is  probable,  also, 
that  in  consequence  of  the  change  in  motive  and  method 
brought  about  by  the  Lexington  and  Concord  fights,  the 
further  development  of  this  amusing  satire  came  to  an 
unintended  close.  Not  a  little  of  the  humor  of  the  book  is 
due  to  its  literary  form — that  of  scriptural  parody;  for  it 
undertakes  to  narrate  contemporary  events  after  the  man- 
ner of  the  historical  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  particu- 
larly of  the  Kings  and  the  Chronicles, — a  species  of  literary 
mirth  very  effective  among  a  people  addicted  from  child- 
hood to  the  reading  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  Employing 
very  cleverly  this  quaint  phraseology,  and  getting  at  times 
extremely  droll  effects  through  the  clash  of  modern  inci- 

1  This  vivacious  specimen  of  American  humor,  which  made  a  considerable 
mark  at  the  time  of  its  publication,  seems  to  have  fallen  almost  entirely  out  of 
men's  notice  since  then.  Excepting  in  a  library  catalogue,  and  in  Hildeburn, 
"  Issues  of  the  Pa.  Press,"  ii.  179,  I  do  not  remember  to  have  seen  any  men- 
tion of  it.  I  first  came  across  it  in  1880  in  the  library  of  my  lamented  friend, 
Mr.  C.  Fiske  Harris,  of  Providence,  who,  however,  was  unable  to  give  me  any 
information  about  it  ;  and  when,  in  the  following  year,  I  read  some  parts  of  it 
to  another  valued  friend,  now  also  gone  from  us,  Mr.  Charles  Deane,  of  Cam- 
bridge, I  was  told  by  him  that  he  had  never  before  heard  of  it.  Since  that 
time,  I  have  met  with  two  other  copies  ;  one  belonging  to  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society,  another  to  the  Library  Company  of  Philadelphia.  The 
Fiske  Harris  copy  is  without  title-page  or  page  numbers  ;  and  each  of  its  five 
chapters  ends  with  the  words,  "  [To  be  continued]  Boston,  Printed  and  Sold  by 
John  Boyle,  1775."  The  copy  belonging  to  the  Massachusetts  Historical  So- 
ciety has  the  same  five  chapters  ;  at  the  end  of  each  chapter  the  imprint  of  D. 
Kneeland,  in  Queen  Street ;  but  at  the  end  of  the  third  chapter,  the  date  1775, 
also  the  announcement  that,  at  the  printer's  maybe  had  "complete  setts  of  these 
Chronicles."  The  copy  belonging  to  the  Library  Company  of  Philadelphia  was 
printed  and  sold  by  B.  Towne  in  Philadelphia  ;  it  contains  six  chapters ;  and 
by  the  imprint  at  the  end  of  each,  it  appears  that  the  first  was  issued  there  ia 
October,  1774,  the  second  in  November,  and  the  third  and  fourth  in  December, 
of  the  same  year,  while  the  fifth  and  sixth  were  issued  in  February,  1775.  A 
third  edition  of  the  first  chapter  was  also  announced.  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  the  work  was  not  written  in  New  England,  but  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Philadelphia  :  its  humor  is  as  the  humor  of  Francis  Hopkinson. 


THE   AMERICAN  CHRONICLES.  259 

dents  with  ancient  and  venerable  associations,  it  gives  a 
ludicrous  version  of  Anglo-American  history  during  the 
later  stages  of  the  tea-troubles,  especially  from  the  autumn 
of  1773  to  the  autumn  and  winter  of  1774,  wherein  all  our 
calamities  are  seen  to  flow  from  the  fact  that  the  king  has 
set  up  for  our  worship  the  god  of  the  heathen — the  Tea- 
Chest,  whose  length  is  three  cubits,  and  the  breadth  thereof 
one  cubit  and  a  half. 

The  story  begins  in  the  true  epic  manner:  it  plunges  into 
the  midst  of  things,  by  telling  of  the  wrath  of  King  George 
the  Third  at  the  horrid  tidings,  early  in  1774,  of  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  tea  in  Boston  harbor  in  December  of  the  previous 
year: 

1.  And  behold!  when  the  tidings  came  to  the  great 
city  that  is  afar  off,  the  city  that  is  in  the  land  of  Britain, 
how  the  men  of  Boston,  even  the  Bostonites,  had  arose,  a 
great  multitude,   and   destroyed  the  Tea,   the  abominable 
merchandise  of  the  east,  and  cast  it  into  the  midst  of  the  sea: 

2.  That  the  Lord  the  King  waxed   exceeding  wroth, 
insomuch  that  the  form  of  his  visage  was  changed,  and  his 
knees  smote  one  against  the  other. 

"  3.  Then  he  assembled  together  the  Princes,  the  Nobles, 
the  Counselors,  the  Judges,  and  all  the  Rulers  of  the  peo- 
ple, even  the  great  Sanhedrim,  and  when  he  had  told  them 
what  things  were  come  to  pass, 

"  4.  They  smote  their  breasts  and  said,  these  men  fear 
thee  not,  O  King,  neither  have  they  obeyed  the  voice  of 
our  Lord  the  King,  nor  worshipped  the  Tea-Chest,  which 
thou  hast  set  up,  whose  length  was  three  cubits,  and  the 
breadth  thereof  one  cubit  and  a  half. 

"  5.  Now,  therefore,  make  a  decree  that  their  harbours  be 
blocked  up,  and  ports  shut,  that  their  merchants  may  be 
broke,  and  their  multitudes  perish,  that  there  may  be  no 
more  the  voice  of  merchandise  heard  in  the  land,  that  their 
ships  that  goeth  upon  the  waters,  may  be  sunk  in  the 
depths  thereof,  and  their  mariners  dwindle  away  to  norght, 
that  their  cods  and  their  oil  may  stink,  and  the  whale,  the 


260  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

great  Leviathan,  may  be  no  more  troubled,  for  that  they 
have  rebelled  against  thee. 

"  6.  And  it  came  to  pass  that  the  King  hearkened  unto 
the  voice  of  these  sons  of  Belial." 

This,  of  course,  is  meant  to  give  us  the  origin  of  the  Bos- 
ton port  bill,  which  became  a  law  in  the  spring  of  1774. 
While,  however,  that  drastic  measure  is  under  considera- 
tion, an  effort  to  prevent  its  adoption  is  made  by  an  aged 
and  astute  counselor,  named  Mordecai  the  Benjamite,  to- 
wit,  Benjamin  Franklin,  then  colonial  agent  in  London,  and 
likewise  deputy  postmaster-general  for  North  America: 

"  7.  Then  arose  Mordecai,  the  Benjamite,  who  was  four- 
score and  five  years  old,  an  aged  man  whom  the  Lord  loved, 
a  wise  man,  a  soothsayer,  an  astrologer,  in  whom  was  wis- 
dom from  above,  and  he  said  unto  the  King,  I  pray  thee, 
O  King,  let  thy  servant  speak. 

"  8.  And  the  King  commanded  .that  he  should  speak. 

"  9.  Then  Mordecai  spake  aloud,  in  the  presence  of  all 
the  Princes,  the  Nobles,  the  Counselors,  the  Judges,  and 
the  Rulers  of  the  people,  and  said,  O  King,  live  for  ever. 

10.  Thy  throne,  O  King,   is  encompassed  about  with 
lies,  and  thy  servants,  the  Bernardites,  and  the  Hutchin- 
sonians,  are  full  of  deceit;  for  be  it  known  unto  thee,   O 
King,  they  hide  the  truth  from  thee,  and  wrongfully  accuse 
the  men  of  Boston ;  for  behold,  these  letters  in  mine  hand 
witnesseth  sore  against  them;    O  King,   if  thou  art  wise, 
thou  wilt  understand  these  things. 

11.  And  there  was  present  one  of  the  King's  Counsel- 
ors, a  Jacobite,  a  vagabond,  a  Wedderburnite,  and  he  used 
foul  language,   and  said  unto  Mordecai,   Thou  liest  ;    and 
Mordecai  answered  and  said  unto  him,  God  will  smite  thee, 
thou  whited  wall  ;    and  Mordecai  departed  from  amongst 
them. 

"  12.  And  behold  the  Princes,  the  Nobles,  the  Counsel- 
ors, the  Judges,  and  all  the  Rulers  of  the  people,  cried  out 
vehemently  against  Mordecai,  for  they  were  in  fear  because 
of  Mordecai's  wisdom. 


THE  AMERICAN  CHRONICLES.  26 1 

"  13.  And  they  besought  the  King  that  he  would  take 
from  Mordecai  his  post,  for  he  was  in  high  honour  before 
that  time. 

"14.  So  they  prevailed  on  the  King  and  he  took  from 
Mordecai  his  post  and  all  that  he  had,  and  Mordecai  was 
persecuted  yet  more  and  more ;  but  he  bore  it  patiently,  for 
Job  was  his  grandfather's  great-grandfather;  moreover,  he 
knew  the  times  must  alter,  and  the  King's  eyes  would  be 
opened  anon." 

The  chronicler  next  proceeds  to  shift  the  scene  from 
England  to  America,  telling  how  the  King  orders  one  of 
his  generals  to  take  fierce  warriors,  and  sail  away  in  ships, 
and  invade  the  land  of  the  Bostonites: 

"15.  Now  in  the  seventh  month,  in  the  fourteenth  da^- 
of  the  month,  the  Lord  the  King  commanded  Thomas,  the 
captain  of  the  Gageites,  saying, 

1 6.  Choose  thou  the  valiant  men  of  Britain,  by  hun- 
dreds and  by  thousands,  and  get  ye  together  the  ships, 
even  the  ships  of  war,  the  terror  of  the  nations  round  about, 
and  make  your  way  towards  the  coasts  of  the  Americanites, 
the  land  of  the  Bostonians,  that  lieth  on  the  other  side  of 
the  sea  westwards,  and  cut  off  all  [their  men],  and  utterly 
destroy  all  their  cities  with  fire  and  with  sword,  for  they 
have  rebelled  against  me. 

"17.  Howbeit,  the  men  of  Boston  had  intelligence  there- 
of, for  they  kept  their  spies  abroad  from  the  east  to  the 
west,  and  from  the  north  to  the  south ;  and  when  the  tid- 
ings came  of  these  things,  they  rent  their  clothes,  and 
fasted,  and  put  on  sackcloth,  and  went  softly. 

"  23.  And  behold  when  Thomas,  the  Gageite,  was  come 
into  the  land  of  the  Bostonites,  he  threatened  them  sore, 
and  swore  by  the  life  of  Pharaoh,  insomuch  that  some  of 
the  old  women  and  children  lifted  up  their  voices,  and  wept 
exceedingly,  with  bitter  lamentations." 

Nevertheless,  while  some  of  the  old  women  and  children 
among  the  Bostonites  thus  exhibit  fear  at  the  sight  and 


262  THE  AMERICAN  K     VOLUTION. 

sound  of  these  men  of  war,  the  people  in  general,  and  espe- 
cially their  leaders,  do  not  give  way  to  unseemly  fright, 
but  keep  their  heads  so  well  as  to  be  able  to  practice  much 
mischief  upon  Thomas  the  Gageite,  especially  to  tease  him 
with  the  subtleties  of  their  politics;  whereat  he  becomes 
sore  in  heart,  and  much  discouraged,  and  writes  a  letter  of 
dolorous  complaint  to  the  king: 

"  5.  O  King,  thy  servant  is  in  a  great  strait;  the  men  of 
New  England  are  stiff-necked,  and  as  stubborn  hogs,  neither 
knoweth  thy  servant  what  to  make  of  them ;  they  are  worse 
unto  me  than  all  the  plagues  of  Egypt. 

.  "6.  For  they  resolve  upon  resolves,  they  address,  they 
complain,  they  protest,  they  compliment,  they  flatter,  they 
S£>oth,  and  they  threaten  to  root  me  up. 

"  7.  Now,  therefore,  O  King,  I  pray  thee  send  able  Coun- 
selors over,  that  they  may  advise  and  counsel  thy  servant, 
lest  they  circumvent  him,  and  he  appear  foolish  in  the  eyes 
of  all  the  people ;  for  thou  knowest,  O  King,  thy  servant  is 
no  conjurer. 

8.  Moreover,  all  my  Counselors  have  forsaken  me,  and 
resigned,  and  are  become  like  unto  Job's  comforters;  thy 
servant  knoweth  not  what  to  do. 

"  9.  For  the  men  of  New  England  are  as  venomous  as 
the  poison  of  a  serpent,  even  like  the  deaf  adder  that  stop- 
peth  her  ears;  they  give  good  words  with  their  mouths,  but 
curse  with  their  hearts;  they  go  to  and  fro  in  the  evening 
and  grin  like  a  dog,  and  run  about  through  the  city ;  they 
slander  thy  servant,  they  make  a  byword  of  him,  and 
grudge  him  everything;  yet  complain  if  they  be  not  satis- 
fied. 

10.  Surely,  O  King,  the  spirit  of  Oliver  or  the  devil  is 
got  in  them." 

The  effect  of  this  complaint  is  to  convince  the  king  that 
his  general  hath  need,  not  of  more  men  to  advise,  but  of 
more  men  to  fight.  Wherefore  he  gathers  together  another 
great  host  of  fierce  men  of  war,  and  putting  them  on  board 
his  mighty  ships,  despatches  them  over  the  sea  westward, 


THE  AMERICAN  CHRONICLES.  26$ 

commanding  them  to  make  short  work  with  these  disobedi- 
ent and  cunning  Bostonites.  Already,  however,  among  the 
Bostonites  themselves  is  some  expectation  of  so  dreadful  an 
enlargement  of  the  number  of  the  enemies  within  their 
gates ;  and  at  last  the  coming  of  the  mighty  host  is  seen 
afar  off  by  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  people,  named  Jere- 
miah, to-wit,  Samuel  Adams: 

"  27.  Now  Jeremiah,  the  son  of  the  prophet,  got  himself 
up  on  high,  and  climbed  on  the  top  of  Liberty  Tree,  and 
sat  there  from  the  morning  until  the  evening,  and  said, 

28.  Behold  yonder  I  see  a  dark  cloud,  like  unto  a  large 
sheet,  rise  from  the  North,  big  with  oppression  and  desola- 
tion, and  the  four  corners  thereof  are  held  up  by  the  four 
great  beasts,  Bute,  Mansfield,  Bernard  and  Hutchinson; 

"  29.  Carrying  a  large  swarm,  like  unto  locusts,  of  syco- 
phants, commissioners,  duty-gatherers,  custom-house  offi- 
cers, searchers,  tide-waiters,  placemen  and  pensioners 
innumerable; 

"  30.  The  bastards  and  spurious  breed  of  Noble-men, 
and  the  children  of  harlots." 

Certainly  not  even  Jeremiah,  the  son  of  the  prophet,  from 
his  high  watch  on  the  top  of  Liberty  Tree,  could  stay  the 
progress  of  this  formidable  host  bringing  succor  to  Thomas 
the  Gageite;  and,  accordingly,  their  arrival  in  the  harbor 
of  Boston,  and  all  the  evil  they  did  there,  and  how  they 
hemmed  in  the  city  and  cut  off  its  communications  with  the 
inhabitants  of  the  back  country, — all  this  is  set  forth  in 
faithful  words,  of  which  the  following  are  a  part : 


"45.  Now,  it  came  to  pass  when  the  Gageites  had 
received  succor,  they  prepared  to  go  against  the  city,  in 
which  were  men  of  valor,  and  old  women  and  children,  and 
the  mothers  of  children,  and  grandmothers  and  the  mothers 
of  mothers. 

"  46.  And  they  brought  their  battering  rams,  and  their 
cannon,  whose  mouths  were  of  the  diameter  of  a  cubit,  and 


264  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

whose  throats  were  like  unto  open  sepulchres,  and  which 
bellowed  out  fire,  and  smoke,  and  saltpetre,  and  brimstone. 

"  47.  And  they  planted  them  on  the  neck  of  the  Boston- 
ites,  and  they  laid  siege  against  it,  and  builded  a  fort  and 
bulwarks,  and  cast  a  mount,  and  set  the  camp  against  it, 
and  laid  engines  of  war  against  it  round  about. 

"  48.  And  their  ships,  even  their  mighty  ships  of  war, 
with  their  iron  tiers,  their  pride  and  their  boast,  whose 
masts  are  of  the  stately  cedars  of  Lebanon,  and  the  huge 
pine  from  the  Norwegian  hills,  surrounded  the  posts  round 
about,  so  that  the  ships  of  the  merchants  that  came  to 
traffic  from  the  isles  afar  off  could  not  enter. 

"  49.  And  they  jested  one  with  another,  and  made 
mouths,  and  squinted  with  their  eyes,  and  said,  Let  us  cut 
off  the  communication  between  the  city  and  country,  and 
pinch  them  by  famine,  and  they  will  surely  give  up,  and 
fall  a  prey  into  our  hands. ' ' 


"  36.  Now  it  came  to  pass,  while  the  Gageites  abode  in 
the  land  of  the  Bostonites,  they  day  by  day  committed 
iniquity ;  they  made  great  clattering  with  their  sackbuts,  their 
psalteries,  their  dulcimers,  bands  of  music,  and  vain  parade. 
37.  And  they  drummed  with  their  drums,  and  piped 
with  their  pipes,  making  mock  fights,  and  running  to  and 
fro  like  shitepokes  on  the  muddy  shore.  - 

"  38.  Moreover,  by  night,  they  abused  the  watchmen  on 
duty,  and  the  young  children  of  Boston  by  the  wayside, 
making  mouths  at  them,  calling  them  Yankees.  .  .  . 

"  39.  And  it  provoked  the  young  men,  and  they  said 
unto  Aminidab,  We  cannot  bear  this;  these  seven  times 
have  they  vexed  us;  for  they  gape  upon  us  with  their 
mouths,  as  it  were  a  ramping  and  roaring  lion. 

"  40.  Now  therefore,  speak  unto  Jedediah  the  priest, 
that  he  would  blow  the  ram's  horn  and  conch  shells,  that  we 
may  go  and  smite  the  heathen.  .  .  . 

"41.   But  Jedediah,  the  priest,  answered  and  said,  Nay, 


THE  AMERICAN  CHRONICLES.  26$ 

my  sons,   let  us  bear  with  them  yet   seventy  and  seven 
times.     .     .     . 

"  42.  Only  be  of  good  courage  and  strong,  pluck  up 
your  hearts,  dread  not  nor  be  afraid,  hold  up  your  heads, 
and  look  like  young  unicorns :  for  they  are  a  nation  void  of 
counsel,  neither  is  there  any  understanding  in  them." 

V. 

Thus,  the  chronicler  brings  his  story  onward  to  a  very 
great  event  in  the  history  of  those  times — the  immediate 
origin  of  the  American  Union  through  the  call  of  the  dis- 
tressed Bostonites  for  a  great  council  to  be  held  by  them 
and  their  brethren  of  the  other  tribes  in  the  coasts  of 
America.  For,  when  the  oppression  practiced  upon  the 
men  of  Boston  became  too  great  for  them  to  resist  or  to 
bear  alone,  and  especially  when  "  Thomas  the  Gageite,  the 
Captain  of  the  Heathen,  came  by  night  to  steal  away  their 
powder,  and  their  implements  of  war,  and  to  seize  their 
brethren  and  send  them  away  captives  to  Babel,  to  be  tried 
by  the  Heathen  laws,  and  peradventure  hanged  for  sup- 
posed transgressions, 

"  35.  Then  arose  Jedediah  the  priest,  and  Aminidab,  and 
Obadiah,  and  Jeremiah,  and  lifted  up  their  voices,  and 
spake  aloud  and  said, 

"  36.  Fathers,  brethren,  and  the  children  of  our  fathers, 
ye  have  heard  of  all  the  evil  that  has  been  brought  upon 
our  city,  the  city  of  our  forefathers,  the  New  Canaan,  the 
land  of  Promise,  and  behold  this  day  it  is  desolate,  and  no 
man  dwelleth  therein. 

"  37.  How  doth  the  city  remain  solitary  that  was  full  of 
people ;  she  is  as  a  widow :  she  that  was  great  amongst  the 
nations,  and  princess  among  the  provinces,  is  about  to  be 
made  tributary,  and  bow  down  to  the  Tea  Chest,  the  God 
of  the  Heathen.  .  .  . 

"  28.  Be  of  good  comfort,  let  us  send  messengers  into  all 
the  coasts  of  our  brethren  the  Americanites,  peradventure 


266  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

they  will  commune  with  us,  for  we  be  one  people,  and  serve 
one  God:  If  so  be  they  hear  us,  the  Lord  is  on  our  side; 
but  if  they  refuse  to  hearken  unto  us,  they  and  we  be  then 
slaves  to  the  Gageites,  and  our  substance  and  all  that  we 
have,  taken  from  us,  and  we  be  their  hewers  of  wood  and 
drawers  of  water. 

"  29.  And  all  the  people  shouted,  and  said  with  one 
voice,  send  and  commune  with  our  brethren. 

"  30.  Now  it  came  to  pass  that  their  brethren  listened 
unto  them,  and  they  sent  messengers  backwards  and  for- 
wards throughout  the  land,  from  the  east  unto  the  west, 
and  from  the  north  unto  the  south,  even  unto  the  sea  coast 
of  the  Georgeites. 

"31.  And  they  assembled  themselves  together,  in  a  Con- 
gress in  the  great  city  of  Philadelphia,  in  the  house  of  the 
Carpenters,  the  builders'  house,  in  the  land  of  Pennsylvania, 
on  the  seventh  day  of  the  ninth  month,  with  their  coaches, 
their  chariots,  their  camels,  their  horsemen  and  their  ser- 
vants, a  great  multitude,  and  they  communed  together." 

Thus,  even  from  the  clouds  of  steam  rising  out  of  the 
political  teapot  in  America,  there  emerges  the  august 
figure  of  the  first  Continental  Congress,  which  assembled 
in  Carpenters'  Hall,  Philadelphia,  in  September,  1774,  and 
which  then  and  there  began  on  behalf  of  the  American 
people  a  general  government  that,  under  varying  forms  and 
with  gradually  increasing  strength,  has  lasted  among  us, 
without  one  break  in  its  continuity,  till  the  present  hour. 
Indeed,  the  chief  moral  of  this  humorous  chronicle  of  the 
American  tea-troubles,  is  that  of  the  necessity  and  the 
beneficence  of  American  political  Union.  In  the  midst  of 
all  their  dangers  and  sufferings,  as  we  are  here  told,  "  the 
men  of  Boston  waited  patiently  the  event,  for  they  put 
their  trust  in  the  Lord  of  Hosts,  in  the  Congress,  in  them- 
selves, and  in  Occuncocogeecocacheecacheecadungo;  for 
they  said — Two  is  better  than  one,  and  a  fourfold  cord  is 
not  easily  broken." 


CHAPTER   XII. 

THE   SUMMONS   FOR  A   GREAT  AMERICAN  COUNCIL:    MAY- 
SEPTEMBER,    17/4. 

I. — The  critical  character  of  the  year  1774  in  the  development  of  the  Revolu- 
tion— Marks  a  change  in  the  process  of  governmental  discipline  of  the 
colonies — Expectation  that  the  colonies  would  succumb  to  the  pressure 
thus  laid  upon  them. 

II. — Action  of  Boston  at  the  news  of  the  port-bill — The  response  of  the  twelve 
colonies  to  Massachusetts — The  summons  for  the  first  Continental  Con- 
gress. 

III. — A  fresh  outburst  of  political  literature  immediately  prior  to  the  meeting 
of  the  Congress — Josiah  Quincy's  "  Observations  on  the  Boston  Port-Bill  " 
— James  Wilson's  "  Considerations  on  the  Nature  and  Extent  of  the  Legis- 
lative Authority  of  the  British  Parliament." 

IV. — "A  Few  Political  Reflections  Submitted  to  the  Consideration  of  the 
British  Colonies,  by  a  Citizen  of  Philadelphia  " — Demands  that  American 
opposition  should  be  legal  and  rational — Anticipates  two  prominent  argu- 
ments of  Thomas  Paine. 

V. — The  fundamental  theory  of  American  opposition  challenged  in  "  A  Letter 
from  a  Virginian  to  the  Members  of  the  Congress  " — Taxation  and  govern- 
ment are  inseparable — This  writer  blames  his  fellow  colonists  for  their 
political  fickleness  and  inconsistency — He  denounces  the  proposal  for  non- 
importation and  non-consumption. 

VI. — The  assembling  of  the  first  Continental  Congress— Their  meeting  is 
simultaneous  with  the  publication  of  "  A  Pretty  Story"  by  Peter  Grievous, 
Esq. — The  invitation  of  the  preface. 

VII. — Outline  of  "A  Pretty  Story  "  as  an  allegorical  history  of  the  business  that 
brought  the  Congress  together — The  story  teller  stops  at  the  point  where 
the  Congress  takes  it  up. 

VIII. — The  literary  charm  of  "  A  Pretty  Story" — Comparison  of  it  with 
Arbuthnot's  "  History  of  John  Bull  "—Francis  Hopkinson,  the  author  of 
"A  Pretty  Story,"  thus  takes  his  place  as  one  of  the  three  leading  satirists 
on  the  Whig  side  of  the  Revolution — The  character  of  his  satire  as  com- 
pared with  that  of  Trumbull  and  Freneau. 

I. 

No  student  of  our  Revolutionary  period   can  afford  to 
hasten   past  the  year   1774, — the   year   which   divides  the 

267 


268  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

entire  period  into  two  nearly  equal  sections.  In  the  deeper 
meaning  of  things,  this  was  the  most  critical  year  of  all  the 
twenty :  in  it  were  done  the  deeds  that  defined  what  went 
before,  that  predicted  what  came  after.  At  the  beginning 
of  that  year,  it  could  not  certainly  be  known  from  any  out- 
ward fact,  that  the  one  party  or  the  other  in  the  great  dis- 
pute would  not  finally  give  way  in  time  to  avert  the  clash 
which  might  produce  civil  war,  the  disruption  o-f  one  English 
empire,  the  appearance  in  its  place  of  two.  By  the  end  of 
that  year,  events  had  occurred  which  made  it  certain  that  no 
essential  claim  of  either  party  was  to  be  withdrawn ;  conse- 
quently, that  the  claims  of  both,  being  irreconcilable,  were 
also  to  be  pressed  to  their  ultimate  issue.  In  that  ultimate 
issue  was  included  every  action  and  passion  of  American 
experience  down  to  the  Peace  of  1783. 

Of  course,  scarcely  any  other  chapter  of  history  is  more 
familiar  to  us  than  the  record  of  this  critical  year.  For  the 
purpose  now  before  us,  all  that  is  needed  is  that,  having  in 
mind  the  salient  items  of  that  record,  we  fail  not  to  note 
their  fresh  and  tremendous  significance  as  we  adjust  them 
to  our  present  point  of  view. 

In  all  the  windings  of  the  controversy  during  the  previ- 
ous ten  years,  a  certain  threefold  process  had  been  uniform : 
first,  parliamentary  encroachment,  then  colonial  resistance, 
then  parliamentary  concession.  Will  this  third  term  in 
the  process  be  once  more  repeated,  when,  in  March,  1774, 
parliament  shall  learn  of  the  obstreperous  transactions  in 
Boston  harbor  three  months  before  ?  If,  indeed,  under  such 
circumstances,  that  third  term  shall  be  repeated,  then  any 
onlooker  may  foresee  that  the  subsequent  decade  is  not  to 
be  essentially  different  from  the  previous  one.  If,  however, 
instead  of  parliamentary  concession,  at  last  shall  be  substi- 
tuted parliamentary  firmness — an  unflinching  refusal  to  con- 
cede anything— and  if  with  this  shall  go  its  logical  adjunct 
—coercion— then,  also,  any  onlooker  may  foresee  that  the 
subsequent  decade  is  to  develop  lines  of  public  experience 
startlingly  unlike  those  which  had  gone  before :  either  the 


PARLIAMENTARY  DISCIPLINE.  269 

colonies  themselves  will  yield, — which,  indeed,  would  be 
something  very  new, — or  the  dispute  will  become  a  Revo- 
lution. 

Here,  then,  in  1774,  we  mark  the  point  of  change  in  the 
fatal  third  term  of  the  process  of  governmental  discipline. 
Instead  of  yielding  any  portion  of  the  policy  which  had 
provoked  colonial  resistance,  parliament  stood  by  that 
policy  without  flinching,  and  at  once  provided  for  its  vindi- 
cation by  four  measures  of  appalling  force :  the  act  for  clos- 
ing the  port  of  Boston,  the  act  for  exterminating  every 
trace  of  self-government  in  Massachusetts,  the  act  for 
removing  to  Great  Britain  for  trial  any  person  indicted  in 
Massachusetts  for  a  capital  offense,  and  the  act  for  prevent- 
ing the  colonists  south  of  the  St.  Lawrence  from  finding, 
in  their  future  measures  of  resistance,  allies  in  the  colonists 
north  of  that  boundary.  Still  further  to  indicate  the  thor- 
oughness of  this  scheme  for  stamping  out  sedition  in  Massa- 
chusetts, its  governor,  a  civilian,  was  withdrawn,  and  in  his 
stead  was  sent  there  as  governor,  the  commander-in-chief  of 
all  the  royal  forces  in  America.  Thenceforward,  the  rough 
murmurings  of  American  discontent  were  to  be  met  by  the 
frank  and  simple  policy  of  blood  and  iron. 

What  will  be  the  response  of  the  Americans  to  all  this 
simplicity  and  frankness  ?  In  the  presence  of  so  tremendous 
a  display  of  imperial  firmness  and  force,  will  not  the  several 
colonies  be  terrorized  ?  And,  in  their  terror,  will  they  not 
remain  politically  separated  as  hitherto  ?  And  in  their 
political  separation,  will  they  not  think  each  of  its  own 
safety  only,  and  thus,  one  by  one,  succumb  to  a  power  so 
vastly  beyond  their  ability  to  cope  with  ?  That  such  would 
be  the  effects  of  the  new  colonial  policy  as  pushed  through 
the  two  houses  in  the  spring  of  1774,  was  the  confident 
prediction  of  the  king,  of  the  ministry,  of  the  entire  court 
party,  in  and  out  of  parliament.  What  actually  happened 
in  America  merely  proved  them  to  be  bad  prophets,  and 
worse  politicians. 


270  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

II. 

The  Boston  port-bill — the  first  of  the  four  great  measures 
then  in  contemplation — received  the  royal  assent  on  the  3ist 
of  March.  The  news  of  that  fact  reached  the  doomed  city 
on  the  loth  of  May.  On  the  I3th  of  May,  arrived  the  new 
governor,  General  Gage.  Even  while  he  was  sailing  up  the 
harbor,  the  people  of  Boston,  in  town-meeting  assembled, 
voted  that  the  act  of  parliament  to  which  their  good  king  had 
just  given  his  assent,  was  one  of  "  impolicy,  injustice,  in- 
humanity, and  cruelty  "  ;  against  it  they  made  solemn  appeal 
"  to  God  and  the  world  " ;  and  they  called  upon  the  other 
colonies  not  to  suffer  the  colony  of  Massachusetts  to  contend 
alone  against  a  power  which,  if  it  should  first  crush  that 
colony,  would  be  able  the  more  easily  to  crush  all  the  rest.1 

By  the  other  colonies,  this  invocation  from  Massachusetts 
was  scarcely  needed :  they  were  not  so  obtuse  as  to  be 
unable  of  themselves  to  perceive  their  own  concern  in  the 
Boston  port-bill.  Indeed,  the  mere  arrival  within  their 
borders  of  printed  copies  of  that  act,  had  produced  every- 
where an  effect  even  profounder  and  more  impassioned  than 
that  produced  by  the  Stamp  Act  nine  years  before.  Of  the 
greatness  of  the  danger  which  then  menaced  them,  they 
were  fully  aware ;  but,  instead  of  terror,  was  fearless  resolve, 
instead  of  the  blind  selfishness  of  localism  and  the  imbecility 
of  divided  councils,  was  an  almost  universal  demand  for 
political  union.  Even  those  Americans — and  there  were 
many — who  thought  that  American  opposition  had  already 
gone  too  far,  could  easily  see  that  the  time  had  come  for 
them  all  to  try,  at  any  rate,  to  think  and  act  together. 
Almost  at  one  breath,  therefore,  from  the  twelve  other 
colonies  went  back  the  word  to  Massachusetts,  that  the 
cause  of  one  was  the  cause  of  all,  and  that  on  behalf  of  all 
must  be  immediately  summoned  a  great  American  council, 
to  consider  and  to  announce  a  common  course  of  action  in 

1  W.  Gordon,  "  History,"  etc.,  i.  361  ;  W.  V.  Wells,  "  Life  of  Samuel 
Adams,"  ii.  161-164. 


THE  FIRST  COXGRESS. 


27I 


the  presence  of  a  common  danger.     This  was  the  call 

almost  a  simultaneous  one — which  brought  to  Philadelphia, 
in  September,  1774,  the  first  Continental  Congress. 

III. 

These  events,  of  course,  were  the  signal  for  a  fresh  out- 
burst of  political  literature  among  us.  Within  the  two  or 
three  months  prior  to  the  meeting  of  the  Congress,  the 
colonial  newspapers  teemed  and  glowed  with  essays  touch- 
ing the  business  upon  which  that  body  was  to  deliberate ; 
and  these,  with  the  host  of  political  pamphlets  then  sepa- 
rately issued,  discussed  with  a  new  intensity  the  arduous 
and  tragic  character  of  the  responsibilities  thus  thrown  upon 
the  American  people.  Even  the  men  who  thought  alike  as 
to  the  injustice  and  the  dangerousness  of  the  new  measures 
of  the  government,  were  by  no  means  able  to  think  alike  as 
to  the  most  proper  and  most  politic  method  of  dealing  with 
them.  The  need,  at  any  rate,  of  a  general  American  Con- 
gress; the  right  to  have  such  a  Congress,  even  though  no 
express  permission  to  that  effect  was  to  be  found  in  any 
constitutional  document ;  above  all,  the  claims  which  the 
Congress 'should  promulgate  on  behalf  of  the  colonies,  and 
the  line  of  action  it  should  recommend  in  support  of  those 
claims, — such  were  then  the  great  matters  under  consider- 
ation. Even  American  jocularity — that  inextinguishable 
resource  of  this  people  in  times  of  storm  and  gloom — seems 
then  to  have  been  almost  chastened  by  the  pathos  of  the 
situation. 

Of  the  various  writings  which  sprang  into  life  from  the 
midst  of  these  excitements,  one  of  the  earliest  and  one  of 
the  most  significant  was  a  pamphlet  published  in  Boston  in 
May,  1774,  and  bearing  this  title:  "  Observations  on  the 
Act  of  Parliament  commonly  called  the  Boston  Port-Bill; 
with  Thoughts  on  Civil  Society  and  Standing  Armies." 

1  Reprinted  in  "  Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Josiah  Quincy,  of  Massachusetts  Hay  : 
1744-1775.  By  his  Son  Josiah  Quincy,  Jr.,"  293-376.  The  dedication  is 


2/2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Its  author,  who  did  not  here  conform  to  the  common  usage 
of  anonymous  publication,  was  Josiah  Quincy,  a  well- 
educated,  brilliant,  and  high-mettled  lawyer  of  Boston,  then 
but  thirty  years  old,  already  frail  from  pulmonary  disease, 
and  destined  to  death  from  that  cause  in  less  than  a  twelve- 
month thereafter.  As  if  conscious  of  his  fate,  he  often 
permits  to  himself  in  this  pamphlet  a  hectic  intensity  of 
style,  which,  also,  reflects  a  local  habit  of  that  period  in 
its  occasional  spasms  of  grandiloquence  and  in  its  tiresome 
repetitions  of  Greek  and  Roman  commonplaces.  There  is, 
however,  nothing  hectic,  nothing  rhetorical,  in  the  courage 
which  prompts  him  to  put  his  name  openly  upon  the  title- 
page  of  a  tract  that  was  not  unlikely  to  bring  him  to  the 
scaffold:1  "  Legislators  who  could  condemn  a  whole  town 
unheard,  nay,  uncited  to  answer;  who  could  involve  thou- 
sands in  ruin  and  misery,  without  suggestion  of  any  crime 
by  them  committed ;  and  who  could  so  construct  their  law 
as  that  enormous  pains  and  penalties  would  inevitably 
ensue,  notwithstanding  the  most  perfect  obedience  to  its 
injunctions,  .  .  .  would  undoubtedly  imagine  the 
attainder  and  death  of  a  private  individual,  for  his  public 
animadversions,  a  less  extraordinary  act  of  power.  But  all 
exertions  of  duty  have  their  hazard.  ...  He  who  shall 
go  about  to  treat  of  important  and  perilous  concerns,  and 
conceals  himself  behind  the  curtain  of  a  feigned  signature, 
gives  an  advantage  to  his  adversaries,  who  will  not  fail  to 
stigmatize  his  thoughts  as  the  notions  of  an  unknown  writer, 
afraid  or  ashamed  to  avow  his  sentiments ;  and  hence  they 
are  deemed  unworthy  of  notice  and  refutation.  Therefore 
I  give  the  world  both  my  sentiments  and  my  name  on  the 

dated  Boston,  May  14,  1774,  only  four  days  after  the  reception  there  of  the 
news  of  the  passage  of  the  bill  discussed  by  him.  The  pamphlet  is  of  great 
length,  and  in  some  parts  gives  evidence  of  considerable  reading,  as  well  as  of 
some  care  in  writing.  Much  of  it,  doubtless,  had  been  written  before  the  im- 
me  Hate  occasion  which  brought  it  to  light,— the  author  using  the  excitement 
produced  by  the  port-bill  as  a  tide  on  which  to  float  his  "  Thoughts  on  CiviJ 
Society  and  Standing  Armies." 

1  "  Memoir  of  Josiah  Quincy,"  130-136. 


JAMES    WILSON.  273 

present  occasion."  As  to  the  political  virtues  which  in 
that  trying  hour  were  most  needed  by  his  countrymen,  he 
writes  with  a.  solemnity  not  at  all  artificial,  even  if  it  be 
somewhat  grandiose:  "To  divide  and  conquer  was  the 
maxim  of  the  devil  in  the  garden  of  Eden,  and  to  disunite 
and  enslave  hath  been  the  principle  of  all  his  votaries  from 
that  period  to  the  present.  .  .  .  The  combinations  of 
public  robbers  ought,  therefore,  to  cement  patriots  and 
heroes;  and,  as  the  former  plot  and  conspire  to  undermine 
and  destroy  the  commonwealth,  the  latter  ought  to  form  a 
compact  for  opposition, — a  band  of  vengeance."  a 

In  broad  contrast  to  the  somewhat  febrile  intensity  of 
Quincy's  pamphlet,  is  the  quiet  tone  of  a  pamphlet  pub- 
lished anonymously  at  Philadelphia  a  few  weeks  later,  and 
entitled  "  Considerations  on  the  Nature  and  Extent  of  the. 
Legislative  Authority  of  the  British  Parliament,"  9  wherein, 
with  great  learning  and  with  great  acumen,  as  well  as  with 
perfect  sobriety,  the  author  seeks  to  influence  the  policy  of 
the  approaching  Congress  by  an  argument  in  support  of  the 
constitutional  paradox  that  the  American  colonies  were 
bound  to  the  empire  only  through  their  allegiance  to  the 
British  crown,  and  consequently  were  beyond  the  legislative 
authority  of  parliament.  Its  author  \vas  James  Wilson,  a 
lawyer  of  Philadelphia,  at  that  time  but  thirty-two  years 
old,  a  Scotsman  bred  at  St.  Andrew's,  Glasgow,  and  Edin- 
burgh, an  accomplished  and  a  courageous  politician,  then 
on  the  threshold  of  a  great  career  in  the  higher  walks  of 
American  statesmanship.4 

1  "Observations,"  etc.,  299-301  of  reprint  in  "  Memoir."  *  Ibid.  372. 

3  Reprinted  in  the  Works  of  James  Wilson,  iii.  199-246. 

4  The  case  of  this  man  would  serve  to  point  a  moral  or  adorn  a  tale  as  to  the 
caprice  which  seems  to  direct  the  distribution  of  fame  in  this  world.     Among 
the  men  who  founded  the  Republic,  and  especially  among  those  who  created 
and  shaped  our  national  constitution,  James  Wilson  stood  in  his  lifetime  in  the 
front  rank  with  John  Dickinson  and  John  Jay,  with  Hamilton  and  Madison  ; 
yet  during  the  present  century  his  name  has  fallen  into  something  like  oblivion. 
There  are  some  tokens  that  such  oblivion  is  not  always  to  last  ;  one  being  the 
recent  call   for  a  new  edition  of   his  works,  which,  edited  by  James  deWitt 
Andrews,  was  published  in  two  volumes  in  Chicago  in  1896. 


274  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

IV. 

Between  the  eleventh  of  June  and  the  fourth  of  August,, 
1774,  the  dominant  topic  was  discussed  in  the  "  Pennsyl- 
vania Packet  "  in  a  series  of  six  essays,  which  drew  upon 
themselves  so  much  attention  that  a  collected  edition  of 
them  had  then  to  be  struck  off.  The  pamphlet  as  thus 
formed  was  called  "  A  Few  Political  Reflections  Submitted 
to  the  Consideration  of  the  British  Colonies,  by  a  Citizen  of 
Philadelphia."  '  The  uncommon  quality  of  this  writer  is 
shown  in  the  fearless  manner  in  which,  while  approving  of 
the  universal  rejection  of  the  tax-claim  of  parliament,  he 
dares  to  demand  that  all  measures  of  opposition  shall  be 
both  lawful  and  rational. 

To  begin  with,  he  plants  himself  squarely  upon  the  prop- 
osition that  that  claim  is  "so  unjust,  so  unnatural  and 
absurd,"  that  all  Americans  must  unite  to  oppose  it,  and 
that  in  such  opposition,  if  wisely  conducted,  they  will  have 
the  sympathy  and  support  of  multitudes  of  good  people  in 
England.4  The  propriety,  the  necessity,  of  opposing  this 
tax-claim,  then,  is  admitted ;  only  as  to  the  manner  of 
opposing  it,  can  there  be  a  doubt. 

One  form  of  opposition — that  through  civil  war — should 
be  at  once  and  forever  discarded:  "  The  '  ultima  ratio,'  to 
oppose  force  to  force,  is  what  the  heart  of  every  American 
must  revolt  at.  For  with  whom  should  we  engage  ?  Our 
friends — our  countrymen — our  kindred  !  No  !  Let  not 
the  profligacy  of  a  ministry  abandoned  to  every  principle  of 
virtue  and  raging  for  despotism,  tempt  such  near  and  dear 
connections  to  sheathe  the  sword  in  each  other's  bowels. 
There  are  surer,  safer,  means  to  end  the  controversy. ' '  3 

And   as  he  would  reject    the   remedy  through   war,   so 

1  The  copy  used  by  me— the  only  one  that  I  have  ever  met  with— belongs  to 
the  Library  Company  of  Philadelphia.  On  the  fly-leaf  is  a  manuscript  note  ap- 
parently by  the  late  Mr.  Lloyd  Smith,  attributing  the  authorship  of  the  pamphlet 
to  Richard  Wells. 

s  "A  Few  Political  Reflections,"  3.  3  Ibid.  3-4. 


A    FEW  POLITICAL  REFLECTIONS.  2?$ 

would  he  reject  the  remedy  through  mere  riot  and  the  wan- 
ton destruction  of  property;  and  in  order  to  atone  for  some 
recent  lapses  of  that  kind,  he  would  promptly  compensate 
the  East  India  Company  for  its  pecuniary  losses  at  our 
hands. 

The  true  remedy,  in  his  opinion,  is  to  be  found  among 
the  resources  of  legitimate  and  honorable  commerce.  Here, 
also,  there  is  one  resource  which,  though  in  itself  just,  is 
not  wise — that  of  an  agreement  for  non-exportation ;  for, 
just  in  proportion  as  we  are  faithful  to  it,  we  merely  hurt 
ourselves.  Nevertheless,  the  true  remedy  is  a  commercial 
one :  it  is  a  general  agreement  for  non-importation,  which, 
if  honestly  adhered  to,  would  break  neither  the  law  nor  the 
peace,  and  would,  in  due  time,  compel  the  ministers  either 
to  give  up  their  policy  or  to  go  out  of  office. 

This  pamphlet  has  additional  interest  for  us,  as  develop- 
ing, on  behalf  of  a  larger  and  freer  political  life  in  America, 
two  striking  arguments  which,  eighteen  months  afterward, 
were  repeated  with  brilliant  amplification  by  Thomas  Paine. 
One  is  the  argument  from  our  political  maturity:  the  other 
is  the  argument  from  our  greatness  in  territory  and  in  popu- 
lation. Americans,  it  is  here  argued,  are  no  longer  political 
infants;  they  have  reached  their  political  majority;  the  time 
has  come  for  them  to  be  clothed  with  all  its  appropriate 
rights  and  duties:  "  We  look  to  manhood;  our  muscles 
swell  with  youthful  vigor;  our  sinews  spring  with  elastic 
force,  and  we  feel  the  marrow  of  Englishmen  in  our  bones. 
The  day  of  independent  manhood  is  at  hand.  ...  In 
domestic  life,  we  all  allow,  there  is  a  time  when  youth  shall 
no  longer  be  subject  to  the  control  of  age."  *  Finally,  in 
demanding  that  American  greatness  in  territory  and  in  popu- 
lation should  be  accepted  as  having  its  due  weight  against 
any  further  minute  or  severe  control  over  us  by  England, 
he  predicts  the  ultimate  and  peaceful  transfer  to  America  of 
the  seat  of  the  British  empire, — his  words  to  this  effect 
being  a  sort  of  prose  version  of  Dean  Berkeley's  earlier  pre- 

1  "A  Few  Political  Reflections,"  33~34- 


2/6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

diction  in  verse:  "  George  the  First,  when  called  to  the 
throne  of  England,  never  harbored  so  absurd  a  thought  as 
to  wield  the  English  sceptre  in  the  Electorate  of  Hanover. 
The  centre  of  his  dominion  was  the  place  of  his*  choice;  nor 
would  the  nation  have  been  satisfied  without  it.  How  long 
it  may  be  before  a  similar  translation  shall  happen  in  favor 
of  America,  I  will  not  undertake  to  determine.  But,  should 
the  Georges  in  regular  succession  wear  the  British  diadem 
to  a  number  ranking  with  the  Louises  of  France,  many  a 
goodly  prince  of  that  royal  line  will  have  mingled  his  ashes 
with  American  dust;  and  not  many  generations  may  pass 
away,  before  one  of  the  first  monarchs  of  the  world,  ascend- 
ing his  throne,  shall  declare  with  exulting  joy, — '  Born  and 
educated  amongst  you,  I  glory  in  the  name  of  American ! '  "  ' 

V. 

We  should  be  only  misleading  ourselves  into  a  morass  of 
historical  error,  if  we  were  to  overlook  the  fact  that  in  this 
season  of  alarm  and  of  earnest  consultation,  there  were  many 
patriotic  Americans  who  gravely  challenged  the  wisdom, 
even  the  rectitude,  of  the  chief  measures  of  opposition 
which,  by  so  many  writers,  were  already  pressed  upon  the 
attention  of  the  Congress  in  advance  of  its  meeting.  Per- 
haps the  most  characteristic  example  of  this  political  atti- 
tude is  furnished  by  a  pamphlet,  admirable  in  temper  and 
expression,  entitled  "  A  Letter  from  a  Virginian  to  the 
Members  of  the  Congress  to  be  held  at  Philadelphia  on  the 
First  of  September,  1774."  " 

The  solicitude  of  this  writer  has  its  deepest  root  in  his 
own  distrust  of  the  soundness  of  the  constitutional  theory 
on  which  most  of  the  colonial  opposition  proceeds.  That 

1  "A  Few  Political  Reflections,"  49. 

9  The  great  impression  made  by  this  pamphlet  is  proved  by  the  numerous  re- 
prints of  it  which  were  made  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  its  argument  was  dead 
against  what  appeared  to  be  the  popular  current.  Some  copies  of  it  are  without 
place  of  publication.  It  was  probably  first  printed  at  Philadelphia.  I  am 
using  a  Boston  reprint  of  1774. 


"LETTER  FROM  A    VIRGINIAN."  277 

the  measures  of  the  ministry  are  impolitic  and  ought  to  be 
withdrawn,  he  nowhere  denies, — but  are  they  unconstitu- 
tional ?  "  We  may  ring  eternal  changes  upon  taxation  and 
representation ;  .  but  there  is  one  proposition,  a 

self-evident  proposition,  to  which  all  the  world  give  their 
assent,  and  from  which  we  cannot  withhold  ours, — that, 
whatever  taxation  and  representation  may  be,  taxation  and 
government  are  inseparable." 

Granted  that  the  ministerial  measures  to  which  we  object, 
do  entail  hardship  and  are  justly  offensive,  what  course 
ought  we  to  pursue  to  obtain  their  repeal  ?  For  one  thing, 
we  ought  to  pursue  a  consistent  course — a  thing  we  have 
not  been  doing  the  past  ten  years.  And  is  this  long  record 
of  our  political  inconsistency  to  be  extended  ?  "  Shall 
we,  Proteus-like,  perpetually  change  our  ground,  assume 
every  moment  some  new  and  strange  shape,  to  defend,  to 
evade  ?  Shall  we  establish  distinctions  between  internal 
and  external  taxation  one  year,  and  laugh  at  them  the 
next  ?  Shall  we  confound  duties  with  taxes,  and  regula- 
tions of  trade  with  revenue  laws  ?  Shall  we  rave  against 
the  preamble  of  the  law,  while  we  are  ready  to  admit  the 
enacting  part  of  it  ?  Shall  we  refuse  to  obey  the  tea  act, 
not  as  an  oppressive  act,  but  as  a  dangerous,  a  sole  prece- 
dent of  taxation,  when  every  post  day  shows  a  precedent 
which  our  forefathers  submitted  to,  and  which  we  still  sub- 
mit to,  without  murmuring  ?  Shall  we  move  heaven  and 
earth  against  a  trifling  duty,  on  a  luxury  unknown  to  nine- 
tenths  of  the  globe,  unknown  to  our  ancestors,  despised  by 
half  the  nations  of  Europe,  which  no  authority,  no  neces- 
sity, compels  us  to  use  ?  "  a 

Furthermore,  we  shall  miss  the  right  way  for  securing  the 
repeal  of  measures  to  which  we  object,  if  we  adopt  any  plan 
for  merely  vexing  and  distressing  the  mother  country,  as 
that  of  non-importation  and  non-consumption:  "  Beware 
how  you  adopt  that  measure,  how  you  engage  in  that 
strange  conflict  of  sullenness  and  obstinacy,  till  you  have 

1  "  A  Letter  from  a  Virginian,"  etc.,  26.  2  Ibid.  22-23. 


278  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

given  it  the  most  calm  and  serious  deliberation."  "  \Yc 
may  tease  the  mother  country  ;  we  cannot  ruin  her." 
"  No  man  of  spirit  in  private  life,  even  on  the  slightest 
quarrel,  will  submit  to  be  bullied,  and  exposed  to  the  scorn 
and  derision  of  the  little  circle  he  lives  in.  Can  we  seriously 
hope  that  a  great  nation,  a  proud  nation,  will  be  insulted 
and  degraded  with  impunity  by  her  colonies,  in  the  face  of 
every  rival  kingdom  in  Europe  ?  "  Even  though  our 
agreement  for  non-importation  and  non-consumption  should 
succeed,  "  it  certainly  behooves  us  as  men,  and  as  Christians, 
to  be  sure  that  it  is  a  just  measure.  A  combination  to  ruin 
or  to  obstruct  the  trade  of  a  fellow  citizen  who  happens  to 
differ  from  us  in  his  religious  or  political  opinions,  adopted 
in  passion,  prosecuted  by  the  intrigues  of  a  cabal,  by  innuen- 
does, insinuations,  threatenings,  and  publicly  signed  by 
large  numbers  of  leading  men,  would,  I  presume,  be  a  mani- 
fest violation  of  the  laws  of  God  and  man,  and  would,  on 
conviction,  be  severely  punished  in  every  court  of  justice  in 
Christendom.  In  what  colors,  then,  will  appear  combina- 
tions of  a  large  and  respectable  body  of  subjects  against  the 
supreme  power  of  the  community,  adopted  from  the  same 
motives,  prosecuted  by  the  same  arts,  and  publicly  signed 
in  the  face  of  the  whole  world  ?  "  4  "  For  the  sake  of  com- 
mon humanity,  gentlemen,  disdain  to  co-operate  with  hand- 
bills, with  newspapers,  with  'the  high  menacing  resolves  of 
common  town-meetings.  Do  not  conspire  with  them,  to 
reduce,  under  the  pains  and  penalties  of  disgrace  and 
infamy,  thousands  of  your  fellow  citizens  to  the  cruel  alter- 
native of  involving  themselves,  their  wives  and  children,  in 
indigence  and  wretchedness,  or  of  being  publicly  branded 
and  pointed  out  by  the  frantic  multitude  as  apostates  and 
traitors  to  their  country."  * 

1  "  A  Letter  from  a  Virginian,"  etc.,  18-19.  *  Ibid.  2O- 

3  Ibid.  25.  «  Ibid.  20-21. 

s  Ibid.  22.  I  do  not  remember  to  have  met  with  any  suggestion  as  to  the 
authorship  of  this  able  pamphlet ;  but  from  its  tone  both  of  thought  and  of 
expression,  I  am  inclined  to  attribute  it  to  Jonathan  Boucher. 


"  A    PRETTY  STOJfV."  279 

VI. 

On  Monday  morning,  the  fifth  of  September,  1774,  four- 
and-forty  respectable  gentlemen,  mostly  strangers  to  one 
another,  but  representing  twelve  "  colonies  and  provinces  in 
North  America,"  quietly  made  their  way  into  Carpenters' 
Hall,  in  Philadelphia,  and  there  sitting  down  together 
began  "  to  consult  upon  the  present  state  of  the  colonies, 
and  the  miseries  to  which  they  are  and  must  be  reduced,  by 
the  operation  of  certain  acts  of  parliament  respecting  Amer- 
ica, and  to  deliberate  and  determine  upon  wise  and  proper 
measures  to  be  by  them  recommended  to  all  the  colonies, 
for  the  recovery  and  establishment  of  their  just  rights  and 
liberties,  civil  and  religious,  and  the  restoration  of  union  and 
harmony  between  Great  Britain  and  the  colonies,  most 
ardently  desired  by  all  good  men."  '  Thus  came  into  life 
the  first  Continental  Congress,  and  with  it  the  permanent 
political  union  of  the  American  people.  As  to  the  task  set 
before  those  four-and-forty  gentlemen,  no  graver  one  was 
€ver  undertaken  since  the  world  began. 

As  they  came  out  from  that  hall  of.  anxious  deliberation, 
some  of  them  may  have  found,  on  stepping  into  Mr.  John 
Dunlap's  shop  not  far  away,  a  lively-looking  little  book, 
just  come  from  the  printer's  hands,  in  which  book,  under 
the  veil  of  playful  allegory,  they  could  read  in  a  few  min- 
utes a  graphic  and  indeed  a  quite  tremendous  history  of  the 
very  events  that  had  brought  them  together  in  that  place : 

A 

PRETTY  STORY 

written  in  the 

YEAR  OF  OUR  LORD  1774, 

By 
PETER  GRIEVOUS,  ESQ., 

A.B.C.D.E.    ' 
Veluti  in  Speculo. 

PHILADELPHIA. 

Printed  and  sold  by  John  Dunlap. 

M.    DCC.    LXXIV. 
1  "Journals  of  Congress,"  i.  1-2. 


280  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

As  this  title-page,1  however,  gave  no  clew  to  the  real 
import  of  the  book,  the  reader  who  should  then  seek  for 
such  clew  in  the  preface,  would  find  himself  there  decoyed 
and  led  on  by  explanations  which  still  failed  to  give  him 
warning  that  he  was  about  to  peruse  a  tractate  upon  Anglo- 
American  politics.  "  A  book,"  gaily  remarks  Peter  Griev- 
ous, with  the  nonchalant  air  of  a  mere  story-teller  unvexed 
by  things  political,  "  is  like  a  house.  The  grand  portico  is 
the  Dedication  ;  the  flagged  pavement  is  an  Humble  Address 
to  the  Reader,  in  order  to  pave  the  way  for  a  kind  reception 
of  the  work;  the  front  door  with  its  fluted  pillars,  pediment, 
trigliffs,  and  modillons,  are  the  Title-page,  with  its  motto, 
author's  name  and  titles,  date  of  the  year,  etc. ;  the  entry 
is  the  Preface — oftentimes  of  a  tedious  length ;  and  the  sev- 
eral apartments  and  closets  are  the  Chapters  and  Sections 
of  the  work  itself.  As  I  am  but  a  clumsy  carpenter  at  best, 
I  shall  not  attempt  to  decorate  my  little  cottage  with  any 
out-of-door  ornaments;  but  as  it  would  be  inconvenient  and 
uncomfortable  to  have  my  front  door  open  immediately  into 
the  apartments  of  the  house,  I  have  made  this  Preface  by 
way  of  entry. 

"  And  now,  gentle  reader,  if  you  should  think  my  entry 
too  plain  and  simple,  you  may  set  your  imagination  to 
work,  and  furnish  it  with  a  grand  staircase,  with  cornices, 
stucco,  and  paintings.  That  is,  you  may  suppose  that  I 
entered  very  unwillingly  upon  this  work,  being  compelled 
to  it  by  a  chain  of  unforeseen  circumstances;  that  it  was 
written  in  the  midst  of  a  great  hurry  of  other  business,  and 
under  particular  disadvantages  of  time  and  place,  and  that 
it  was  only  intended  for  the  inspection  of  a  few  friends, 
without  any  expectations  of  ever  seeing  it  in  the  press. 

1  In  my  citations  from  "  A  Pretty  Story,"  I  have  used  the  edition  by  B.  J. 
Lossing,  published  in  N.  Y.,  in  1864,  under  the  outside  title  of  "  The  Old 
Farm  and  the  New  Farm  :  A  Political  Allegory."  Lossing  professes  to  give 
an  exact  reprint  of  the  original  edition  ;  while  the  copy  to  be  found  in  Hopkin- 
son's  "Miscellaneous  Essays,"  i.  65-0,1,  was  more  or  less  tampered  with  and 
weakened  by  himself,  in  his  preparation  of  it  for  what  proved  to  be  the  posthu- 
mous publication  of  his  writings. 


"A    PRETTY  STORY."  28l 

You  may,  kind  reader,  go  on  to  suppose  that  when  my 
friends  perused  my  work,  they  were  struck  with  the  energy 
of  my  genius,  and  insisted  that  the  public  ought  not  to  be 
deprived  of  such  a  fund  of  amusement  and  improvement 
through  my  obstinate  modesty ;  and  that,  after  many  solici- 
tations and  powerful  persuasions,  I  had  been  prevailed  upon 
to  bless  mankind  with  the  fruits  of  my  labor.  Or,  if  you 
like  not  this,  you  may  suppose  that  the  following  sheets 
were  found  in  the  cabinet  of  some  deceased  gentleman ;  or 
that  they  were  dug  out  of  an  ancient  ruin,  or  discovered  in 
a  hermit's  cave,  or  dropped  from  the  clouds  in  a  hail  storm. 
In  short,  you  may  suppose  just  what  you  please.  And 
when,  by  the  help  of  imagination,  you  have  seasoned  the 
Preface  to  your  palate,  you  may  turn  over  this  leaf,  and  feast 
upon  the  body  of  the  work  itself." 

VII. 

Turning  over  the  leaf,  then,  in  obedience  to  such  persua- 
sion, the  reader  would  soon  be  in  full  sail  upon  a  current  of 
rapid  and  fascinating  narrative  in  which,  under  the  names 
of  the  Old  Farm  for  England,  and  the  New  Farm  for 
America,  the  troubled  relations  between  the  two,  especially 
for  the  ten  or  twelve  years  prior  to  1774,  are  depicted  in  a 
very  amusing  way,  and  through  which,  especially,  there 
runs  a  vein  of  delicate  raillery  and  satire  upon  the  entire 
spirit  and  method  of  the  masters  of  the  Old  Farm  in  their 
dealing  with  the  settlers  of  the  New.  It  was  the  whole 
case,  then  to  be  considered  with  so  much  solemnity  by  the 
first  Continental  Congress,  set  forth  logically  and  laughably 
in  a  good-humored  little  story, — which  no  one  could  fail  to 
read  to  the  end  who  should  once  begin  it. 

"  Once  upon  a  time,  a  great  while  ago,  there  lived  a  cer- 
tain Nobleman,  who  had  long  possessed  a  very  valuable 
Farm,  and  had  a  great  number  of  children  and  grand- 
children. Besides  the  annual  profits  of  his  land,  which  were 
very  considerable,  he  kept  a  large  shop  of  goods;  and  being 


282  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

very  successful  in  trade,  he  became,  in  process  of  time, 
exceeding  rich  and  powerful,  insomuch  that  all  his  neighbors 
feared  and  respected  him.  With  respect  to  the  manage- 
ment of  his  family,  it  was  thought  he  had  adopted  the  most 
perfect  mode  that  could  be  devised ;  for  he  had  been  at  the 
pains  to  examine  the  economy  of  all  his  neighbors,  and  had 
selected  from  their  plans  all  such  parts  as  appeared  to  be 
equitable  and  beneficial,  and  omitted  those  which  from 
experience  were  found  to  be  inconvenient.  Or,  rather,  by 
blending  their  several  constitutions  together,  he  had  so 
ingeniously  counterbalanced  the  evils  of  one  mode  of  gov- 
ernment with  the  benefits  of  another,  that  the  advantages 
were  richly  enjoyed,  and  inconveniences  scarcely  felt.  In 
short,  his  family  was  thought  to  be  the  best  ordered  of  any 
in  his  neighborhood."  '  "  Now  it  came  to  pass  that  this 
Nobl0nan  had,  by  some  means  or  other,  obtained  a  right 
to  an  immense  tract  of  wild  uncultivated  country  at  a  vast 
distance  from  his  mansion  house.  But  he  set  little  store  by 
this  acquisition,  as  it  yielded  him  no  profit ;  nor  was  it 
likely  to  do  so,  being  not  only  difficult  of  access  on  account 
of  the  distance,  but  was  also  overrun  with  innumerable  wild 
beasts  *  very  fierce  and  savage, — so  that  it  would  be  ex- 
tremely dangerous  to  attempt  taking  possession  of  it. 

"In  process  of  time,  however,  some  of  his  children,  more 
stout  and  enterprising  than  the  rest,  requested  leave  of  their 
Father  to  go  and  settle  on  this  distant  tract  of  land.  Leave 
was  readily  obtained ;  but  before  they  set  out,  certain  agree- 
ments were  stipulated  between  them.  The  principal  were 
— the  old  Gentleman,  on  his  part,  engaged  to  protect  and 
defend  the  adventurers  in  their  new  settlements ;  to  assist 
them  in  chasing  away  the  wild  beasts;  and  to  extend  to 
them  all  the  benefits  of  the  government  under  which  they 
were  born,— assuring  them  that  although  they  should  be 
removed  so  far  from  his  presence,  they  should  nevertheless 
be  considered  as  the  children  of  his  family,  and  treated 
accordingly.  At  the  same  time,  he  gave  each  of  them  a 

1  "  A  Pretty  Story,"  13-14.  *  Particularly,  the  American  Indians. 


"A   PRETTY  STORY."  283 

bond  for  the  faithful  performance  of  these  promises,  in 
which,  among  other  things,  it  was  covenanted  that  they 
should  each  of  them,  in  their  several  families,  have  a  liberty 
of  making  such  rules  and  regulations  for  their  own  good 
government  as  they  should  find  convenient,  provided  the 
rules  and  regulations  should  not  contradict  or  be  incon- 
sistent with  the  general  standing  orders  established  in  his 
Farm.  In  return  for  these  favors,  he  insisted  that  they,  on 
their  parts,  should  at  all  times  acknowledge  him  to  be  their 
Father;  that  they  should  not  deal  with  their  neighbors  with- 
out his  leave,  but  send  to  his  shop  only  for  such  merchan- 
dise as  they  should  want.1  But,  in  order  to  enable  them  to 
pay  for  such  goods  as  they  should  purchase,  they  were  per- 
mitted to  sell  the  product  of  their  lands  to  certain  of  his 
neighbors."  a 

Having  duly  adjusted  all  these  preliminaries,  the  hardy 
sons  of  the  old  Nobleman  set  off  on  their  journey.  After 
dangers  and  hardships  almost  without  number,  they  at  last 
got  comfortably  settled  on  the  New  Farm;  in  due  time 
their  harvests  became  abundant;  and,  keeping  up  a  con- 
stant correspondence  with  the  family  on  the  Old  Farm,  they 
went  to  great  expense  for  wagons,  horses,  and  drivers,  with 
which  to  bring  from  their  Father's  shop  such  goods  as  they 
wanted,  which  they  paid  for  out  of  the  produce  of  their 
lands.  Thus  matters  went  on  very  happily  until,  in  an  evil 
day,  the  old  Nobleman's  Wife3  "  began  to  cast  an  ava- 
ricious eye  upon  the  new  settlers."  In  the  first  place,  she 
issued  "  an  edict  setting  forth  that,  whereas  the  tailors  of 
her  family  were  greatly  injured  by  the  people  of  the  New 
Farm,  inasmuch  as  they  presumed  to  make  their  own 
clothes,  whereby  the  said  tailors  were  deprived  of  the  bene- 
fit of  their  custom,  it  was  therefore  ordained  that  for  the 
future,  the  new  settlers  should  not  be  permitted  to  have 

1  The  Navigation  Acts. 
*  "  A  Pretty  Story,"  19-21. 

3  The  Nobleman's  Wife  is,  of  course,  the  British  Parliament.  In  Arbuthnot's 
•"  History  of  John  Bull,"  also,  John  Bull's  Wife  is  Parliament. 


284  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

amongst  them  any  shears  or  scissors  larger  than  a  certain 
fixed  size.1  In  consequence  of  this,  our  adventurers  were 
compelled  to  have  their  clothes  made  by  their  Father's 
tailors  ;  but  out  of  regard  to  the  old  Gentleman,  they 
patiently  submitted  to  this  grievance."2  Next,  she  pro- 
ceeded to  lay  heavy  taxes  upon  them  on  various  pretences, 
all  the  time  "  receiving  the  fruits  of  their  industry  with 
both  hands.  Moreover,  she  persuaded  her  Husband  to 
send  amongst  them,  from  time  to  time,  a  number  of  the 
most  lazy  and  useless  of  his  servants,  under  the  specious 
pretext  of  defending  them  in  their  settlements,  and  of 
assisting  to  destroy  the  wild  beasts,  but  in  fact,  to  rid  his 
own  house  of  their  company,  not  having  employment  for 
them,  and  at  the  same  time  to  be  a  watch  and  a  check  upon 
the  people  of  the  New  Farm."  3 

As  the  old  Nobleman  advanced  in  years,  he  came  to  leave 
his  affairs  more  and  more  in  the  hands  of  his  Steward,  who 
was  a  very  bad  man,  and  had  debauched  the  old  Nobleman's 
Wife,4  "  and  by  that  means  gained  an  entire  ascendency 
over  her.  She  no  longer  deliberated  what  would  most 
benefit  either  the  Old  Farm  or  the  New,  but  said  and  did 
whatever  the  Steward  pleased.  Nay,  so  much  was  she  influ- 

1  For  example,  no  hat  maker  in  America  was  allowed  to  have  more  than  two 
apprentices,  or  to  teach  his  trade  to  a  negro,  or  to  export  his  products  by  loading 
them  on  any  horse,  ass,  cart,  or  sailing  vessel  whatsoever.     All  iron  manufacture 
in  the  colonies  was  particularly  obnoxious.     An  act  was  passed  by  the  house  of 
commons,  but  did  not  go  into  effect,  whereby  no  American  blacksmith  might 
make  so  much  as  a  bolt,  or  spike,  or  nail ;  but  later,  parliament  actually  "  for- 
bade under  penalties  the  maintaining  of  iron  mills,  slitting  or  rolling  mills, 
plating  forges,  and  steel  furnaces  in  the  colonies,"  "  Encyc.  Brit.,"  xxiii.  733. 
"  England  made  it  a  fixed  maxim  of  her  commercial  policy  to  crush  every  rising 
industry  in  her  colonies,  that  could  possibly  compete  with  the  home  market." 
Lecky,  "  A  History  of  England  in  the  i8th  Century,"  ii.  240.     "It  is  to  the 
antagonism  of  interests  "  created  by  such  laws,  "  much  more  than  to  the  Stamp 
Act  or  to  any  isolated  instances  of  misgovernment,  that  the  subsequent  disrup- 
tion must  be  ascribed."     Ibid.  241. 

2  "  A  Pretty  Story,"  26-27. 

3  Ibid.  27-28. 

4  The  corruption  of  parliament  by  ministerial  bribes  in  the  form  of  money, 
office,  titles,  etc. 


"A    PRETTY  STORY."  28$ 

enced  by  him,  that  she  could  neither  utter  Aye  or  No  but 
as  he  directed.  For  he  had  cunningly  persuaded  her  that  it 
was  very  fashionable  for  women  to  wear  padlocks  on  their 
lips,  and  that  he  was  sure  they  would  become  her  exceed- 
ingly. He  therefore  fastened  a  padlock  to  each  corner  of 
her  mouth.  When  the  one  was  open,  she  could  only  say 
Aye ;  and  when  the  other  was  loosed,  could  only  cry  No. 
He  took  care  to  keep  the  keys  of  these  locks  himself;  so 
that  her  will  became  entirely  subject  to  his  power."  ' 

Thus,  the  wicked  Steward  with  the  help  of  the  debauched 
Old  Lady  was  able  to  work  his  will  against  the  people  of  the 
New  Farm,  devising  all  sorts  of  "  ways  and  means  to  impov- 
erish and  distress  them."  For  one  thing,  he  got  the  old 
Nobleman  to  sign  an  edict  against  the  new  settlers,  in  which 
it  was  declared  that  it  was  their  duty  as  children  to  pay 
something  towards  supplying  their  Father's  table  with  pro- 
visions, and  to  the  supporting  the  dignity  of  his  family.* 
For  that  purpose,  it  was  ordained  3  that  all  their  spoons, 
knives  and  forks,  plates  and  porringers,  should  be  marked 
with  a  certain  mark,  by  officers  appointed  for  that  end ;  for 
which  marking,  they  were  to  pay  a  certain  stipend;  and 
that  they  should  not,  under  severe  penalties,  presume  to 
make  use  of  any  spoon,  knife  or  fork,  plate  or  porringer, 
before  it  had  been  so  marked,  and  the  said  stipend  paid  to 
the  officer."  4  The  attempt  to  put  this  edict  in  force  led  to 
a  vast  amount  of  trouble  both  in  the  Old  Farm  and  in  the 
New,  so  that  at  last  the  Nobleman  thought  it  best  to  revoke 
it,*  though  he  did  this  with  a  very  bad  grace.6  Of  course, 
"  the  Steward  continued  to  hate  the  new  settlers  with 
exceeding  great  hatred,  and  determined  to  renew  his  attack 

1  "  A  Pretty  Story,"  30-31. 

8  In  1764,  duties  were  laid  on  the  colonies  for  the  first  time  for  the  avowed 
purpose  of  increasing  the  imperial  revenue. 

3  The  Stamp  Act,  1765. 

<"  A  Pretty  Story,"  31-32. 

5  Repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  1766. 

«  The  Declaratory  Resolution  asserting  the  power  of  parliament  to  bind  the 
colonies  in  all  cases  whatsoever. 


286  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

upon  their  peace  and  happiness."  '  Accordingly,  he  caused 
to  be  proclaimed  another  decree,"  to  the  effect  "  that  the 
new  settlers  should  pay  a  certain  stipend  upon  particular 
goods,  which  they  were  not  allowed  to  purchase  anywhere 
but  at  their  Father's  shop."3  Of  these  goods,  the  most 
important  was  Water-Gruel,  of  which  the  new  settlers  were 
very  fond.  Thereupon,  they  made  such  a  commotion  that 
the  Old  Nobleman  thought  it  necessary  to  repeal  this 
decree,4  only  retaining  that  portion  of  it  which  laid  a  stipend 
on  Water-Gruel,  and  this  merely  for  the  purpose  of  showing 
that  he  had  the  power  to  do  so.  Then  followed  worse 
troubles  than  before.  For,  the  new  settlers  agreed  with 
one  another  that  so  long  as  the  tax  on  Water-Gruel  should 
remain,  they  would  drink  no  Water-Gruel,  and  would  thus 
cause  the  Water-Gruel  business  to  be  unprofitable  to  the 
Great  Merchants 6  in  the  Old  Farm,  who  had  it  for  sale. 
Accordingly,  these  Great  Merchants  lifted  up  their  voices 
and  wept,  because  innumerable  casks  of  the  commodity 
were  lying  unsold  in  their  warehouses.  Whereupon  the 
wicked  Steward  directed  them  to  load  many  and  great 
wagons  with  these  casks  of  Water-Gruel,'  and  send  them 
to  the  New  Farm  for  sale  at  a  price  so  low  that  the  settlers 
would  be  tempted  to  violate  their  agreement, — he  "  promis- 
ing that  the  accustomed  duty  which  they  paid  for  their 
exclusive  right,  should  be  taken  off  from  all  the  Gruel  they 
should  send  amongst  the  new  settlers ;  and  that  in  case  their 
cargoes  should  come  to  any  damage,  he  would  take  care 
that  the  loss  should  be  repaired  out  of  the  old  Gentleman's 
coffers."  When,  however,  the  people  saw  the  wagons 

1  "  A  Pretty  Story,"  38. 

3  The  act  introduced  by  Charles  Townshend  in  1767,  laying  duties  on  p.aper, 
painters'  colors,  glass,  and  tea. 

3  "  A  Pretty  Story,"  39. 

4  The  bill  introduced  by  Lord  North,  5  March,  1770,  repealing  that  part  of 
the  act  of  1767  which  laid  a  duty  on  paper,  painters'  colors,  and  glass,  but  re- 
taining the  duty  on  tea  in  order  to  maintain  the  parliamentary  right  of  taxation. 

5  The  East  India  Company. 

6  Lord  North's  bill,  in  1773,   authorizing  the  East  India  Co.   to  send  their 
commodity  to  America  free  of  export  duty. 

'  "  A  Pretty  Story,"  42. 


"A   PRETTY  STORY."  287 

of  Water-Gruel  approaching,  they  "  were  again  thrown  into 
great  alarms  and  confusions.  Some  of  them  would  not 
suffer  the  waggons  to  be  unloaded  at  all,  but  sent  them 
immediately  back  to  the  Gruel  Merchants.1  Others  per- 
mitted the  waggons  to  unload,  but  would  not  touch  the 
hateful  commodity  ;  so  that  it  lay  neglected  about  their 
roads  and  highways  until  it  grew  sour  and  spoiled.8  But 
one  of  the  new  settlers,  whose  name  was  Jack,3  either  from 
a  keener  sense  of  the  injuries  attempted  against  him,  or 
from  the  necessity  of  his  situation,  which  was  such  that  he 
could  not  send  back  the  Gruel  because  of  a  number  of  mer- 
cenaries 4  whom  his  Father  had  stationed  before  his  house 
to  watch,  and  be  a  check  upon  his  conduct, — he,  I  say, 
being  almost  driven  to  despair,  fell  to  work,  and  with  great 
zeal  stove  to  pieces  the  casks  of  Gruel,  which  had  been  sent 
him,  and  utterly  demolished  the  whole  cargo." 

Of  course,  as  soon  as  these  high  doings  were  known  at 
the  Old  Farm,  "  great  and  terrible  was  the  uproar  there. 
The  old  Gentleman  fell  into  great  wrath,  declaring  that  his 
absent  children  meant  to  throw  off  all  dependence  upon  him, 
and  to  become  altogether  disobedient.  His  Wife,  also,  tore 
the  padlocks  from  her  lips,  and  raved  and  stormed  like  a 
billingsgate.  The  Steward  lost  all  patience  and  moderation, 
swearing  most  profanely  that  he  would  leave  no  stone 
unturned  until  he  had  humbled  the  settlers  of  the  New 
Farm  at  his  feet,'  and  caused  their  Father  to  trample  on 
their  necks.  Moreover,  the  Gruel  Merchants  roared  and 
bellowed  for  the  loss  of  their  Gruel;  and  the  clerks  and 

1  The  tea  ships  were  sent  back  from  New  York  and  Philadelphia. 
"*  At  Charleston  the  tea  was  landed,   but  placed  in  damp  cellars  where  it 
spoiled. 

3  Boston. 

4  British  soldiers  and  vessels  of  war  in  Boston  harbor. 

5  Pages  44-45- 

6  A  reverberation  of  Lord  North's  too-well-remembered  speech  in  the  house 
of   commons  in   1768  :    "  I  am  against   repealing  the  last  act  of   parliament, 
securing  to  us  a  revenue  out  of  America  ;  I  will  never  think  of  repealing  it 
until  we  see  America  prostrate  at  our  feet." 


288  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

apprentices  were  in  the  utmost  consternation  lest  the  people 
of  the  New  Farm  should  again  agree  to  have  no  dealings 
with  their  Father's  shop.  Vengeance  was  immediately  set 
on  foot,  particularly  against  Jack."  For  that  purpose,  a 
large  padlock  was  prepared,  which  was  "  to  be  fastened  upon 
Jack's  great  gate,"  '  and  this  was  not  to  be  opened  again 
until  Jack  had  paid  for  the  Gruel  he  had  spilt,  and  had  shown 
other  signs  of  repentance.  Moreover,  "  a  large  gallows  was 
erected  before  the  mansion  house  in  the  Old  Farm,  and  an 
order  made  that  if  any  of  Jack's  children  or  servants  should 
be  suspected  of  misbehavior,  they  should  not  be  convicted 
or  acquitted  by  the  consent  of  their  brethren,  .  .  .  but 
be  tied  neck  and  heels  and  dragged  to  the  gallows  at  the 
mansion  house,  and  there  be  hanged  without  mercy."  a 

Certainly,  all  this  was  dreadful  for  poor  Jack.  "  The 
great  inlet  to  his  farm  was  entirely  blocked  up,  so  that  he 
could  neither  carry  out  the  produce  of  his  land  for  sale,  nor 
receive  from  abroad  the  necessaries  for  his  family.  But  this 
was  not  all.  His  Father,  along  with  the  padlock  aforesaid, 
had  sent  an  Overseer 8  to  hector  and  domineer  over  him  and 
his  family,  and  to  endeavor  to  break  his  spirit  by  exercising 
every  possible  severity ;  for  which  purpose,  he  was  attended 
by  a  great  number  of  mercenaries,  and  armed  with  more 
than  common  authorities."  4  On  the  arrival  of  the  Over- 
seer, Jack  and  his  family  received  him  with  all  due  respect ;  * 
"  for,  notwithstanding  all  that  had  passed,  the  people  of 
the  new  Settlements  loved  and  revered  the  old  Gentleman 
with  a  truly  filial  attachment, — attributing  his  unkindness 

1  The  Boston  port  bill,  1774. 
9  Pages  45,  46,  47. 

3  General  Gage,  to  whom  was  given  extraordinary  powers.     He  arrived  at 
Boston,  May,  1774,  bringing  four  additional  regiments. 

4  Page  48. 

5  General  Gage  "landed  at  Long  Wharf,  amid  salutes  from  ships  and  bat- 
teries.    Received  by  the  council  and  civil  officers,   he  was   escorted   by  the 
Boston    cadets,   whom   Hancock  commanded,    to  the  state  house,    where  the 
council    presented    a   loyal    address.     ...     He   then    partook   of  a  public 
dinner  in  Faneuil  Hall."     Bancroft,  "  Hist,  of  U.  S.,"  last  rev.,  iv.  7-8. 


PRETTY  STORY." 


289 


entirely  to  the  intrigues  of  their  enemy,  the  Steward.  But 
this  fair  weather  did  not  last  long.  The  new  Overseer  took 
the  first  opportunity  of  showing  that  he  had  no  intentions 
of  living  in  harmony  and  friendship  with  the  family.  Some 
of  Jack's  domestics  had  put  on  their  Sunday  clothes,  and 
attended  the  Overseer  in  the  great  parlor,  in  order  to  pay 
him  their  compliments  on  his  arrival,  and  to  request  his 
assistance  in  reconciling  them  to  their  Father;  but  he 
rudely  stopped  them  short  in  the  midst  of  their  speech, 
called  them  a  parcel  of  disobedient  scoundrels,  and  bid  them 
go  about  their  business.  So  saying,  he  turned  upon  his 
heel,  and  with  great  contempt  left  the  room."  ' 

In  the  midst  of  these  troubles,  poor  Jack  turned  for  help 
to  the  other  Families  on  the  New  Farm.  The  latter 
promptly  and  kindly  assured  Jack  and  his  family  that  in 
their  opinion  the  cause  of  one  was  the  cause  of  all, — adding 
that  "  they  would  stand  by  and  support  them  to  the  last." 
But,  above  all,  they  "  earnestly  recommended  it  to  them  to 
be  firm  and  steady  in  the  cause  of  liberty  and  justice,  and 
never  acknowledge  the  omnipotence  of  their  Mother-in-Law, 
nor  yield  to  the  machinations  of  their  enemy,  the  Steward. 
In  the  meantime,  lest  Jack's  family  should  suffer  for  want 
of  necessaries,  their  great  gate  being  fast  locked,  liberal 
and  very  generous  contributions  were  raised  among  the  sev- 
eral Families  of  the  new  Settlements  for  their  present  relief. 
This  seasonable  bounty  was  handed  to  Jack  over  the  garden 
wall,  all  access  to  the  front  of  his  house  being  shut  up."  * 

All  these  proceedings  only  the  more  provoked  the  hard- 
fisted  Overseer,  who,  observing  "  that  the  children  and 
domestics  of  Jack's  Family  had  frequent  meetings  and  con- 
sultations together,  sometimes  in  the  garret,  and  sometimes 
in  the  stable,  ...  he  wrote  a  thundering  prohibition, 
much  like  a  Pope's  Bull,  which  he  caused  to  be  pasted  up  in 
every  room  in  the  house ;  in  which  he  declared  and  protested 
that  these  meetings  were  treasonable,  traitorous,  and  rebel- 


1  Pages  48-49-  'Page  51. 

19 


290  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

lious,  contrary  to  the  dignity  of  their  Father,  and  incon- 
sistent with  the  omnipotence  of  their  Mother-in-Law  ; 
denouncing,  also,  terrible  punishments  against  any  two  of 
the  Family  who  should  from  thenceforth  be  seen  whispering 
together,  and  strictly  forbidding  the  domestics  to  hold  any 
more  meetings  in  the  garret  or  stable. 

"  These  harsh  and  unconstitutional  proceedings  irritated 
Jack  and  the  other  inhabitants  of  the  New  Farm  to  such  a 
degree  that  . 

Caetera  desunt."  J 

In  other  words,  Peter  Grievous  is  an  historian  and  not  a 
prophet ;  and  having  brought  the  record  down  to  the  point 
at  which  the  older  members  of  the  several  Families  on  the 
New  Farm  have  met  together  in  the  hall  of  the  Carpenters, 
at  Philadelphia,  there  to  make  common  cause  with  poor 
Jack,  and  for  him  and  with  him  to  think  out  wisely  what  is 
further  to  be  done  by  them  all  in  their  common  troubles, 
the  author  very  properly  leaves  it  to  these  wise  gentlemen 
to  finish  the  "  Pretty  Story"  in  their  own  way,  and  in 
doing  so  to  decide  whether  it  shall  really  turn  out  to  be, 
upon  the  whole,  a  pretty  story  or  not. 

VIII. 

To  any  one  in  the  least  degree  familiar  with  the  problems 
which  convulsed  the  American  colonies  in  the  year  1774, 
when  the  troubles  growing  out  of  the  tea  tax  had  culmi- 
nated in  the  closing  of  the  harbor  at  Boston  and  in  the 
opening  of  the  Congress  at  Philadelphia,  even  a  glance  over 
this  little  book  will  show  that  here  at  last  was  a  writer, 
enlisted  in  the  colonial  cause,  who  was  able  to  defend  that 
cause,  and  to  assail  its  enemies,  with  a  fine  and  a  very  rare 
weapon — that  of  humor.  The  personages  included  in  "  A 
Pretty  Story  "  are  few;  its  topics  are  simple  and  palpable, 

1  Pages  51-52. 


FXANCIS  HOPKINSON.  29! 

and  even  now  in  but  little  need  of  elucidation ;  the  plot  and 
incidents  of  the  fiction  travel  in  the  actual  footsteps  of  well- 
known  history ;  while  the  aptness,  the  delicacy,  and  the 
humor  of  the  allegory  give  to  the  reader  the  most  delightful 
surprises,  and  are  well  sustained  to  the  very  end.  Indeed, 
the  wit  of  the  author  flashes  light  upon  every  legal  question 
then  at  issue ;  and  the  stern  and  even  technical  debate 
between  the  colonies  and  the  motherland  is  here  translated 
into  a  piquant  and  a  bewitching  novelette.  It  soon  became 
known  that  its  author  was  Francis  Hopkinson. 

Some  critic  was  good  enough,  at  an  early  day,  to  launch 
upon  the  world  the  opinion  that  Hopkinson's  "  Pretty 
Story  "  was  closely  modelled  after  Arbuthnot's  "  History 
of  John  Bull";  and  this  opinion  seems  to  have  held  its 
own  unchallenged  since,  then,  and  to  have  thriven  on  mere 
repetition.  The  truth  is,  however,  that  Hopkinson's  little 
book  resembles  Arbuthnot's  in  just  one  particular — it  is  an 
example  of  the  use  of  allegory  in  the  facetious  treatment  of 
national  or  international  politics — a  use  of  allegory  almost 
as  old  as  allegory  itself;  and,  besides  this,  so  far  as  thought, 
or  form,  or  incident  is  concerned,  there  is  almost  no  feature 
of  resemblance  between  them.  It  is  not  to  be  doubted  that 
Hopkinson  had  read  "  The  History  of  John  Bull,"  for  he 
was  a  loving  disciple  and  a  true  kinsman  of  the  wits  of  the 
age  of  Queen  Anne ;  yet  he  might  easily  have  written  every 
word  of  his  own  allegory,  without  ever  having  read  any 
word  of  Arbuthnot's. 

By  this  neat  and  telling  bit  of  work,  Hopkinson  took  his 
true  place  as  one  of  the  three  leading  satirists  on  the  Whig 
side  of  the  American  Revolution, — the  other  two  being 
John  Trumbull  and  Philip  Freneau.  In  the  long  and  pas- 
sionate controversy  in  which  these  three  satirists  bore  so 
effective  a  part,  each  is  distinguishable  by  his  own  peculiar 
note.  The  political  satire  of  Freneau  and  of  Trumbull  is, 
in  general,  grim,  bitter,  vehement,  unrelenting.  Hopkin- 
son's satire  is  as  keen  as  theirs,  but  its  characteristic  note  is 
one  of  playfulness.  They  stood  forth  the  wrathful  critics 


292  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

and  assailants  of  the  enemy,  confronting  him  with  a  hot  and 
an  honest  hatred,  and  ready  to  overwhelm  him  with  an 
acerbity  that  was  fell  and  pitiless.  Hopkinson,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  too  gentle,  too  tender-hearted — his  personal  tone 
was  too  full  of  amenity — for  that  sort  of  warfare.  A  man 
who,  in  his  private  life,  had  so  kindly  and  gracious  a  nature 
as  to  be  able  to  establish  intimate  relations  with  a  poor  little 
Ishmaelite  of  a  mouse  which,  on  his  taking  his  seat  at  table, 
would  steal  from  its  hiding-place  and  disport  itself  by  him 
at  his  meals;  or  who  could  so  prevail  over  the  distrust  and 
the  fugaciousness  of  a  flock  of  pigeons,  that  they  would  wait 
for  him  daily  in  his  garden,  would  flutter  around  him  as  he 
approached,  and  contend  for  places  on  his  person,  crowding 
upon  his  head  and  shoulders,  and  even  clinging  to  the 
slopes  of  his  arms, — such  a  man  was  not  the  one  to  make 
use,  even  against  his  worst  political  enemies,  of  the  rancor- 
ous and  acrid  methods  of  literary  strife.  As  a  satirist,  there- 
fore, Hopkinson  accomplished  his  effects  without  bitterness 
or  violence.  No  one  saw  more  vividly  than  he  what  was 
weak,  or  despicable,  or  cruel,  in  the  position  and  conduct  of 
the  enemy;  but  in  exhibiting  it,  his  method  was  that  of 
good-humored  ridicule.  Never  losing  his  temper,  almost 
never  extreme  in  emotion  or  in  expression,  with  an  urbanity 
which  kept  unfailingly  upon  his  side  the  sympathies  of  his 
readers,  he  knew  how  to  dash  and  discomfit  the  foe  with  a 
raillery  that  was  all  the  more  effective  because  it  seemed  to 
spring  from  the  very  absurdity  of  the  case,  and  to  be,  as 
Ben  Jonson  required,  "  without  malice  or  heat." 


CHAPTER    XIII. 

THE  PARTY  OF  THE  LOYALISTS  AND  THEIR  LITERATURE. 

I. — The  slight  development  of  Loyalist  literature  prior  to  1774 — The  rapid 
crystallization  of  political  ideas  occasioned  by  the  first  Continental  Con- 
gress— In  argumentative  literature  the  period  of  chief  Loyalist  activity,  from 
1 774  to  1776. 

II. — The  survival  among  us  of  the  partisan  ideas  and  prejudices  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary controversy — The  proper  historic  attitude  toward  the  problems  and 
parties  of  any  Revolution. 

III. — The  Loyalist  party  judged  with  respect  to  its  size — The  Loyalist  claim 
that  the  promoters  of  the  Revolution  were  a  minority — Opinion  of  John 
Adams  and  Thomas  McKean. 

IV. — The  Loyalists  judged  with  respect  to  personal  value — In  general  composed 
of  the  more  conservative  section  of  American  society — The  proportion  of 
college-bred  men  among  them — Opinion  of  Anne  Grant  of  Laggan. 

V. — The  Loyalists  judged  with  respect  to  the  value  of  their  logical  position — 
Complexity  and  difficulty  of  the  questions  involved  in  the  dispute — The  old 
maxim,  "No  taxation  without  representation,"  not  necessarily  in  conflict 
with  the  tax  claim  of  parliament— The  maxim  applauded  by  George  Gren- 
ville— According  to  the  historic  meaning  of  the  word,  the  commons  of 
America  were  represented  in  the  popular  branch  of  the  imperial  parlia- 
ment— That  this  representation  was  imperfect  and  unsatisfactory,  was  not 
denied— The  true  remedy  was  reform  of  the  representation,  and  not  nullifi- 
cation of  the  laws  of  parliament,  nor  secession  from  the  empire — Opinions 
of  experts  in  constitutional  law — The  Loyalist  reply  to  the  argument  of 
danger  from  moderate  parliamentary  taxation. 

VI.— The  question  of  Independence  kept  in  abeyance  till  1776— Three  preva- 
lent errors  as  to  the  character  and  attitude  of  the  Loyalists. 

I. 

THERE  cannot  be  a  more  authentic  introduction  to  the 
Loyalists  of  our  Revolution,  than  is  to  be  had  through  an 
acquaintance  with  their  literature.  As  we  turn  over  the 
pages  of  that  literature,— political  essays,  pamphlets,  ser- 
mons, songs,  satires,  epigrams,  burlesques,  lampoons, — a 

293 


294  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

literature  now  having  an  almost  pathetic  insignificance  as  it 
slumbers  under  a  hundred  years  of  dust  and  contempt, — 
perhaps  the  first  notable  fact  that  calls  for  attention  is,  that, 
in  point  of  time,  its  development  lags  somewhat  behind  that 
of  the  Revolutionist  party,  and  does  not  become  of  much 
value  until  within  the  twelvemonth  preceding  the  Lexing- 
ton and  Concord  skirmishes — that  is,  until  about  the  time 
of  the  Congress  of  1774. 

Of  course,  from  the  very  beginning  of  the  dispute  there 
had  been  American  writers  who,  while  doubting  the  wis- 
dom of  the  colonial  policy  of  the  English  ministry,  likewise 
doubted  the  soundness  of  the  constitutional  claim  set  up  in 
opposition  to  it  by  many  of  their  American  brethren;  and, 
at  any  rate,  deprecated  all  violent  or  extreme  measures  in 
the  assertion  of  that  claim.  Nevertheless,  during  the  eight 
or  ten  years  prior  to  1774,  it  might  fairly  have  been  assumed 
that  this  Anglo-American  dispute  was  but  one  of  a  long 
series  of  political  disagreements  that  had  broken  out,  at 
various  times,  in  John  Bull's  large  and  vivacious  family, 
and  that  this  particular  dispute  would  probably  run  its 
natural  course  and  come  to  an  end,  just  as  its  predecessors 
had  done,  without  any  permanent  rupture  of  the  interior 
relations  of  the  family,  and,  indeed,  to  the  great  advantage 
of  all  its  members  through  a  clearer  definition  of  those  con- 
stitutional principles  which  had  enabled  them  all  to  live 
together  so  long  under  the  same  enormous  and  kindly  roof. 
Not  until  after  the  failure  of  Lord  North's  clever  device  for 
inducing  the  Americans  to  take  the  taxation  which  they 
liked  so  little,  along  with  that  cheering  beverage  which  they 
liked  so  much,  was  it  necessary  for  any  person  to  regard  the 
dispute  as  one  of  peculiarly  deep  and  tragical  import.  It 
was,  perhaps,  on  account  of  this  confidence  of  theirs  in  the 
natural  limitations  of  the  problem  then  vexing  the  colonies 
and  the  mother  country,  that  so  many  of  the  ablest  con- 
servative writers  in  America  refrained,  in  that  stage  of 
affairs,  from  engaging  very  actively  in  the  discussion.  Thus 
it  is  that  we  may  in  a  measure  explain  why.  in  this  contro- 


THE   LOYALISTS. 


295 


versy,  so  little  part  was  taken  prior  to  1774  by  the  most 
powerful  of  all  the  Loyalist  writers, — Daniel  Leonard, 
Joseph  Galloway,  Samuel  Seabury,  Jonathan  Boucher,  and 
Jonathan  Odell. 

But  with  the  events  of  the  years  1773  and  1774  came  a 
total  change  in  the  situation,  and  in  the  attitude  of  all 
parties  toward  it :  first,  the  repulsion  of  the  gentle  tea  ships 
by  several  American  communities,  and  the  destruction  of 
valuable  property  belonging  to  liegemen  of  the  king;  then 
the  series  of  stern  retaliatory  measures  to  which  parliament 
was  thereby  drawn ;  finally,  by  a  large  portion  of  the  col- 
onists, the  fearless  summons  for  a  great  council  of  their  own 
delegates,  solemnly  to  determine  and  to  proclaim  some  com- 
mon plan  of  action.  With  the  gathering  of  this  celebrated 
council  —  the  first  Continental  Congress  —  the  wayfaring 
American  though  a  fool  could  not  err  in  reading,  in  very 
crimson  letters  painted  on  the  air  in  front  of  him,  the  tid- 
ings of  the  arrival  of  a  race-crisis  altogether  transcending 
those  ordinary  political  altercations  which  had  from  time  to 
time  disturbed,  and  likewise  quickened  and  clarified,  the 
minds  of  his  English  ancestors. 

Naturally,  therefore,  from  about  this  time  the  process  of 
political  crystallization  among  the  colonists  went  on  with 
extraordinary  rapidity.  Then,  every  man  had  to  define 
both  to  himself  and  to  his  neighbor,  what  he  thought,  how 
he  felt,  what  he  meant  to  do.  Then,  too,  the  party  -of 
insubordination  in  these  thirteen  agitated  communities  had, 
for  the  first  time,  a  common  and  a  permanent  organ  for  the 
formulation  of  the  political  doctrine  and  purpose  which 
should  sway  them  all.  Finally,  around  this  official  and 
authoritative  statement  of  doctrine  and  purpose,  the  oppos- 
ing tendencies  of  thought  could  clash  and  do  intelligent 
battle, — having  a  set  of  precise  propositions  to  fight  for  or 
to  fight  against,  and  having,  likewise,  the  grim  conscious- 
ness that  such  fight  was  no  longer  a  merely  academic  one. 

In  a  valid  sense,  therefore,  it  may  be  said  that  the  forma- 
tion of  the  great  Loyalist  party  of  the  American  Revolution 


296  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

dates  from  about  the  time  of  the  Congress  of  1774.  More- 
over, its  period  of  greatest  activity  in  argumentative  litera- 
ture is  from  that  time  until  the  early  summer  of  1776,  when 
nearly  all  further  use  for  argumentative  literature  on  that 
particular  subject  was  brought  to  an  end  by  the  Declaration 
of  Independence.  The  writings  of  the  Loyalists,  from  the 
middle  of  1776  down  to  1783,  form  no  longer  a  literature  of 
argumentative  discussion,  but  rather  a  literature  of  emo- 
tional appeal,  exultant,  hortatory,  derisive,  denunciatory, 
— a  literature  chiefly  lyrical  and  satirical. 

II. 

Even  yet,  in  this  last  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century,  it 
is  by  no  means  easy  for  Americans — especially  if,  as  is  the 
case  with  the  present  writer,  they  be  descended  from  men 
who  thought  and  fought  on  behalf  of  the  Revolution — to 
take  a  disinterested  attitude,  that  is,  an  historical  one, 
toward  those  Americans  who  thought  and  fought  against 
the  Revolution.  Both  as  to  the  men  and  as  to  the  ques- 
tions involved  in  that  controversy,  the  rehearsal  of  the 
claims  of  the  victorious  side  has  been  going  on  among  us, 
now  for  a  hundred  years  or  more,  in  tradition,  in  history,  in 
oration,  in  song,  in  ceremony.  Hardly  have  we  known, 
seldom  have  we  been  reminded,  that  the  side  of  the  Loyal- 
ists, as  they  called  themselves,  of  the  Tories,  as  they  were 
scornfully  nicknamed  by  their  opponents,  was  even  in  argu- 
ment not  a  weak  one,  and  in  motive  and  sentiment  not  a 
base  one,  and  in  devotion  and  self-sacrifice  not  an  unheroic 
one.  While  the  war  was  going  forward,  of  course  the  ani- 
mosities aroused  by  it  were  too  hot  and  too  fierce,  especially 
between  the  two  opposing  groups  of  Americans,  to  permit 
either  party  in  the  controversy  to  do  justice  to  the  logical 
or  to  the  personal  merit  of  the  other.  When  at  last  the  war 
came  to  an  end,  and  the  champions  of  the  Revolution  were 
in  absolute  triumph,  then  the  more  prominent  Tories  had  to 
flee  for  their  lives ;  they  had  to  flee  from  the  wrath  that  had 


THE  LO  Y A  LISTS  IN  DEFEA  T.  297 

come,  and  to  bury  themselves,  either  in  other  lands  or  in 
obscure  places  of  this  land.  Then,  of  course,  they  and  all 
their  detested  notions  and  emotions  and  deeds,  whether 
grand  or  petty  or  base,  went  down  out  of  sight,  submerged 
beneath  the  abhorrence  of  the  victorious  Revolutionists,  and 
doomed,  as  it  appears,  to  at  least  one  solid  century  of  ora- 
torical and  poetical  infamy,  which  has  found  its  natural  and 
organized  expression  in  each  recurring  Fourth  of  July,  and 
in  each  reappearance  of  the  birthday  of  Washington.  May 
it  not,  however,  at  last  be  assumed  that  a  solid  century 
should  be,  even  under  such  conditions,  a  sufficient  refrig- 
erator for  overheated  political  emotion  ?  May  we  not  now 
hope  that  it  will  not  any  longer  cost  us  too  great  an  effort 
to  look  calmly,  even  considerately,  at  least  fairly,  upon 
what,  in  the  words  and  acts  of  the  Tories,  our  fathers  and 
grandfathers  could  hardly  endure  to  look  at  all  ?  And, 
surely,  our  willingness  to  do  all  this  can  hardly  be  lessened 
by  the  consideration  that,  "  in  dealing  with  an  enemy,  not 
only  dead,  but  dead  in  exile  and  in  defeat,  candor  prescribes 
the  fullest  measure  of  generous  treatment."  '  At  any  rate, 
the  American  Revolution  affords  no  exemption  from  the 
general  law  of  historic  investigation, — that  the  truth  is  to 
be  found  only  by  him  who  searches  for  it  with  an  unbiased 
mind.  Until  we  shall  be  able  to  take,  respecting  the  prob- 
lems and  the  parties  of  our  own  Revolution,  the  same  atti- 
tude which  we  freely  and  easily  take  respecting  the  problems 
and  parties  of  other  revolutions — that  is,  the  attitude,  not 
of  hereditary  partisans,  but  of  scientific  investigators — will 
it  be  forbidden  us  to  acquire  a  thoroughly  discriminating 
and  just  acquaintance  with  that  prodigious  epoch  in  our 
history. 

III. 

As  preliminary  to  some  examination  of  the  argumentative 
value  of  the  position  taken  by  the  Loyalist  party,  let  us 

1  Winthrop  Sargent,  Preface  to  "  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  vi. 


398  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

inquire,  for  a  moment,  what  recognition  may  be  due  to  them 
simply  as  persons.  Who  and  what  were  the  Tories  of  the 
American  Revolution  ?  As  to  their  actual  number,  there  is 
some  difficulty  in  framing  even  a  rough  estimate.  No 
attempt  at  a  census  of  political  opinions  was  ever  made 
during  that  period ;  and  no  popular  vote  was  ever  taken 
of  a  nature  to  indicate,  even  approximately,  the  numerical 
strength  of  the  two  opposing  schools  of  political  thought. 
Of  course,  in  every  community  there  were  Tories  who  were 
Tories  in  secret.  These  could  not  be  counted,  for  the  good 
reason  that  they  could  not  be  known.  Then,  again,  the 
number  of  openly  avowed  Tories  varied  somewhat  with 
variations  in  the  prosperity  of  the  Revolution.  Still  fur- 
ther, their  number  varied  with  variations  of  locality. 
Throughout  the  entire  struggle,  by  far  the  largest  number 
of  Tories  was  to  be  found  in  the  colony  of  New  York,  par- 
ticularly in  the  neighborhood  of  its  chief  city.  Of  the  other 
middle  colonies,  while  there  were  many  Tories  in  New  Jer- 
sey, in  Delaware,  and  in  Maryland,  probably  the  largest 
number  lived  in  Pennsylvania, — a  number  so  great  that  a 
prominent  officer '  in  the  Revolutionary  army  described  it 
as  the  "  enemies'  country."  Indeed,  respecting  the  actual 
preponderance  of  the  Tory  party  in  these  two  central  colo- 
nies, an  eminent  champion  of  the  Revolution  bore  this 
startling  testimony:  "  New  York  and  Pennsylvania  were  so 
nearly  divided — if  their  propensity  was  not  against  us — that 
if  New  England  on  one  side  and  Virginia  on  the  other  had 
not  kept  them  in  awe,  they  would  have  joined  the  Brit- 
ish." '  Of  the  New  England  colonies,  Connecticut  had  the 
greatest  number  of  Tories;  and  next,  in  proportion  to 
population,  was  the  district  which  was  afterwards  known  as 
the  State  of  Vermont.  Proceeding  to  the  colonies  south  of 
the  Potomac,  we  find  that  in  Virginia,  especially  after  hos- 
tilities began,  the  Tories  were  decidedly  less  in  number  than 
the  Whigs.  In  North  Carolina,  the  two  parties  were  about 

I  Timothy  Pickering. 

II  "  The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  x.  63. 


NUMBER    OF    THE   LOYALISTS. 


299 


evenly  divided.  In  South  Carolina,  the  Tories  were  the 
more  numerous  party;  while  in  Georgia  their  majority  was 
so  great  that,  in  17.81,  they  were  preparing  to  detach  that 
colony  from  the  general  movement  of  the  rebellion,  and 
probably  would  have  done  so,  had  it  not  been  for  the  em- 
barrassing accident  which  happened  to  Cornwallis  at  York- 
town  in  the  latter  part  of  that  year. 

If  we  may  accept  these  results  as  giving  us  a  fair,  even 
though  crude,  estimate  concerning  the  local  distribution  of 
the  Tories,  we  have  still  to  come  back  to  the  question  which 
deals  with  their  probable  number  in  the  aggregate.  Natur- 
ally, on  such  a  problem,  the  conclusions  reached  by  the 
opposing  parties  would  greatly  differ.  Thus,  the  Tories 
themselves  always  affirmed  that  could  there  have  been  a 
true  and  an  unterrified  vote,  they  would  have  had  a  great 
majority;  and  that  the  several  measures  of  the  Revolution 
had  not  only  never  been  submitted  to  such  a  test,  but  had 
been  resolved  upon  and  forced  into  effect  by  a  few  resolute 
leaders  who,  under  the  names  of  committees  of  correspond- 
ence, committees  of  observation,  committees  of  safety,  con- 
ventions, and  congresses,  had  assumed  unconstitutional 
authority,  and  had  pretended,  without  valid  credentials,  to 
speak  and  to  act  for  the  whole  population  of  their  towns,  or 
counties,  or  provinces.  To  translate  the  Tory  explanation 
into  the  language  of  the  present  day,  it  may  be  said  that,  in 
their  belief,  the  several  measures  of  the  Revolution  were  the 
work  of  a  weli-constructecTand  powerful  political  machine, 
set  up  in  each  colony,  in  each  county,  in  each  town,  and 
operated  with  as  much  skill  and  will  and  unscrupulousness 
as  go  into  the  operation  of  such  machines  in  our  time. 
This  opinion,  which,  in  its  substance,  was  most  ably  pre- 
sented in  those  days  by  the  Tory  writers,  has  been  adopted 
by  a  very  candid  English  historian  now  living,  who  says  of 
the  American  Revolution  that,  like  most  other  revolutions, 
it  "  was  the  work  of  an  energetic  minority,  who  succeeded 
in  committing  an  undecided  and  fluctuating  majority  to 
courses  for  which  they  had  little  love,  and  leading  them 


300  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

step  by  step  to  a  position  from  which  it  was  impossible  to 

ede."  ' 

Certainly,  with  such  an  estimate  as  to  the  superior  num- 
bers of  the  Tories,  their  own  opponents  did  not  agree ;  but 
they  did  admit  that  the  Tory  party  was  at  any  rate  a  very 
large  one.  Perhaps  no  statesman  on  the  Whig  side  was 
better  informed  on  such  a  subject  than  John  Adams,  or  was 
less  inclined  to  make  an  undue  concession  to  the  enemy ; 
and  he  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  about  one-third  of  the 
people  of  the  thirteen  States  had  been  opposed  to  the  meas- 
ures of  the  Revolution  in  all  its  stages.8  This  opinion  of 
John  Adams,  which  he  affirmed  more  than  once  in  the  latter 
part  of  his  life,  was  on  one  occasion  mentioned  by  him  in  a 
letter  to  his  old  compatriot,  Thomas  McKean,  chief-justice 
of  Pennsylvania,  a  signer  of  the  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence, and  a  member  of.  every  American  Congress  from  that 
of  1765  to  the  close  of  the  Revolution.  "  You  say,"  wrote 
McKean  in  reply,  "  that  .  .  .  about  a  third  of  the 
people  of  the  colonies  were  against  the  Revolution.  It 
required  much  reflection  before  I  could  fix  my  opinion  on 
this  subject ;  but  on  mature  deliberation  I  conclude  you  are 
right,  and  that  more  than  a  third  of  influential  characters 
were  against  it."  s 

Out  of  three  millions  of  people,  then,  at  least  one  million 
did  not  approve  of  the  policy  of  carrying  their  political 
opposition  to  the  point  of  rebellion  and  separation.  Accord- 
ing to  John  Adams  and  Thomas  McKean,  every  third 
American  whom  we  could  have  encountered  in  this  part  of 
the  world  betw.een  1765  and  1783  was  a  Loyalist.  Surely, 
an  idea — a  cause — that  was  cherished  and  clung  to,  amid 
almost  every  form  of  obloquy  and  disaster,  by  so  vast  a 
section  of  American  society,  can  hardly  deserve  any  longer 
to  be  turned  out  of  court  in  so  summary  and  contemptuous 
a  fashion  as  that  with  which  it  has  been  commonly  disposed 
of  by  American  writers. 

1  Lecky,  "  A  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  "new  ed.,  iv.  224. 
"  The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  x.  63,  no.  a  Ibid.  87. 


CHARACTER   OF   THE  LOYALISTS.  301 

IV. 

After  the  question  of  number,  very  properly  comes  that 
of  quality.  What  kind  of  people  were  these  Tories,  as 
regards  intelligence,  character,  and  standing  in  their  several 
communities  ? 

And  here,  brushing  aside,  as  unworthy  of  historical  inves- 
tigators, the  partisan  and  vindictive  epithets  of  the  contro- 
versy,— many  of  which,  however,  still  survive  even  in  the 
historical  writings  of  our  own  time, — we  shall  find  that  the 
Loyalists  were,  as  might  be  expected,  of  all  grades  of  per- 
sonal worth  and  worthlessness ;  and  that,  while  there  was 
among  them,  no  doubt,  the  usual  proportion  of  human  self- 
ishness, malice,  and  rascality,  as  a  class  they  were  not  bad 
people,  much  less  were  they  execrable  people — as  their 
opponents  at  the  time  commonly  declared  them  to  be. 

In  the  first  place,  there  was,  prior  to  1776,  the  official 
class;  that  is,  the  men  holding  various  positions  in  the  civil 
and  military  and  naval  services  of  the  government,  their 
immediate  families,  and  their  social  connections.  All  such 
persons  may  be  described  as  inclining  to  the  Loyalist  view 
in  consequence  of  official  bias. 

Next  were  certain  colonial  politicians  who,  it  may  be 
admitted,  took  a  rather  selfish  and  an  unprincipled  view  of 
the  whole  dispute,  and  who,  counting  on  the  probable,  if 
not  inevitable,  success  of  the  British  arms  in  such  a  conflict, 
adopted  the  Loyalist  side,  not  for  conscience'  sake  but  for 
profit's  sake,  and  in  the  expectation  of  being  rewarded  for 
their  fidelity  by  offices  and  titles,  and  especially  by  the 
confiscated  estates  of  the  rebels,  after  the  rebels  themselves 
should  have  been  defeated,  and  their  leaders  hanged  or  sent 
into  exile. 

As  composing  still  another  class  of  Tories,  may  be  men- 
tioned probably  a  vast  majority  of  those  who  stood  for  the 
commercial  interests,  for  the  capital  and  the  tangible  prop- 
erty of  the  country,  and  who,  with  the  instincts  natural  to 
persons  who  have  something  considerable  to  lose,  disap- 


302 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


proved  of  all  measures  for  pushing  the  dispute  to  the  point 
of  disorder,  riot,  and  civil  war. 

Still  another  class  of  Loyalists  was  made  up  of  people 
of  professional  training  and  occupation, — clergymen,  phy- 
sicians, lawyers,  teachers, — a  clear  majority  of  whom  seem 
to  have  been  set  against  the  ultimate  measures  of  the 
Revolution. 

Finally,  and  in  general,  it  may  be  said  that  a  majority  of 
those  who,  of  whatever  occupation,  of  whatever  grade  of 
culture  or  of  wealth,  would  now  be  described  as  conserva- 
tive people,  were  Loyalists  during  the  American  Revolu- 
tion. And  by  way  of  concession  to  the  authority  and 
force  of  truth,  what  has  to  be  said  respecting  the  personal 
quality  commonly  attaching  to  those  who,  in  any  age  or 
country,  are  liable  to  be  classed  as  conservative  people  ? 
Will  it  be  denied  that  wjthin  that  order  of  persons,  one  may 
usually  find  at  least  a  fair  portion  of  the  cultivation,  of  the 
moral  thoughtfulness,  of  the  personal  purity  and  honor, 
existing  in  the  entire  community  to  which  they  happen  to 
belong  ? 

Precisely  this  description,  at  any  rate,  applies  to  the  con- 
servative class  in  the  American  colonies  during  that  epoch, 
— a  majority  of  whom  dissented  from  those  extreme  meas- 
ures which  at  last  transformed  into  a  revolution  a  political 
movement  which  began  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  confin- 
ing itself  to  a  struggle  for  redress  of  grievances,  and  within 
the  limits  of  constitutional  opposition.  If,  for  example,  we 
consider  the  point  with  reference  to  cultivation  and  moral 
refinement,  it  may  seem  to  us  a  significant  fact  that  among 
the  members  of  the  Loyalist  party  are  to  be  found  the 
names  of  a  great  multitude  of  the  graduates  of  our  colonial 
colleges— especially  of  Harvard,  William  and  Mary,  Yale, 
Princeton,  and  Pennsylvania.  Thus,  in  an  act  of  banish- 
ment passed  by  Massachusetts,  in  September,  1778,  against 
the  most  prominent  of  the  Tory  leaders  in  that  State,  one 
may  now  read  the  names  of  three  hundred  and  ten  of  her 
citizens.  And  who  were  they  ?  Let  us  go  over  their  names. 


CHARACTER   OF   THE  LOYALISTS,  303 

Are  these  the  names  of  profligates  and  desperadoes,  or  even 
of  men  of  slight  and  equivocal  consideration  ?  To  any  one 
at  all  familiar  with  the  history  of  colonial  New  England, 
that  list  of  men,  denounced  to  exile  and  loss  of  property  on 
account  of  their  opinions,  will  read  almost  like  the  beadroll 
of  the  oldest  and  noblest  families  concerned  in  the  founding 
and  upbuilding  of  New  England  civilization.  Moreover,  of 
that  catalogue  of  three  hundred  and  ten  men  of  Massachu- 
setts, banished  for  an  offence  to  which  the  most  of  them  ap- 
pear to  have  been  driven  by  conscientious  convictions,  more 
than  sixty  '  were  graduates  of  Harvard.  This  fact  is  prob- 
ably a  typical  one;  and  of  the  whole  body  of  the  Loyalists 
throughout  the  thirteen  colonies,  it  must  be  said  that  it 
contained,  as  one  of  its  ablest  antagonists  long  after  ad- 
mitted, "  more  than  a  third  of  influential  characters," — that 
is,  a  very  considerable  portion  of  the  customary  chiefs  and 
representatives  of  conservatism  in  each  community. 

By  any  standard  of  judgment,  therefore,  according  to 
which  we  usually  determine  the  personal  quality  of  any 
party  of  men  and  women  in  this  world — whether  the  stand- 
ard be  intellectual,  or  moral,  or  social,  or  merely  conven- 
tional— the  Tories  of  the  Revolution  seem  to  have  been  not 
a  profligate  party,  nor  an  unprincipled  one,  nor  a  reckless  or 
even  a  light-minded  one,  but,  on  the  contrary,  to  have  had 
among  them  a  very  considerable  portion  of  the  most  refined, 
thoughtful,  and  conscientious  people  in  the  colonies.  So 
true  is  this,  that  in  1807  a  noble-minded  Scottish  woman, 
Mistress  Anne  Grant  of  Laggan,  who  in  her  early  life  had 
been  familiar  with  American  colonial  society,  compared  the 
loss  which  America  suffered  in  consequence  of  the  expatria- 
tion of  the  Loyalists  by  the  Revolution,  to  the  loss  which 
France  suffered  in  consequence  of  the  expatriation  of  so- 
many  of  her  Protestants  by  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantes.4 

So  much,  then,  must  be  said  on  behalf  of  the  Tories  of 

1  George  E.  Ellis,  in  "  Narr.  and  Crit.  Hist.  Am.,"  vii.  195. 

*  Mrs.  Anne  Grant,  "  Memoirs  of  an  American  Lady,"  etc.,  353. 


304  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

the  Revolution, — in  point  of  numbers,  they  were  far  from 
inconsiderable,  and  in  point  of  character,  they  were  far  from 
despicable.  On  the  one  hand,  they  formed  no  mere  rump 
party.  If  they  were  not  actually  a  majority  of  the  Ameri- 
can people, — as  they  themselves  always  claimed  to  be,  and 
as  some  careful  scholars  now  think  they  were, — they  did  at 
least  constitute  a  huge  minority  of  the  American  people : 
they  formed  a  section  of  colonial  society  too  important  on 
the  score  of  mere  numbers  to  be  set  down  as  a  paltry  hand- 
ful of  obstructives;  while  in  any  rightful  estimate  of  per- 
sonal value,  quite  aside  from  mere  numbers,  they  seem  to 
deserve  the  consideration  which  conscientious  and  cultivated 
people  of  one  party  never  ask  in  vain  of  conscientious  and 
cultivated  people  of  the  opposite  party, — at  least  after  the 
issues  of  the  controversy  are  closed. 

V. 

Pressing  forward,  then,  with  our  investigation,  we  pro- 
ceed to  apply  to  the  American  Loyalists  that  test  by  which 
we  must  judge  any  party  of  men  who  have  taken  one  side, 
and  have  borne  an  important  share  in  any  great  historical 
controversy.  This  is  the  test  of  argumentative  value.  It 
asks  whether  the  logical  position  of  the  party  was  or  was 
not  a  strong  one. 

Even  yet  it  is  not  quite  needless  to  remind  ourselves  that 
the  American  Revolution  was  a  war  of  argument  long  before 
it  became  a  war  of  physical  force;  and  that,  in  this  war  of 
argument,  were  involved  a  multitude  of  difficult  questions, 
— constitutional,  legal,  political,  ethical, — with  respect  to 
which  honest  and  thoughtful  people  were  compelled  to 
differ.  All  these  questions,  however,  may,  for  our  pur- 
poses, be  reduced  to  just  two:  first,  the  question  of  what 
was  lawful  under  the  existing  constitution  of  the  British 
empire;  and  secondly,  the  question  of  what  was  expedient 
under  the  existing  circumstances  of  the  colonies.  Now, 
paradoxical  as  it  may  seem  to  many  of  the  American  de- 


THE  LOYALIST  ARGUMENT.  305 

scendants  of  the  victorious  party,  each  of  those  questions  had 
two  very  real  and  quite  opposite  sides ;  much  was  to  be  said 
for  each  side ;  and  for  the  Tory  side  so  much  was  to  be  said 
in  the  way  of  solid  fact  and  of  valid  reasoning,  that  an  intel- 
ligent and  a  noble-minded  American  might  have  taken  that 
side,  and  might  have  stuck  to  it,  and  might  have  gone  into 
battle  for  it,  and  might  have  imperiled  all  the  interests  of 
his  life  in  defense  of  it,  without  any  just  impeachment  of 
his  reason  or  of  his  integrity — without  deserving  to  be 
called,  then  or  since  then,  either  a  weak  man  or  a  bad  one. 

That  we  may  develop  before  our  eyes  something  of  the 
argumentative  strength  of  the  Loyalist  position,  in  the 
appeal  which  it  actually  made  to  honest  men  at  that  time, 
let  us  take  up  for  a  moment  the  first  of  the  two  questions 
to  which,  as  has  just  been  said,  the  whole  dispute  may  be 
reduced, — the  question  of  what  was  lawful  under  the  exist- 
ing constitution  of  the  British  empire.  Let  us  strike  into 
the  very  heart  of  that  question.  It  was  the  contention  of 
the  American  Whigs  that  the  British  parliament  could  not 
lawfully  tax  us,  because  by  so  doing  it  would  be  violating 
an  ancient  maxim  of  the  British  constitution  :  "  No  taxation 
without  representation."  Have  we  not  all  been  taught 
from  our  childhood  that  the  citation  of  that  old  maxim 
simply  settled  the  constitutional  merits  of  the  whole  contro- 
versy, and  settled  it  absolutely  in  favor  of  the  Whigs  ?  But 
did  it  so  settle  it  ?  Have  we  not  been  accustomed  to  think 
that  the  refusal  of  the  American  Tories  to  give  way  before 
the  citation  of  that  maxim  was  merely  a  case  of  criminal 
stupidity  or  of  criminal  perversity  on  their  part  ?  But  was 
it  so  ? 

On  the  contrary,  many  of  the  profoundest  constitutional 
lawyers  in  America,  as  well  as  in  England,  both  rejected 
the  foregoing  Whig  contention,  and  at  the  same  time 
admitted  the  soundness  and  the  force  of  the  venerable 
maxim  upon  which  that  contention  was  alleged  to  rest. 
Thus  the  leading  English  jurists,  who  supported  the  parlia- 
mentary taxation  of  the  colonies,  did  not  dispute  that 


306  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

maxim.  EvenyGeorge  Grenville,  the  author  and  champion 
of  the  Stamp  Act,  did  not  dispute  it.  "  The  colonies  claim, 
it  is  true,"  said  fie,  "  the  privilege  which  is  common  to  all 
British  subjects,  of  being  taxed  only  with  their  own  consent, 
given  by  their  representatives.  And  may  they  ever  enjoy 
the  privilege  in  all  its  extent ;  may  this  sacred  pledge  of 
liberty  be  preserved  inviolate  to  the  utmost  verge  of  our 
dominions,  and  to  the  latest  pages  of  our  history!  I  would 
never  lend  my  hand  toward  forging  chains  for  America,  lest, 
in  so  doing,  I  should  forge  them  for  myself.  But  the 
remonstrances  of  the  Americans  fail  in  the  great  point  of 
the  colonies  not  being  represented  in  parliament,  which  is 
the  common  council  of  the  whole  empire,  and  as  such  is  as. 
capable  of  imposing  internal  taxes  as  impost  duties,  or  taxes 
on  intercolonial  trade,  or  laws  of  navigation." 

These  words  of  Grenville  may  help  us  to  understand  the 
position  of  the  American  Loyalists.  They  frankly  admitted 
the  maxim  of  "  No  taxation  without  representation  "  ;  but 
the  most  of  them  denied  that  the  maxim  was  violated  by 
the  acts  of  parliament  laying  taxation  upon  the  colonies. 
Here  everything  depends,  they  argued,  on  the  meaning  to 
be  attached  to  the  word  representation ;  and  that  mean- 
ing is  to  be  ascertained  by  ascertaining  what  was  understood 
by  the  word  in  England  at  the  time  when  this  old  maxirn 
originated,  and  in  the  subsequent  ages  during  which  it  had 
been  quoted  and  applied.  Now,  the  meaning  then  attached 
to  the  word  in  actual  constitutional  experience  in  England 
is  one  which  shows  that  the  commons  of  America,  like  the 
commons  of  England,  are  alike  represented  in  that  great 
branch  of  the  British  parliament  which  proclaims  its  repre- 
sentative character  in  its  very  name, — the  house  of  com- 
mons. During  the  whole  period  in  which  the  maxim  under 

1  Given  in  George  Bancroft,  "  History  of  the  United  States,"  last  revision, 
iii.  98.  These  sentences  of  Grenville,  which  are  not  to  be  found  in  Hansard, 
seem  to  have  been  compiled  by  Bancroft  from  several  contemporary  reports  to 
be  met  with  in  private  letters  from  persons  who  heard  Grenville.  Compare  iSth 
ed.  of  Bancroft,  v.  237  n. 


THE  LOYALIST  ARGUMENT.  307 

consideration  had  been  acquiring  authority,  the  idea  was 
that  representation  in  parliament  was  constituted,  not 
through  any  uniform  distribution,  among  individual  persons, 
of  the  privilege  of  voting  for  members,  but  rather  through 
a  distribution  of  such  privilege  among  certain  organized 
communities,  as  counties,  cities,  boroughs,  and  universities, 
to  which  at  an  early  day  this  function  had  been  assigned 
according  to  a  method  then  deemed  equable  and  just. 
Furthermore,  as  it  has  been  from  the  beginning,  so  is  it 
still  a  principle  of  parliamentary  representation,  that  from 
the  moment  a  member  is  thus  chosen  to  sit  in  parliament, 
he  is  the  representative  of  the  whole  empire  and  not  of 
his  particular  constituency.  He  "  is  under  no  obligation, 
therefore,  to  follow  instructions  from  the  voters  or  the  in- 
habitants of  the  district  from  which  he  is  chosen.  They 
have  no  legal  means  of  enforcing  any  instructions.  They 
cannot  demand  his  resignation.  In  fact,  a  member  cannot 
resign."  Moreover,  the  members  of  the  house  of  lords 
"  represent,  in  principle,  the  interests  of  the  whole  empire, 
and  of  all  classes,  as  truly  as  the  commons."  '  Therefore, 
the  historic  meaning  of  the  word  representation,  as  the  word 
has  always  been  used  in  English  constitutional  experience, 
seemed  fairly  to  justify  the  Loyalist  contention,  that  the 
several  organized  British  communities  in  America,  as  an 
integral  part  of  the  British  empire,  were  to  all  intents  and 
purposes  represented  in  the  British  parliament,  which  sat  at 
the  capital  as  the  supreme  council  of  the  whole  empire, 
and  exercised  legislative  authority  coextensive  with  the 
boundaries  of  that  empire. 

It  was  no  sufficient  reply  to  this  statement  to  say,  as 
some  did  say,  that  such  representation  as  has  just  been 
described  was  a  very  imperfect  kind  of  representation.  Of 
course  it  was  an  imperfect  kind  of  representation ;  but,  what- 


1  John  W.  Burgess,  "  Political  Science  and  Comparative  Constitutional  Law," 
ii.  67,  68.  The  reader  should  examine  the  whole  of  Professor  Burgess's  section 
on  "  The  Principle  of  Representation  in  the  Parliament,"  65-69. 


308  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

ever  it  was,  it  was  exactly  the  kind  of  representation  that 
was  meant  by  the  old  constitutional  maxim  thus  cited ;  for 
it  was  the  only  kind  of  representation  practised,  or  known, 
or  perhaps  even  conceived  of  in  England  during  all  those 
ages  which  had  witnessed  the  birth  and  the  growth  of  this 
old  formula.  The  truth  is  that  representation,  as  a  political 
fact  in  this  world,  has  thus  far  been  a  thing  of  degrees — a 
thing  of  less  and  of  more;  that  perfect  representation  has 
even  yet  not  been  anywhere  attained  in  this  world ;  that  in 
the  last  century  representation  in  England  was  very  much 
less  perfect  than  it  has  since  become;  and,  finally,  that,  in 
the  period  now  dealt  with,  what  had  always  been  meant 
by  the  word  representation  in  the  British  empire  was 
satisfied  by  such  a  composition  of  the  house  of  commons 
as  that,  while  its  members  were  voted  for  by  very  few 
even  of  the  common  people  in  England,  yet,  the  moment 
that  its  members  were  elected,  they  became,  in  the  eye  of 
the  constitution  and  in  the  spirit  of  this  old  formula,  the 
actual  representatives  of  all  the  commoners  of  the  whole 
empire,  in  all  its  extent,  in  all  its  dominions  and  depend- 
encies. 

Accordingly,  when  certain  English  commoners  in  America 
at  last  rose  up  and  put  forward  the  claim  that,  merely 
because  they  had  no  votes  for  members  of  the  house  of 
commons,  therefore  that  house  did  not  represent  them,  and 
therefore  they  could  not  lawfully  be  taxed  by  parliament,  it 
was  very  naturally  said,  in  reply,  that  these  English  com- 
moners in  America  were  demanding  for  themselves  a  new 
and  a  peculiar  definition  of  the  word  representation ;  a  de- 
finition never  up  to  that  time  given  to  it  in  England,  and 
never  of  course  up  to  that  time  claimed  or  enjoyed  by  Eng- 
lish commoners  in  England.  For,  how  was  it  at  that  time 
in  England  with  respect  to  the  electoral  privilege  ?  Indeed, 
very  few  people  in  England  then  had  votes  for  members  of 
the  house  of  commons, — only  one-tenth  of  the  entire  popu- 
lation of  the  realm.  How  about  the  other  nine-tenths  of 
the  population  of  the  realm  ?  Had  not  those  British  sub- 


THE  LOYALIST  ARGUMENT.  309 

jects  in  England  as  good  a  right  as  these  British  subjects  in 
America  to  deny  that  they  were  represented  in  parliament, 
and  that  they  could  be  lawfully  taxed  by  parliament  ?  Nay, 
such  was  the  state  of  the  electoral  system  that  entire  com- 
munities of  British  subjects  in  England,  composing  such 
cities  as  Leeds,  Halifax,  Birmingham,  Manchester,  and 
Liverpool, — communities  as  populous  and  as  rich  as  entire 
provinces  in  America, — had  no  votes  whatever  for  members 
of  parliament.  Yet,  did  the  people  of  these  several  com- 
munities in  England  refuse  to  pay  taxes  levied  by  act  of 
parliament — that  is,  did  they,  for  that  reason,  proclaim  the 
nullification  of  a  law  of  the  general  government  ?  "  We 
admit,"  continued  the  American  Loyalists,  "  that  for  all 
these  communities  of  British  subjects — for  those  in  England, 
as  well  as  for  these  in  America — the  existing  representation 
is  very  imperfect;  that  it  should  be  reformed  and  made 
larger  and  more  uniform  than  it  now  is ;  and  we  are  ready 
and  anxious  to  join  in  all  forms  of  constitutional  agitation, 
under  the  leadership  of  such  men  as  Chatham,  and  Camden, 
and  Burke,  and  Barre",  and  Fox,  and  Pownall,  to  secure 
such  reform ;  and  yet  it  remains  true  that  the  present  state 
of  representation  throughout  the  British  empire,  imperfect 
as  it  is,  is  representation  in  the  very  sense  understood  and 
practised  by  the  English  race  whenever  hitherto  they  have 
alleged  the  maxim, — '  No  taxation  without  representation. ' 
That  old  maxim,  therefore,  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  vio- 
lated by  the  present  imperfect  state  of  our  representative 
system.  The  true  remedy  for  the  defects  of  which  we  com- 
plain is  reform — reform  of  the  entire  representative  system 
both  in  England  and  in  America — reform  by  means  of  vig- 
orous political  agitation — reform,  then,  and  not  a  rejection 
of  the  authority  of  the  general  government;  reform,  and  not 
nullification;  reform,  and  not  a  disruption  of  the  empire." 

Such  is  a  rough  statement,  and,  as  I  think,  a  fair  one,  of 
the  leading  argument  of  the  American  Loyalists  with  respect 
to  the  first  of  the  two  great  questions  then  dividing  the 
American  people,  namely,  the  question  of  what  was  lawful 


310  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

under  the  existing  constitution  of  the  British  empire.  Cer- 
tainly, the  position  thus  taken  by  the  Loyalists  was  a  very 
strong  one, — so  strong,  in  fact,  that  honest  and  reasonable 
Americans  could  take  it,  and  stand  upon  it,  and  even  offer 
up  their  lives  in  defense  of  it,  without  being  justly  liable  to 
the  charge  that  they  were  either  peculiarly  base,  or  pecu- 
liarly stupid. 

Indeed,  under  this  aspect  of  legality,  the  concession  just 
made  by  us  does  scant  justice  to  the  Tories — or  to  the  truth. 
The  dispute,  it  must  be  remembered,  had  arisen  among  a 
people  who  were  then  subjects  of  the  British  empire,  and 
were  proud  of  the  fact;  who  exulted  in  the  blessings  of  the 
British  constitution;  and  who,  upon  the  matter  at  issue, 
began  by  confidently  appealing  to  that  constitution  for  sup- 
port. The  contention  of  the  Tories  was  that,  under  the 
constitution,  the  authority  of  the  imperial  parliament  was, 
even  for  purposes  of  revenue  legislation,  binding  in  America, 
as  in  all  other  parts  of  the  empire,  and  even  though  America 
should  have  no  members  in  the  house  of  commons.  This 
the  Whigs  denied.  It  was,  then,  a  question  of  British  con- 
stitutional law.  Upon  that  question,  which  of  the  two 
parties  was  in  the  right  ?  Is  it  now  possible  to  doubt  that 
it  was  the  Tories  ?  A  learned  American  writer  upon  the 
law,  now  one  of  the  justices  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States,  in  referring  to  the  decision  of  Mr.  Chief- 
Justice  Hutchinson  sustaining  the  legality  of  writs  of 
assistance,  has  given  this  opinion:  "  A  careful  examination 
of  the  question  compels  the  conclusion  .  .  .  that  there 
was  at  least  reasonable  ground  for  holding,  as  a  matter  of 
mere  law,  that  the  British  parliament  had  power  to  bind  the 
colonies."  This  view,  of  course,  has  been  sustained  by 
the  highest  English  authorities  upon  British  constitutional 
law,  from  the  time  of  Lord  Mansfield  to  the  present.  "  As 
a  matter  of  abstract  right,"  says  Sir  Vernon  Harcourt,"  "  the 

1  Horace  Gray,  "  Quincy's  Mass.  Reports,  1761-1762,"  Appendix  I.,  page  540. 

2  Writing  as  "  Historicus,"  in  "  The  Times,"  for  June  I,   1876,  and  cited  in 
A.  Todd,  "  Parliamentary  Gov.  in  the  Brit.  Col.,"  27. 


THE   LOYALIST  ARGUMENT.  31 1 

mother  country  has  never  parted  with  the  claim  of  ultimate 
supreme  authority  for  the  imperial  legislature.  If  it  did  so, 
it  would  dissolve  the  imperial  tie,  and  convert  the  colonies 
into  foreign  and  independent  states."  "  The  constitutional 
supremacy  of  the  imperial  parliament  over  all  the  colonial 
possessions  of  the  crown,"  says  another  eminent  English 
writer,  "  was  formally  reasserted  in  1865,  by  an  act  passed 
to  remove  certain  doubts  respecting  the  powers  of  colonial 
legislatures.  .  .  .  It  is  clear  that  imperial  acts  are  bind- 
ing upon  the  colonial  subjects  of  the  crown,  as  much  as 
upon  all  other  British  subjects,  whenever,  by  express  pro- 
vision or  by  necessary  intendment,  they  relate  to  or  concern 
the  colonies."  ' 

But  after  the  question  as  to  what  was  lawful  under  the 
existing  constitution  of  the  British  empire,  came  the  ques- 
tion as  to  what  was  expedient  under  the  existing  circum- 
stances of  the  American  colonies.  Now,  as  it  happened, 
this  latter  question  had  two  aspects,  one  of  which  pointed 
toward  the  expediency  of  rejecting  the  taxing  power  of 
parliament,  even  though  such  power  did  exist  under  the 
constitution ;  the  other  pointed  toward  the  expediency  of 
separation  from  the  empire. 

Having  in  view,  at  present,  the  former  aspect  of  this 
question,  the  American  Whigs  went  forward  and  took  the 
ground  that,  if  the  claim  of  parliament  to  tax  them  was 
indeed  justified  by  the  constitution,  then  so  much  the  worse 
for  the  constitution, — since  it  was  a  claim  too  full  of  political 
danger  to  be  any  longer  submitted  to:  "  If  parliament,  to 
which  we  send  no  members,  may  tax  us  three  pence  on  a 
pound  of  tea,  it  may,  if  it  pleases,  tax  us  a  shilling,  or  a 
guinea.  Once  concede  to  it  this  right  to  tax  us  at  all,  and 
what  security  have  we  against  its  taxing  us  excessively  ? — 
what  security  have  we  for  our  freedom  or  our  property 
against  any  enormity  of  oppression  ?  "  And  what  was  the 
answer  of  the  American  Tories  to  this  argument  ?  '  Yes," 

1  A.  Todd,  "  Parl.  Gov.,"  etc.,  189.  The  act  of  parliament  above  referred 
to,  is  28  &  29  Viet.  (1865),  cap.  Ixiii.  sees.  I,  2. 


312  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

said  the  Tories,  "^you  allege  a  grave  political  danger.  But 
does  it  really  exist  ?  Is  it  likely  ever  to  exist  ?  Are  you 
not  guilty  of  the  fallacy  of  arguing  against  the  use  of  a 
power,  simply  from  the  possibility  of  its  abuse  ?  In  this 
world  every  alleged  danger  must  be  estimated  in  the  light 
of  common  sense  and  of  reasonable  probability.  In  that 
light,  what  ground  have  we  for  alarm  ?  The  line  drawn  by 
the  supreme  legislature  itself  for  the  exercise  of  its  own 
power,  is  a  perfectly  distinct  one, — that  it  should  tax  no 
part  of  the  empire  to  a  greater  amount  than  its  just  and 
equitable  proportion.  As  respects  America,  the  supreme 
legislature  has  not  yet  overstepped  that  line;  it  has  shown 
no  disposition  to  overstep  that  line  ;  we  have  not  the 
slightest  reason  to  suppose  that  it  ever  will  overstep  that 
line.  Moreover,  all  the  instincts  of  the  English  race  are 
for  fair  play,  and  would  be  overwhelmingly  against  such 
an  injustice,  were  parliament  to  attempt  it.  It  is  thought 
in  England  that  as  we,  British  subjects  in  America,  receive 
our  share  of  the  benefits  of  membership  of  the  empire,  so 
we  ought  to  pay  our  share  toward  the  cost  of  those  benefits. 
In  apportioning  our  share  of  the  cost,  they  have  not  fixed 
upon  an  amount  which  anybody,  even  here,  calls  exces- 
sive ;  indeed,  it  is  rather  below  than  above  the  amount  that 
might  justly  be  named.  Now,  in  this  world,  affairs  cannot 
be  conducted — civilization  cannot  go  on — without  confi- 
dence in  somebody.  And  in  this  matter,  we  deem  it  reason- 
able and  prudent  to  have  confidence  in  the  good  sense  and 
in  the  justice  of  the  English  race,  and  especially  of  the  house 
of  commons,  which  is  the  great  council  of  the  commoners  of 
the  English  race.  True,  we  do  not  at  present  send  members 
to  that  great  council,  any  more  than  do  certain  great  tax- 
paying  communities  in  England;  but,  then,  no  community 
even  in  England  has,  in  reality,  so  many  representatives  in 
parliament — so  many  powerful  friends  and  champions  in 
both  houses  of  parliament — as  we  American  communities 
have:  not  only  a  great  minority  of  silent  voters,  but  many 
of  the  ablest  debaters  and  party  leaders  there, — Barre,  and 


THE  LOYALIST  ARGUMENT.  313 

Pownall,  and  Conway,  and  Fox,  and  Edmund  Burke  in  the 
lower  house,  and  in  the  upper  house  Lord  Camden,  and, 
above  all,  the  great  Earl  of  Chatham  himself.  Surely,  with 
such  men  as  these  to  speak  for  us,  and  to  represent  our 
interests  in  parliament  and  before  the  English  people,  no 
ministry  could  long  stand,  which  should  propose  any  meas- 
ure liable  to  be  condemned  as  grossly  beyond  the  line  of 
equity  and  fair  play." 

The  Americans  who  took  this  line  of  reasoning  in  those 
days  were  called  Tories.  And  what  is  to  be  thought  of  this 
line  of  reasoning  to-day  ?  Is  it  not  at  least  rational  and 
fair  ?  Even  though  not  irresistible,  has  it  not  a  great  deal 
of  strength  in  it  ?  Even  though  we,  perhaps,  should  have 
declined  to  adopt  it,  are  we  not  obliged  to  say  that  it  might 
have  been  adopted  by  Americans  who  were  both  clear- 
headed and  honest-minded  ? 

VI. 

And  thus  we  are  brought  to  the  second  aspect  of  the 
question  of  expediency, — the  great  and  ultimate  issue  of  the 
whole  controversy, — that  of  Independence,  which,  however, 
need  not  be  dealt  with  by  us  till,  in  the  course  of  this 
history,  we  reach  the  year  wherein  that  doctrine  suddenly 
leaped  into  the  arena  and  demanded  recognition.  In  the 
meantime,  for  a  clearer  understanding  of  the  Loyalist  atti- 
tude toward  all  matters  in  dispute  prior  to  that  of  Independ- 
ence, it  will  be  profitable  for  us  here  to  note  three  grave 
errors  closely  connected  with  the  whole  subject,  and  still 
prevalent  in  popular  American  expositions  of  it. 

First,  it  is  an  error  to  represent  the  Tories  of  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution  as  a  party  of  mere  negation  and  obstruction. 
They  did  deny,  they  did  attempt  to  obstruct ;  but  they  also 
had  positive  political  ideas,  as  well  as  precise  measures  in 
creative  statesmanship  to  offer  in  the  place  of  those  ideas 
and  measures  to  which  they  made  objection,  and  which  they 
would  have  kept  from  prevailing  if  they  could. 


314  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Secondly,  it  is  an  error  to  represent  the  Tories  of  the 
American  Revolution  as  a  party  opposed  either  to  any 
reform  in  the  relations  of  the  colonists  with  the  mother 
country,  or  to  the  extension  of  human  rights  and  liberties 
here  or  elsewhere.  From  the  beginning  of  the  agitation, 
they  clearly  saw,  they  strongly  felt,  they  frankly  declared, 
that  the  constitutional  relations  of  the  colonies  with  the 
mother  country  were  in  a  crude  state,  were  unsatisfactory, 
were  in  need  of  being  carefully  revised  and  reconstructed. 
This  admission  of  theirs,  they  never  recalled.  Quite  aside 
from  the  question  of  its  legality,  they  doubted  the  expe- 
diency, under  modern  conditions,  of  such  an  exertion  of 
parliamentary  authority  as  the  ministry  had  forced  into  life. 
Upon  these  points,  there  was  substantial  agreement  between 
all  Americans ;  namely,  that  there  was  a  wrong,  that  there 
was  a  danger,  that  there  should  be  a  reform.  It  was  chiefly 
as  to  the  method  and  the  process  and  the  scope  of  this 
needed  reform,  that  Americans  broke  asunder  into  two 
great  opposing  parties.  The  exact  line  of  cleavage  between 
these  two  parties,  together  with  the  tone  and  the  spirit  char- 
acteristic of  each  party,  may  now  be  traced  with  precision 
in  the  history  of  the  Congress  of  1774.  Within  that  body, 
the  Tory  party,  both  as  regards  its  political  ideas  and  its 
conscientiousness,  was  represented  by  Joseph  Galloway, 
who  then  and  there  tried,  but  tried  in  vain,  to  induce  the 
Congress  to  adopt  such  measures  as  would  commit  the 
American  people  to  reform  through  reconciliation,  rather 
than  to  reform  through  separation. 

Thirdly,  it  is  an  error  to  represent  the  Tories  of  our  Rev- 
olution as  composed  of  Americans  lacking  in  love  for  their 
native  country,  or  in  zeal  for  its  liberty,  or  in  willingness  to 
labor,  or  fight,  or  even  to  die,  for  what  they  conceived  to 
be  its  interests.  As  was  most  natural,  the  party  which  suc- 
ceeded in  carrying  through  the  Congress  of  1774  such  meas- 
ures and  methods  of  political  reform  as,  in  fact,  led  to  civil 
war,  and,  finally,  to  American  Independence,  took  for  itself 
the  name  of  the  patriotic  party,  its  members  being  com- 


THE  LOYALISTS  IN  HISTORY.  315 

monly  called  patriots.  Beyond  question,  the  Whig  party 
was  a  patriotic  party;  but  it  is  not  now  apparent  that 
those  Americans  who  failed  in  their  honest  and  sacrificial 
championship  of  measures  which  would  have  given  us  polit- 
ical reform  and  political  safety,  but  without  civil  war  and 
without  an  angry  disruption  of  the  English-speaking  race, 
can  justly  be  regarded  as  having  been,  either  in  doctrine,  or 
in  purpose,  or  in  act,  an  unpatriotic  party. 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

LOYALIST   SERMON  WRITERS:     JONATHAN  BOUCHER. 

I. — Restraints  upon  the  freedom  of  the  Loyalist  clergy — The  career  of  Jonathan 
Boucher — His  frankness  and  courage  in  controversy — His  physical  resist- 
ance to  all  attempts  to  silence  him. 

II. — Publishes  in  London  thirteen  discourses  preached  in  America  on  political 
affairs  between  1763  and  1775 — A  Loyalist  "  View  of  the  Causes  and  Con- 
sequences of  the  American  Revolution" — Notes  of  his  intellectual  sincerity, 
love  of  truth,  and  courage — His  fearless  antagonism  of  evil  things  then 
popular,  the  spirit  of  war,  disregard  of  the  rights  of  the  Indians,  and 
negro-slavery. 

III. — His  fearless  antagonism  of  the  several  stages  of  the  Revolutionary  move- 
ment— His  ideas  those  of  an  old-fashioned  believer  in  church  and  king — 
Civil  government  of  divine  origin  and  authority — The  degradation  of  gov- 
ernment and  of  governors  through  the  opposite  theory — The  leadership  of 
those  who  "  prevail  with  their  tongues" — The  untruth  of  the  doctrine  of 
the  natural  equality  of  all  men. 

IV. — His  consistency  in  opposing  the  Revolution — Depicts  the  decay  of  old- 
time  loyalty  in  Virginia — Defines  an  American  Whig,  and  a  low  church- 
man— His  attitude  toward  the  controversy  over  the  American  episcopate — 
He  laments  the  taxing  policy  of  the  British  ministry  as  a  blunder,  but 
demands  that  it  be  resisted  by  lawful  means  only — The  irresistible  power 
of  submission — Boucher's  violent  ejection  from  his  pulpit  and  from  the 
country. 

I. 

WHILE  almost  every  aspect  of  the  Revolutionary  move- 
ment may  be  illustrated  from  the  published  sermons  of  the 
preachers  who  supported  that  movement,  the  opposite  is 
the  case  respecting  the  preachers  who  were  in  antagonism 
to  it:  their  sermons  having  seldom  found  their  way  into 
print, — nay,  the  privilege  of  preaching  them  having  been 
early  taken  away. 

One  of  the  most  impressive  examples  of  high  principle  and 
316 


JONATHAN  BOUCHER.  3^ 

of  courageous  conduct  on  the  part  of  these  Loyalist  clergy- 
men, is  furnished  by  the  career  of  Jonathan  Boucher,  who 
was  born  in  England  in  1738;  removed  to  America  in  1759; 
was  ordained  priest  by  the  Bishop  of  London  in  1762; 
served  as  rector  in  Virginia  and  Maryland  until  September, 
1775;  and  being  then  "  outlawed  and  driven  away"  '  on 
account  of  his  opposition  to  the  Revolution,  went  back  to 
England  and  was  made  vicar  of  Epsom,  where  he  died  in 
1804. 

He  had  come  to  America,  in  the  first  instance,  as  a  tutor 
to  the  sons  of  a  Virginia  planter;  and  his  taking  holy 
orders  was  the  result  of  an  appeal  made  to  him  by  a  neigh- 
boring parish  that  had  lost  its  minister.  Although  he  per- 
formed the  duties  of  his  sacred  office  with  great  sincerity, 
devotion,  and  dignity,  he  never  ceased  to  be  a  man  of 
affairs,  even  a  man  of  the  world.  He  owned  a  large  planta- 
tion, with  many  slaves ;  he  conducted  a  boarding  school  for 
thirty  or  forty  boys ;  he  was  active  and  influential  in  colo- 
nial politics.  While  in  charge  of  the  parish  at  Annapolis, 
he  managed  the  assembly  on  behalf  of  the  government,  he 
drew  up  or  revised  nearly  all  the  bills  that  passed,  he  wrote 
the  speeches  and  messages  of  the  governor  and  the  most 
important  papers  of  the  council.  He  had,  moreover,  many 
a  revel  in  newspaper  controversy  over  affairs  of  church  and 
state ;  he  published  political  essays,  songs,  and  epigrams ; 
being  a  patron  of  the  theatre,  he  promoted  its  interests  by 
a  prologue  or  two,  and  even  by  some  lines  addressed  to  one 
of  the  actresses.2 

His  great  frankness,  both  in  the  pulpit  and  out  of  it,  in 
opposition  to  the  measures  of  the  Revolutionist  party,  drew 
upon  him,  as  was  to  be  expected,  the  fiercest  enmity ;  and 
in  dealing  with  the  personal  attacks  which,  at  such  a  time, 
such  a  man  was  sure  to  incur,  he  deliberately  acted  upon 
the  theory,  "  that  the  true  way  to  escape  a  danger  is  fairly 

1  Boucher,  "  A  View  of  the  Revolution,"  etc.,  594. 

2  Passages  from  Boucher's  "  Autobiography  "  as  contributed  by  his  grandson, 
Jonathan  Bouchier,  to  "  Notes  and  Queries,"  5th  Ser.  vi.  21-22. 


318  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

to  meet  it.  I  have,  I  believe,  a  tolerably  vigorous  and  reso- 
lute mind ;  but  as  to  fighting,  in  every  mode  of  it,  there  is 
nothing  I  so  much  dread  and  detest.  Everything,  there- 
fore, that  I  did  in  that  way  was  really  and  truly  to  preserve 
me  from  fighting.  And  it  appears  that  I  succeeded."1 
Thus,  having  knocked  down  a  burly  blacksmith  who  had 
been  set  upon  him,  he  acquired  in  all  that  region  by  that 
act  of  prowess  greater  honor,  as  he  says,  than  would  have 
been  accorded  to  him  there  for  the  brains  of  Newton,  if  he 
had  possessed  them ; *  and  thenceforward  no  man  thought 
it  prudent  to  provoke  a  personal  issue  with  him  on  the  sup- 
position that  he  would  not  meet  it  like  a  gentleman. 

It  was,  therefore,  chiefly  in  his  public  capacity  as  a 
preacher  that  his  courage  was  most  commonly  put  to  the 
test.  "  I  endeavored  in  my  sermons,  and  in  various  pieces 
published  in  the  gazettes  of  the  country,  to  check  the  im- 
mense mischief  that  was  impending,  but  I  endeavored  in 
vain.  I  was  soon  restrained  from  preaching,  and  the  press 
was  no  longer  open  to  me.  The  first  open  and  avowed  vio- 
lence I  met  with  was  on  account  of  my  expressly  declining, 
when  applied  to  by  some  noisy  patriots  heretofore  of  no 
great  note,  to  preach  a  sermon  to  recommend  the  suffering 
people  of  Boston  to  the  charity  of  my  parish.  Their  port 
was  shut  up  by  act  of  parliament ;  and  as  it  was  alleged  that 
they  suffered  thus  in  the  common  cause,  contributions  were 
collected  for  them  all  over  the  continent :  the  true  motive 
was  by  these  means  to  raise  a  sum  sufficient  to  purchase 
arms  and  ammunition.  I  also  refused  to  set  my  hand  to 
various  associations  and  resolves,  all,  in  my  estimation,  very 
unnecessary  and  unjust;  in  consequence  of  which  I  soon 
became  a  marked  man,  and,  though  I  endeavored  to  con- 
duct myself  with  all  possible  temper  and  even  caution,  I 
daily  met  with  insults,  indignities,  and  injuries."3  "I 

1  Passages  from  Boucher's  "  Autobiography  "  as  contributed  by  his  grandson, 
Jonathan  Bouchier,  to  "  Notes  and  Queries,"  5th  Ser.  vi.  142. 
5  Ibid.  141. 
*  Ibid.  82. 


JON  A  THAN  BO  UCHER.  3 1 9 

received  letters  threatening  me  with  the  most  dreadful  con- 
sequences if  I  did  not  desist  from  preaching  at  all.  All  the 
answers  I  gave  to  these  threats  were  in  my  sermons,  in 
which  I  declared  I  could  never  suffer  any  human  authority 
to  intimidate  me  from  doing  what  I  believed  to  be  my  duty 
to  God  and  his  church;  and  for  more  than  six  months  I 
preached,  when  I  did  preach,  with  a  pair  of  loaded  pistols 
lying  on  the  cushion ;  having  given  notice  that  if  any  one 
attempted,  what  had  long  been  threatened,  to  drag  me  out 
of  the  pulpit,  I  should  think  myself  justified  in  repelling 
violence  by  violence.  Some  time  after,  a  public  fast  was 
ordained ;  and  on  this  occasion  my  curate,  who  was  a  strong 
republican,  had  prepared  a  sermon  for  the  occasion,  and 
supported  by  a  set  of  factious  men,  was  determined  to 
oppose  my  entering  my  own  pulpit.  When  the  day  came, 
I  was  at  my  church  at  least  a  quarter  of  an  hour  before  the 
time  of  beginning;  but,  behold,  Mr.  Harrison  was  in  the 
desk,  and  was  expected,  I  was  soon  told,  to  preach.  In 
addition  to  this,  I  saw  my  church  filled  with  not  less  than 
two  hundred  armed  men  under  the  command  of  Mr. 
Osborne  Sprigg,  who  soon  told  me  I  .was  not  to  preach.  I 
returned  for  answer  that  there  was  but  one  way  by  which 
they  could  keep  me  out  of  it,  and  that  was  by  taking  away 
my  life.  At  the  proper  time,  with  my  sermon  in  one  hand 
and  a  loaded  pistol  in  the  other,  like  Nehemiah  I  prepared 
to  ascend  my  pulpit,  when  one  of  my  friends,  Mr.  David 
Cranford,  having  got  behind  me,  threw  his  arms  round  me 
and  held  me  fast.  He  assured  me  that  he  had  heard  the 
most  positive  orders  given  to  twenty  men  picked  out  for 
the  purpose,  to  fire  on  me  the  moment  I  got  into  the  pulpit, 
which  therefore  he  never  would  permit  me  to  do,  unless  I 
was  stronger  than  himself  and  some  others  who  stood  close 
to  him.  I  maintained  that,  once  to  flinch  was  forever  to 
invite  danger ;  but  my  well-wishers  prevailed,  and,  when  I 
was  down,  it  is  horrid  to  recollect  what  a  scene  of  confusion 
ensued.  Sprigg  and  his  company  contrived  to  surround  me 
and  to  exclude  every  moderate  man.  Seeing  myself  thus 


320  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

circumstanced,  it  occurred  to  me  that  there  was  but  one  way 
to  save  my  life, — this  was  by  seizing  Sprigg,  as  I  immedi- 
ately did,  by  the  collar,  and  with  my  cocked  pistol  in  the 
other  hand,  assuring  him  that  if  any  violence  were  offered  to 
me,  I  would  instantly  blow  his  brains  out.  I  then  told  him 
he  might  conduct  me  to  my  house,  and  I  would  leave  them. 
This  he  did,  and  we  marched  together  upwards  of  a  hundred 
yards,  guarded  by  his  whole  company — whom  he  had  the 
meanness  to  order  to  play  the  rogues'  march  all  the  way 
we  went.  Thus  ended  this  dreadful  day,  which  was  a 
Thursday.  On  the  following  Sunday,  I  again  went  to  the 
same  church,  and  was  again  opposed,  but  more  feebly  than 
before.  I  preached  the  sermon  I  should  have  preached  on 
the  Thursday,  with  some  comments  on  the  transactions  of 
the  day."1 

II. 

Though  none  of  Boucher's  sermons  were  printed  during 
the  Revolution,  long  afterward,  in  1797,  he  published  in 
London  a  series  of  thirteen  discourses  having  reference  to 
public  events  in  America  between  1763  and  1775,  and  actu- 
ally preached  by  him  to  various  congregations  in  the  two 
colonies  with  which  he  had  been  connected.  Dealing,  thus, 
with  the  chief  topics  that  employed  and  agitated  the  minds 
of  the  American  people,  from  the  time  of  the  English  acqui- 
sition of  Canada  to  that  of  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill  and  the 
assumption  by  Washington  of  the  command  of  the  American 
forces,  it  was  not  unsuitable  that  the  volume  containing 
these  remarkable  sermons  should  be  entitled  "  A  View  of 
the  Causes  and  Consequences  of  the  American  Revolution." 
Nowhere  else,  probably,  can  be  found  so  comprehensive, 
so  able,  and  so  authentic  a  presentation  of  the  deeper  prin- 
ciples and  motives  of  the  American  Loyalists,  particularly 
from  the  standpoint  of  a  high-church  clergyman  of  great 
purity  and  steadiness  of  character,  of  great  moral  courage, 

"  Notes  and  Queries,"  5th  Ser.  i.  103-104. 


JONATHAN  BOUCHER.  321 

of  great  learning,  finally,  of  great  love  for  the  country  thus 
torn  and  distracted  by  fratricidal  disagreements.  "  The 
unpopularity  of  my  .principles, "  said  he  more  than  thirty 
years  after  these  discourses  were  written,  "  cannot,  I  should 
hope,  be  fairly  objected  to  by  any  man  who  really  loves 
truth ;  because  it  is  at  least  some  proof  that  my  intentions 
are  sincere,  and  that  I  am  in  earnest.  And  though  it  be 
true  that  there  is  nothing  particularly  attractive  or  alluring 
in  the  composition  of  these  discourses,  yet,  as  that  may  in 
some  degree,  perhaps,  arise  from  their  so  often  adverting  to 
minute  and  ordinary  facts  and  circumstances  not  likely  to 
be  noticed  by  other  writers,  even  this  defect  may  be  par- 
doned by  those  who  are  less  solicitous  to  be  amused  than 
edified,  and  are  desirous  thoroughly  to  understand  the 
subject." 

Perhaps  the  deepest  impression  now  to  be  made  by  these 
writings,  is  that  of  the  intellectual  sincerity  of  their  author; 
the  independence  and  purity  of  his  quest  for  the  truth ;  the 
thoroughness,  refinement,  and  nobility  of  his  usual  method 
in  dealing  with  the  perplexing  subjects  discussed  by  him ; 
his  absolute  fidelity  to  his  own  opinions  in  total  disregard  of 
their  opposition  to  those  then  stormily  in  vogue  about  him. 

Thus,  in  1763,  at  a  time  of  passionate  and  clamorous 
enthusiasm  over  military  success  and  military  glory,  he 
calmly  deprecates  both,  as  products  of  "  a  perversion  and 
misapplication  of  fine  talents  "  ;  he  contrasts  the  great  gen- 
erals of  history — "  the  butchers  and  destroyers  of  their 
kind" — with  men  like  Socrates,  Fe"nelon,  and  William 
Penn,  the  true  guardians  and  benefactors  of  the  human 
family.  "  True  greatness,"  he  tells  a  people  then  electri- 
fied by  a  splendid  embodiment  of  military  genius  last  seen 
on  the  heights  of  Quebec,  "  deserves  all  the  honor  that  the 
world  can  pay  it;  but  fields  dyed  with  blood  are  not  the 
scenes  in  which  true  greatness  is  most  likely  to  be  found. 
He  who  simplifies  a  mechanical  process,  who  supplies  us 
with  a  new  convenience  or  comfort,  or  even  he  who  con- 

1  "  A  View,"  etc.,  Pref.  xxiii.-xxiv. 


322  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

trives  an  elegant  superfluity,  is,  in  every  proper  sense  of  the 
phrase,  a  more  useful  man  than  any  of  those  masters  in  the 
art  of  destruction,  who,  to  the  shame  of  the  world,  have 
hitherto  monopolized  almost  all  its  honors."  '  Among  a 
people  accustomed  to  regard  the  American  Indians  as 
noxious  vermin  to  be  exterminated  as  fast  as  possible,  he 
declares  that  the  habitual  treatment  of  these  people  by 
English  Christians  from  the  beginning,  had  been  "  equally 
unsuitable  to  the  genius  of  our  government  and  the  mild 
spirit  of  our  religion."  a  Among  a  people  accustomed  for 
more  than  a  hundred  years  to  be  supported  by  the  labor  of 
slaves,  he  asserts  that  if  ever  the  American  colonies  are  to 
"  be  improved  to  their  utmost  capacity,  an  essential  part  of 
the  improvement  must  be  the  abolition  of  slavery."  s  "I 
believe  it  is  capable  of  demonstration  that,  except  the 
immediate  interest  which  every  man  has  in  the  property  of 
his  slaves,  it  would  be  for  every  man's  interest  that  there 
were  no  slaves;  and  for  this  plain  reason,  because  the  free 
labor  of  a  free  man,  who  is  regularly  hired  and  paid  for  the 
work  which  he  does,  and  only  for  what  he  does,  is,  in  the 
end,  cheaper  than  the  extorted  eye-service  of  a  slave."  * 

III. 

With  the  same  independence  of  mind,  with  the  same 
indisposition  to  purchase  popularity  by  adapting  his  doc- 
trines to  its  demands,  he  dealt  from  the  pulpit  with  the 
several  topics  which,  during  the  subsequent  twelve  years, 
came  into  the  dispute  between  the  colonies  and  the  English 
ministry.  The  spirit  in  which  he  approached  all  these 

1  "  A  View,"  etc.,  10-11.  2  Ibid.  29.  3  Ibid.  40. 

4  Ibid.  39.  Like  many  other  Americans  at  that  time  who  disapproved  of 
slavery,  Boucher  himself  kept  slaves  ;  but  he  was  noted  for  the  enlightenment 
and  humanity  of  his  treatment  of  them.  Long  afterward,  he  wrote  in  his 
"  Autobiography  "  that  no  compliment  was  ever  paid  him  which  went  so  near 
his  heart  as  that  which  was  bestowed  by  a  negro,  who,  when  asked  to  whom  he 
belonged,  replied,  "  To  Parson  Boucher,  thank  God  !  "  "  Notes  and  Queries,' 
5th  Ser.  vi.  23.  When,  in  1775,  he  and  his  family  were  compelled  to  flee  from 
the  country,  they  left  their  house  amidst  the  tears  and  cries  of  their  slaves. 
Ibid,  sth  Ser.  i.  104. 


JONATHAN  BOUCHER.  323 

troublesome  matters  was,  without  variation,  that  of  an  old- 
fashioned  believer  in  church  and  king, — in  the  divine  origin 
and  the  divine  authority  of  government,  consequently,  in 
obedience  to  government  as  a  religious  as  well  as  a  civil 
duty:  "  Of  all  the  theories  respecting  the  origin  of  govern- 
ment, with  which  the  world  has  been  either  puzzled,  amused, 
or  instructed,  that  of  the  Scriptures  alone  is  accompanied 
by  no  insuperable  difficulties.  It  was  not  to  be  expected 
from  an  all-wise  and  all-merciful  Creator,  that,  having 
formed  creatures  capable  of  order  and  rule,  he  should  turn 
them  loose  into  the  world  under  the  guidance  only  of  their 
own  unruly  wills, — that,  like  so  many  wild  beasts,  they 
might  tear  and  worry  one  another  in  their  mad  contests  for 
preeminence.  .  .  .  We  are,  indeed,  so  disorderly  and 
unmanageable,  that  were  it  not  for  the  restraints  and  the 
terrors  of  human  laws,  it  would  not  be  possible  for  us  to 
dwell  together.  But  as  men  were  clearly  formed  for  society 
and  to  dwell  together,  which  yet  they  cannot  do  without 
the  restraints  of  law,  or,  in  other  words,  without  govern- 
ment, it  is  fair  to  infer  that  government  was  also  the  original 
intention  of  God,  who  never  decrees  the  end,  without  also 
decreeing  the  means.  Accordingly,  when  man  was  made 
as  soon  as  there  were  some  to  be  governed,  there 
were  also  some  to  govern.  .  .  .  Copying  after  the  fair 
model  of  heaven  itself,  wherein  there  was  government  even 
among  the  angels,  the  families  of  the  earth  were  subjected 
to  rulers,  at  first  set  over  them  by  God.  '  For  there  is  no 
power,  but  of  God :  the  powers  that  be  are  ordained  of 
Pod.'  Thejirst  father,  was  the  first  king.  .  .  .  Hence 
it  is,  that  "our  church,  in  perfect  conformity  with  the  doc- 
trine here  inculcated,  in  her  explication  of  the  fifth  com- 
mandment, from  the  obedience  due  to  parents,  wisely 
derives  the  congenial  duty  of  '  honoring  the  king,  and  all 
that  are  put  in  authority  under  him.' 

Nor  was  he  content  with  merely  putting  forward  his  own 
doctrine  of  the  divine  origin  and  authority  of  government: 

1  "  A  View,"  etc.,  523-530. 


324  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION'. 

he  boldly  denounced  as  false  and  disastrous  the  opposite 
doctrine  then  commonly  held  and  loudly  advocated  by  most 
people  about  him.  "  Government  being  assumed  to  be  a 
mere  human  ordinance,  it  is  thence  inferred  that  '  rulers  are 
the  servants  of  the  public  ' ;  and,  if  they  be,  no  doubt  it 
necessarily  follows,  that  they  may — in  the  coarse  phrase  of 
the  times — be  '  cashiered  '  or  continued  in  pay,  be  rever- 
enced or  resisted,  according  to  the  mere  whim  or  caprice  of 
those  over  whom  they  are  appointed  to  rule."  "  This 
low  opinion  of  government  naturally  produces  another  false 
and  dangerous  estimate  of  things:  in  proportion  as  govern- 
ment is  degraded,  those  who  depress  it  exalt  themselves. 
Hence,  to  be  a  friend  of  government,  subjects  a  man  to  the 
mortifying  suspicion  of  being  of  an  abject  and  servile  mind; 
whilst  popularity  is  sure  to  attach  to  those  who  oppose  gov- 
ernment, or  rather  perhaps  the  ministers  of  government. 
And  hence,  too,  as  flimsy  oratory  is  always  most  in  vogue 
when  sound  principles  and  sound  learning  are  least  so,  our 
forest  committees,  aping  the  members  of  our  conventions 
and  congresses  in  their  volubility  of  speech,  as  well  as  in 
their  patriotism,  harangue  not  less  vehemently  on  those 
unvarying  topics — the  abuses  of  government,  the  vileness  of 
those  whom  they  call  the  tools  of  government,  the  disinter- 
estedness of  opposition,  and  the  genuine  love  of  liberty 
which  actuates  those  who  conduct  opposition. 
This  is  not  all.  As  though  there  were  some  irresistible 
charm  in  extemporaneous  speaking,  however  rude,  the  ora- 
tors of  our  committees  and  sub-committees,  like  those  in 
higher  spheres,  '  prevail  with  their  tongues.'  To  public, 
speakers  alone  is  the  government  of  our  country  now  com- 
pletely committed.  It  is  cantoned  out  into  new  districts, 
and  subjected  to  the  jurisdiction  of  these  committees,  who, 
not  only  without  any  known  law,  but  directly  in  the  teeth 
of  all  law  whatever,  issue  citations,  sit  in  judgment,  and 
inflict  pains  and  penalties  on  all  whom  they  are  pleased  to 
consider  as  delinquents.  Not  only  new  crimes  have  been 

1  "  A  View,"  etc.,  544. 


JONATHAN  BOUCHER.  325 

thus  created,  but  also  new  punishments,  in  comparison  with 
which  even  the  interdiction  from  fire  and  water  among  the 
Romans  was  mild  and  merciful."  ' 

Of  course,  to  this  writer  there  could  have  been  nothing 
but  pestilent  folly  in  the  notion,  then  becoming  popular, 
"  that  the  whole  human  race  is  born  equal;  and  that  no 
man  is  naturally  inferior  or  in  any  respect  subjected  to  an- 
other ;  and  that  he  can  be  made  subject  to  another  only  by 
his  own  consent.  The  position  is  equally  ill-founded  and 
false,  both  in  its  premises  and  conclusions.  In  hardly  any 
sense  that  can  be  imagined,  is  the  position  strictly  true; 
but,  as  applied  to  the  case  under  consideration,  it  is  demon- 
strably  not  true.  Man  differs  from  man  in  everything  that 
can  be  supposed  to  lead  to  supremacy  and  subjection. 
.••>.  .  Without  government,  there  can  be  no  society; 
nor,  without  some  relative  inferiority  and  superiority,  can 
there  be  any  government."  a 

IV. 

With  these  as  his  fundamental  principles  concerning  man 
and  society,  it  is  easy  to  infer  what  must  have  been  his  atti- 
tude toward  the  entire  movement  of  thought  and  sentiment 
which  constituted  the  American  Revolution :  he  deplored 
and  opposed  it,  but  always  like  a  gentleman,  a  scholar,  and 
a  Christian.  "  Many  old  men  among  us,"  said  he,  in  1771, 
in  a  sermon  at  St.  Mary's  Church,  Caroline  County,  Vir- 
ginia, "  who  had  the  happiness  to  be  established  in  their 
principles  in  other  times  than  these,  see  and  lament  that  a 
great  change  has  taken  place  ...  in  Virginia.  .  *  ,v 
Loyalty,  in  its  excesses,  may  have  been  absurd,  but  it  never 
was  servile.  Even  in  those  days  of  exuberant  loyalty,  our 
people  were  capable  of  thinking  for  themselves,  and  what 
they  thought,  they  were  not  afraid  to  assert.  Virginia  was 
the  last  of  the  British  dominions  that  submitted  to  Crom- 
well's usurpation,  and  the  first  that  proclaimed  Charles  the 
Second  king.  But  now,  taking  our  cue  from  popular 

1  "  A  View,:>  etc.,  319-321.  *  Ibid.  514-515. 


326  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

declaimers  and  popular  writers  in  the  parent  state,  we  are  as 
foryvard  as  the  boldest  to  reprobate  all  those  high  notions  of 
loyalty  which  so  honorably  distinguished  us  in  the  best 
periods  of  our  history.  On  the  principles  of  an  equal  zeal 
for  the  prerogatives  of  the  crown,  and  for  the  just  liberties 
of  the  people,  our  constitution  was  founded;  and  on  these 
alone  it  can  now  be  maintained, — though  every  pert  smat- 
terer  in  politics  has  the  hardiness  and  irreverence  to  attack 
all  those  its  strong  points,  which  our  ancestors  reverenced 
as  its  chief  excellence  and  support.  It  surely  was  some- 
thing more  than  ridiculous,  when,  not  long  since,  a  popular 
candidate  at  one  of  our  elections  solicited  your  suffrages  in 
his  favor,  on  the  plea  of  his  being  as  to  his  political  tenets  a 
Whig  and  the  advocate  of  Revolution  principles,  and  in 
religion  a  low  churchman.  If  folly  can  ever  excuse  au- 
dacity, this  man's  utter  ignorance  of  the  terms  he  used,  may 
be  admitted  as  some  apology  for  his  presumption.  There'is, 
no  doubt,  a  sober  sense  to  which  these  now  fashionable  terms 
may  be  restricted,  so  as  not  to  be  inconsistent  with  the 
duties  which  every  wise  and  good  man  owes  to  his  country; 
but,  it  is  with  sorrow  I  declare,  this  is  not  the  sense  in  which 
I  have  of  late  generally  heard  them  used,  or  in  which  they 
were  used  by  the  popular  candidate  in  question.  The  con- 
duct of  those  among  us  who  are  most  forward  to  assume 
these  titles,  affords  but  too  frequent  proofs  that  to  be  a 
Whig,  consists  in  being  haughty  and  overbearing  in  domes- 
tic life,  in  being  insolent  to  inferiors  and  tyrannical  to 
slaves;  that  to  support  Revolution  principles,  is  in  every- 
thing to  oppose  and  thwart  the  executive  power;  and  that 
to  be  a  low  churchman,  is  to  entertain  and  avow  a  low 
opinion  of  religion  in  general,  and  especially  of  established 
religion,— manifested  by  never  going  to  church.  That  so 
total  and  important  a  change  in  the  public  mind  cannot  fail 
to  have  a  mighty  influence  on  the  whole  of  our  colonial  sys- 
tem, is  evident."  ' 

Perhaps  on  no  other  portion  of  the  field  of  Revolutionary 
thought  is  the  light  thrown  by  this  writer  more  poxvrriul 

"  A  View,"  etc.,  Q7-<)9. 


JONATHAN  BOUCHER.  327 

than  on  that  relating  to  the  stormy  controversy  concerning 
the  American  episcopate, — a  controversy  not  less  vital  in 
the  development  of  the  Revolution,  than  that  earlier  one 
over  the  Stamp  Act,  or  than  that  later  one  over  the  tea 
tax.  The  ability  and  the  vigor  with  which  Boucher  main- 
tained the  proposition  that  the  Anglican  Church  in  America 
had  the  right,  by  the  introduction  of  bishops,  to  complete 
its  own  necessary  organization  there,  and  that  this  involved 
no  menace  to  the  religious  or  the  civil  liberties  of  the 
American  people,  may  be  seen  in  his  discourses  "  On 
Schisms  and  Sects,"  '  and  "On  the  American  Episcopate."  * 
Finally,  concerning  the  secular  dispute  between  the  colo- 
nies and  the  British  ministry  from  1767  to  1774,  Boucher, 
like  nearly  all  other  American  Loyalists,  evidently  thought 
that  the  course  of  the  ministry  was  a  blunder;  that  the 
colonies  had  serious  grievances  to  be  redressed ;  and  that 
these  grievances  would  be  fairly  redressed,  if  the  colonies, 
trusting  to  the  resistless  though  slow  operation  of  moral 
forces,  should  make  their  petitions  and  remonstrances  in  the 
right  way.  And  what  was  the  right  way  ?  It  was  that  of 
colonial  action  through  their  regular  legislatures,  and  not 
through  irregular  and  lawless  committees,  conventions,  and 
congresses.  "  It  is  your  duty,"  said  he,  "  to  instruct  your 
members  to  take  all  the  constitutional  means  in  their  power 
to  obtain  redress.  If  those  means  fail  of  success,  you  can- 
not but  be  sorry  and  grieved ;  but  you  will  better  bear  your 
disappointment,  by  being  able  to  reflect  that  it  was  not 
owing  to  any  misconduct  of  your  own.  .  .  .  Those 
persons  are  as  little  acquainted  with  general  history,  as  they 
are  with  the  particular  doctrines  of  Christianity,  who  repre- 
sent such  submission  as  abject  and  servile.  I  affirm,  with 
great  authority,  that  there  can  be  no  better  way  of  assert- 
ing the  people's  lawful  rights,  than  the  disowning  unlawful 
commands,  by  thus  patiently  suffering.  When  this  doc- 
trine was  more  generally  embraced,  our  holy  religion  gained 
as  much  by  submission,  as  it  is  now  in  a  fair  way  of  losing 
for  want  of  it.  Having,  then,  my  brethren^  thus  long  been 

1  "  A  View,"  etc.,  46-88.  *  Ibid.  89-151. 


328  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

tossed  to  and  fro  in  a  wearisome  circle  of  uncertain  tradi- 
tions, or  in  speculations  and  projects  still  more  uncertain, 
concerning  government,  what  better  can  you  do  than,  fol- 
lowing the  apostle's  advice,  '  to  submit  yourselves  to  every 
ordinance  of  man,  for  the  Lord's  sake;  whether  it  be  to  the 
king  as  supreme,  or  unto  governors,  as  unto  them  that  are 
sent  by  him  for  the  punishment  of  evil-doers,  and  for  the 
praise  of  them  that  do  well  ?  For,  so  is  the  will  of  God, 
that  with  well-doing  ye  may  put  to  silence  the  ignorance  of 
foolish  men ;  as  free,  and  not  using  your  liberty  for  a  cloak 
of  maliciousness,  but  as  the  servants  of  God.  Honor  all 
men:  love  the  brotherhood:  fear  God:  honor  the  king.'  "  ' 
It  was  for  the  crime  of  giving  such  instruction  as  this  to 
his  congregation,  in  the  parish  of  Queen  Anne  in  Prince 
George's  County,  Maryland,  that  he  was  at  last  forcibly 
prevented  from  entering  his  own  pulpit,  and  was  treated,  as 
he  himself  declared,  "  with  such  unmerited  insult  and  indig- 
nity as,  I  believe,  has  seldom  been  experienced  by  persons 
of  my  calling  in  any  civilized  and  Christian  country."  * 

1  "A  View,"  etc.,  559-560. 

*  Ibid.  562.  These  words  are  from  his  "  Farewell  Sermon,"  preached  in 
1775.  Of  this  noble-minded  and  very  able  man,  there  are  two  sketches  by 
Francis  L.  Hawks,  one  being  in  his  "Contributions  to  the  Ecclesiastical 
History  of  the  United  States,"  ii.  269-278,  the  other  in  Sprague,  "Annals," 
etc.,  v.  211-214.  A  good  short  account  of  Boucher  by  W.  P.  Courtney  is  to  be 
found  in  the  "  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,"  sub.  nom.  Much  valuable 
material  relating  to  Boucher  has  been  published  in  "  Notes  and  Queries,"  con- 
tributed by  Walter  Thornbury,  by  a  writer  under  the  signature  of  "  Thrax," 
by  Joseph  Lemuel  Chester,  and  by  Jonathan  Bouchier,  a  grandson  "of  the  old 
Loyalist:  3d  Ser.  ix.  75-76,  282-284;  5th  Ser.  i.  102-104  ;  v.  501-503;  vi. 
21-23,  81-83,  I4I-I43,  161-162;  ix.  50,  68,  89,  311,  371.  A  very  important 
topic  connected  with  Boucher,  is  that  of  his  relations  with  Washington,  which 
were  for  many  years  very  intimate  and  cordial,  though  roughly  disturbed  by  the 
Revolution  ;  and  besides  the  material  in  "  Notes  and  Queries,"  the  subject  is 
illustrated  by  a  paper  from  Moncure  Daniel  Con  way,  in  "  Lippincott's  Maga- 
zine," for  May,  1889,  containing  many  letters  which  had  passed  between 
Boucher  and  Washington.  These  letters  were  placed  in  Mr.  Conway's  hands 
by  a  grandson  of  Boucher,  Mr.  Lampson-Locker  of  London,  known  in  litera- 
ture as  Frederick  Locker,  who  mentions  that  Thackeray  had  had  the  reading  of 
them  when  he  was  waiting  "  The  Virginians."  Among  the  studies  which  oc- 
cupied Boucher  after  his  return  to  England  was  one  which  led  him  to  compile  a 
"  Glossary  of  Archaic  and  Provincial  Words,"  published  in  London  in  1832-1833. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THE   LOYALISTS  IN  ARGUMENT    AGAINST    THE    MEASURES 
OF  THE  FIRST   CONGRESS— THE   "  WESTCHESTER 

FARMER":  NOVEMBER,  i;74-APRiL,  1775. 

I. — The  papers  of  the  first  Continental  Congress — The  great  impression  made 
by  them  in  Great  Britain — Lord  Chatham's  tribute — Testimony  of  British 
newspapers. 

II. — The  two  rival  methods  for  American  opposition — The  bolder  method 
decided  on  by  the  Congress — A  commercial  war  against  England — "The 
Association." 

III. — Attack  on  the  measures  of  the  Congress  by  a  "  Westchester  Farmer  "—His 
"Free  Thoughts" — Tone  and  style  of  this  powerful  writer — Sounds  an 
alarm  to  the  agricultural  class  as  to  the  odious  and  dangerous  features  of 
"  The  Association  " — Great  excitement  caused  by  this  pamphlet. 

IV. — The  "Westchester  Farmer's"  second  pamphlet,  "The  Congress  Can- 
vassed " — An  alarmist  appeal  to  the  merchants  of  New  York — The  wider 
range  and  more  elaborate  character  of  this  discussion — Constitutional  and 
economic  aspects  of  the  question. 

V. — The  "Westchester  Farmer's"  third  pamphlet,  "  A  View  of  the  Contro- 
versy," in  reply  to  Alexander  Hamilton's  "  Full  Vindication  of  the  Meas- 
ures of  the  Congress  " — A  broad  treatment  of  the  most  important  questions 
involved — The  Farmer's  fourth  pamphlet,  "An  Alarm  to  the  Legislature  of 
the  Province  of  New  York" — His  fifth  pamphlet  advertised  April  20, 
1775,  but  never  published. 

VI. — The  "  Westchester  Farmer's"  gifts  for  controversial  authorship — His  ex- 
traordinary literary  power — The  delight  and  the  anger  produced  by  his 
pamphlets. 

VII.— The  "  Westchester  Farmer"  was  Samuel  Seabury,  rector  of  St.  Peter's, 
Westchester — His  early  history — Personal  traits— The  dangers  incurred  by 
him  on  account  of  these  pamphlets — His  abduction  by  a  mob — His  im- 
prisonment in  New  Haven— Subsequent  persecutions — His  flight  within 
the  British  lines — His  work  as  clergyman  and  physician  till  the  close  of  the 
war— First  bishop  of  the  American  Episcopal  Church. 

I. 

THE  first  Continental  Congress,  being  in  secret  session 
at  Philadelphia  from  the  fifth  of  September  till  the  twenty- 

329 


333 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


sixth  of  October,  1774,  took  final  resolution  as  to  the  course 
of  action  then  to  be  pursued  by  the  "  United  Colonres  of 
America,"  in  opposition  to  the  offensive  measures  of  the 
ministry.  In  order  to  win  for  this  course  of  action,  as  far  as 
possible,  the  moral  support  of  mankind,  the  Congress  sent 
forth  a  series  of  state  papers,  which  proved  to  be  writings  of 
extraordinary  dignity,  nobility,  and  force: — "  A  Declara- 
tion of  Rights  and  Grievances,"  l  an  "  Address  to  the 
People  of  Great  Britain,"  a  a  "  Memorial  to  the  Inhabitants 
of  the  British  Colonies,"  3  an ."  Address  to  the  Inhabitants 
of  Quebec,"  *  and  a  "  Petition  to  the  King's  Most  Excellent 
Majesty."  * 

-  "These  were  the  state  papers  which,  being  laid  on  the 
table  of  the  house  of  lords,  became,  on  the  twentieth  of 
January,  1775,  the  subject  of  a  memorable  discussion  in  that 
body.  "  When  your  lordships  look  at  the  papers  trans-_ 
mitted  us  from  America,"  said  Lord  Chatham  on  that 
occasion;  "  when  you  consider  their  decency,  firmness  and 
wisdom,  you  cannot  but  respect  their  cause,  and  wish  to 
make  it  your  own.  For  myself,  I  must  declare  and  avow, 
that  in  all  my  reading  and  observation — and  it  has  been  my 
favorite  study — I  have  read  Thucydides,  and  have  studied 
and  admired  the  master-states  of  the  world — for  solidity  of 
reasoning,  force  of  sagacity,  and  wisdom  of  conclusion, 
under  such  a  complication  of  difficult  circumstances,  no 
nation  or  body  of  men  can  stand  in  preference  to  the  Gen- 
eral Congress  at  Philadelphia.  I  trust  it  is  obvious  to  your 
lordships,  that  all  attempts  to  impose  servitude  upon  such 
men,  to  establish  despotism  over  such  a  mighty  continental 
nation,  must  be  vain,  must  be  fatal."  ' 

1  "  Journals  of  the  American  Congress,"  i.  19-22.     This  paper  was  prepared 
by  a  committee  consisting  of  twenty-five  members. 

*  Ibid.  26-31.     This  paper  was  written  by  John  Jay. 

8  Ibid.  31-38.     This  paper  was  written  by  Richard  Henry  Lee. 

*  Ibid.  40-45.     This  paper  was  written  by  John  Dickinson. 

5  Ibid.  i.  46-49.     This  paper,  in  its  original  form,  was  written  by  Richard 
Henry   Lee  ;  in  the  form  as  adopted,  it  was  written  by  John  Dickinson. 

6  Hansard,  "  Parlimentary  History  of  England,"  xviii.  155-156  n. 


THE  ASSOCIATION. 


331 


That  the  impression  produced  on  Lord  Chatham  by  these 
celebrated  papers  was  not  exceptional,  might  be  shown  from 
other  contemporaneous  European  testimony.  Thus,  imme- 
diately after  their  arrival  in  Great  Britain,  the  "  Edinburgh 
Advertiser"  for  December  23,  1774,  printed  them  in  a 
supplement,  and  at  the  same  time  declared  that,  being 
"  written  with  so  much  spirit,  sound  reason,  and  true  knowl- 
edge of  the  constitution,"  they  "  have  given  more  real 
uneasiness  than  all  the  other  proceedings  of  the  Congress." 

A  writer  in  the  "  London  Public  Ledger,"  for  about  the 
same  date,  bore  this  testimony  as  to  the  effect  of  these 
papers  upon  himself:  "  I  look  on  the  dignity  of  the  Ameri- 
can Congress  as  equal  to  any  assembly  on  earth,  and  their 
deliberations  and  resolutions  more  important  in  their  nature 
and  consequences  than  any  which  were  ever  before  agitated 
in  council."  As  to  the  estimate  placed  on  these  papers  in 
the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  court,  a  letter  written  from 
London,  and  printed  in  the  "  Boston  Morning  Post"  for 
March  27,  1775,  said:  "  It  is  impossible  that  any  production 
could  have  done  more  honor  to  America,  or  gained  more 
universal  approbation."  ' 

II. 

Within  the  seven  weeks  of  its  session,  and  behind  those 
closed  doors  which  so  well  protected  the  privacy  of  the 
Congress,  was  fought  out,  among  the  political  chiefs  of 
America,  the  final  issue  between  the  advocates  of  the  two 
rival  methods  for  conducting  American  opposition  to  a  min- 
isterial policy  which  was  disliked  by  all  Americans — by 
Tories  as  well  as  by  Whigs.  Either  method  of  opposition, 
it  was  affirmed  by  its  supporters,  would  be  effectual  in  ulti- 
mately relieving  us  of  the  offensive  policy ;  but,  while  the 
moderate  method  would  be  likely  to  accomplish  this  result 
without  violence,  and  perhaps  without  bitterness,  the  ex- 
treme method  could  not  fail,  under  existing  circumstances, 
1  R.  FrotWngham,  "  Rise  of  the  Republic,"  408-409  n. 


332  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

to  lead  to  still  greater  exasperation  between  the  contending 
parties,  to  civil  war,  and  to  revolution.  Then  and  there, 
however,  was  defeated  the  plan  for  a  constitutional  and 
a  peaceful  solution  of  the  problems  in  dispute, — defeated,  it 
should  be  remembered,  by  a  majority  of  only  one  vote. 

The  method  of  opposition  thus  officially  chosen,  was  pri- 
marily that  of  a  commercial  war  with  Great  Britain,  to  be 
brought  on  by  means  of  a  universal  stoppage  in  America  of 
every  kind  of  trade  with  her, — this  to  be  enforced  through- 
out the  colonies  by  agencies  of  terrific  energy  penetrating 
not  only  every  community,  but  every  household,  not  to 
say  the  private  habits  and  the  private  opinions  of  every 
man  and  woman  in  the  land.  Moreover,  the  declaration  of 
this  commercial  war  with  Great  Britain  was  accompanied  by 
the  grim  hint  that  a  war  other  than  a  merely  commercial 
one  was  not  unlikely  to  ensue  upon  this,  and,  hence,  that 
all  good  Americans  should  extend  their  "  views  to  mournful 
events,  and  be,  in  all  respects,  prepared  for  every  con- 
tingency." * 

Finally,  for  a  proper  appreciation  of  the  robust  character 
and  unflinching  purpose  of  the  method  of  procedure  which 
the  Congress  thus  adopted,  and  which  it  virtually  enforced 
upon  the  American  people,  no  secondary  description  can 
compare  in  value  with  the  very  text  of  the  document  itself 

"  The  Association  " — which  was  subscribed  by  the  fifty- 
two  members  then  present  in  that  assemblage,  and  which 
was  then  distributed  among  the  people  for  a  similar  endorse- 
ment by  them.  After  recounting  the  grievances  resulting 
from  the  "  ruinous  system  of  colony-administration,  adopted 
by  the  British  ministry  about  the  year  1763,  evidently  cal- 
culated for  enslaving  these  colonies,  and,  with  them,  the 
British  empire,"  the  paper  at  once  proceeds  to  the  tremen- 
dous topic  of  remedy:  "  To  obtain  redress  for  these  griev- 
ances, which  threaten  destruction  to  the  lives,  liberty,  and 
property  of  his  majesty's  subjects  in  North  America,  we  are 
of  opinion,  that  a  non-importation,  non-consumption,  and 

1  "Journals  of  the  American  Congress,"  i.  38. 


THE  ASSOCIATION. 


333 


non-exportation  agreement,  faithfully  adhered  to,  will  prove 
the  most  speedy,  effectual,  and  peaceable  measure;  and, 
therefore,  we  do  for  ourselves  and  the  inhabitants  of  the 
several  colonies  whom  we  represent,  firmly  agree  and  asso- 
ciate, under  the  sacred  ties  of  virtue,  honor,  and  love  of  our 
country,  as  follows: 

"  i.  That  from  and  after  the  first  day  of  December  next, 
we  will  not  import  into  British  America,  from  Great  Britain 
or  Ireland,  any  goods,  wares,  or  merchandise  whatsoever,  or 
from  any  other  place  any  such  goods,  wares,  or  merchandise 
as  shall  have  been  exported  from  Great  Britain  or  Ireland ; 
nor  will  we,  after  that  day,  import  any  East  India  tea  from 
any  part  of  the  world,  nor  any  molasses,  syrups,  paneles, 
coffee,  or  pimento  from  the  British  plantations  or  from 
Dominica,  nor  wines  from  Madeira  or  the  Western  Islands, 
nor  foreign  indigo. 

"3.  As  a  non-consumption  agreement,  strictly  adhered 
to,  will  be  an  effectual  security  for  the  observation  of  the 
non-importation,  we,  as  above,  solemnly  agree  and  associ- 
ate, that  from  this  day  we  will  not  purchase  or  use  any  tea 
imported  on  account  of  the  East  India  Company,  or  any  on 
which  a  duty  hath  been  or  shall  be  paid  ;  and  from  and  after 
the  first  day  of  March  next,  we  will  not  purchase  or  use  any 
East  India  tea  whatever,  nor  will  we,  nor  shall  any  person 
for  or  under  us,  purchase  or  use  any  of  those  goods,  wares, 
or  merchandise,  we  have  agreed  not  to  import,  which  we 
shall  know,  or  have  cause  to  suspect,  were  imported  after 
the  first  day  of  December. 

"  4.  The  earnest  desire  we  have  not  to  injure  our  fellow- 
subjects  in  Great  Britain,  Ireland,  or  the  West  Indies, 
induces  us  to  suspend  a  non-exportation,  until  the  tenth 
day  of  September,  1775  ;  at  which  time,  if  the  said  acts  and 
parts  of  acts  of  the  British  parliament  hereinafter  mentioned, 
are  not  repealed,  we  will  not  directly  or  indirectly  export 
any  merchandise  or  commodity  whatsoever  to  Great  Britain, 
Ireland,  or  the  West  Indies,  except  rice  to  Europe. 


334  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


"  ii.  That  a  committee  be  chosen  in  every  county,  city, 
and  town,  by  those  who  are  qualified  to  vote  for  representa- 
tives in  the  legislature,  whose  business  it  shall  be  attentively 
to  observe  the  conduct  of  all  persons  touching  this  Associa- 
tion ;  and  when  it  shall  be  made  to  appear,  to  the  satisfac- 
tion of  a  majority  of  any  such  committee,  that  any  person 
within  the  limits  of  their  appointment  has  violated  this 
Association,  that  such  majority  do  forthwith  cause  the  truth 
of  the  case  to  be  published  in  the  gazette ;  to  the  end,  that 
all  such  foes  of  the  rights  of  British  America  may  be  pub- 
licly known  and  universally  contemned  as  the  enemies  of 
American  liberty;  and  thenceforth  we  respectively  will 
break  off  all  dealings  with  him  or  her. 

"14.  And  we  do  further  agree  and  resolve,  that  we  will 
have  no  trade,  commerce,  dealings,  or  intercourse  whatso- 
ever, with  any  colony  or  province  in  North  America,  which 
shall  not  accede  to,  or  which  shall  hereafter  violate,  this 
Association,  but  will  hold  them  as  unworthy  of  the  rights  of 
freemen,  and  as  inimical  to  the  liberties  of  their  country." 

III. 

Within  two  or  three  weeks  from  the  day  on  which  the 
Congress  announced  its  grand  scheme  for  an  agreement 
among  the  American  colonists  not  to  import  or  to  consume 
the  chief  materials  of  the  English  carrying-trade,  nor  to  ex- 
port the  chief  products  of  their  own  farms,  there  came  from 
the  press  of  New  York  a  pamphlet,  ostensibly  written  by  a 
farmer,  and  addressed  to  farmers,  and  from  the  level  of  their 
particular  interests  subjecting  the  proposal  of  Congress  to  a 
sort  of  criticism  that  was  well  fitted  to  arouse  against  it  the 
bitterest  and  most  unrelenting  opposition  of  the  great  agri- 
cultural class.  This  is  its  title:  "  Free  Thoughts  on  the 
Proceedings  of  the  Continental  Congress,  held  at  Philadel- 

1  "  Journals  of  the  American  Congress,"  i.  23-26. 


THE  WESTCHESTER  FARMER.  335 

phia  September  5,  1774:  Wherein  their  Errors  are  exhibited, 
their  Reasonings  confuted,  and  the  Fatal  Tendency  of  their 
Non-Importation,  Non-Exportation,  and  Non-Consumption 
Measures  are  laid  open  to  the  plainest  Understandings,  and 
the  Only  Means  pointed  out  for  preserving  and  securing  our 
present  happy  Constitution." 

The  writer  of  this  pamphlet  professed  to  be  a  "  West- 
chester  Farmer," — a  signature  which  at  once  became  the 
target  for  vast  applause  and  for  vast  execration.  Entering 
the  great  debate  not  as  a  lawyer,  nor  as  a  politician,  nor  as 
a  merchant,  but  only  as  a  farmer — an  educated  farmer,  cer- 
tainly, but  a  blunt  and  a  sturdy  one — the  tremendous  im- 
pression produced  by  him  was  partly  due  to  his  dramatic 
identification  of  himself  with  the  character  he  had  assumed 
— expertly  adopting  the  Doric  phrases,  the  rustic  prejudices, 
even  the  bucolic  jests  natural  to  a  brawny  and  manly  yeo- 
man who  has  read  and  thought  much  on  the  laws  of  the 
land,  who  knows  his  rights  as  an  English  American,  who 
loves  his  country,  who  hates  needless  change  and  every  dis- 
turbance of  industry,  and  is  indignant  at  seeing  the  pros- 
perity, even  the  rights  and  the  liberties  of  the  people, 
especially  those  of  his  own  class,  uptorn  and  set  in  peril  by 
the  unwise  and  audacious  interference  of  political  adven- 
turers. Here,  accordingly,  the  reader  need  look  for  nothing 
recondite,  or  high-flown,  or  fine-spun,  no  over-strained  sen- 
timentality, no  rapture  of  idealized  opinion,  but  a  simple, 
practical,  pedestrian  view  of  the  situation,  such  as  any  stal- 
wart farmer  might  present  to  his  brother  farmers.  Here, 
also,  may  the  Son  of  Sirach  encounter  a  surprise,  in  the  dis- 
covery that  even  wisdom  is  to  be  had  from  one  that  holdeth 
the  plough  and  that  glorieth  in  the  goad,  that  driveth  oxen, 
and  is  occupied  in  their  labors,  and  whose  talk  is  of  bullocks. 

'!  My  first  business,"  says  this  stout-hearted  farmer  to  his 
brethren,  "  shall  be  to  point  out  to  you  some  of  the  conse- 
quences that  will  probably  follow  from  the  non-importation, 
non-exportation,  and  non-consumption  agreements  which  " 
the  late  Congress  "  have  adopted,  and  which  they  have 


336  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

ordered  to  be  enforced  in  the  most  arbitrary  manner,  and 
under  the  severest  penalties.  On  this  subject,  I  choose  to 
address  myself  to  you,  the  farmers  of  the  province  of  New 
York,  because  I  am  most  nearly  connected  with  you,  being 
one  of  your  number,  and  having  no  interest  in  the  country 
but  in  common  with  you ;  and  also  because  the  interest  of 
the  farmers  in  general  will  be  more  sensibly  affected  and 
more  deeply  injured  by  these  agreements,  than  the  interest 
of  any  other  body  of  people  on  the  continent."  x 

Of  these  agreements,  probably  one  consequence  will  be  a 
great  disturbance  of  business  in  Great  Britain,  Ireland,  and 
the  West  Indies,  accompanied  by  wide-spread  distress  in  all 
those  countries, — by  discord,  confusion,  mobs,  riots,  insur- 
rections, rebellions.  True,  this  consequence  may  not  at 
first  affect  us;  but  even  if  it  do  not,  where  is  the  justice, 
where  is  the  policy,  in  our  taking  measures  which  are  likely 
to  bring  such  misfortune  upon  others  ?  "  The  manufac- 
turers of  Great  Britain,  the  inhabitants  of  Ireland  and  of 
the  West  Indies  have  done  us  no  injury.  They  have  been 
no  ways  instrumental  in  bringing  our  distresses  upon  us. 
Shall  we  then  revenge  ourselves  upon  them  ? " a  Of  course, 
instead  of  conciliating  them,  we  shall  only  alienate  them : 
of  friends,  we  shall  make  them  enemies.  "  The  passions  of 
human  nature  are  much  the  same  in  all  countries.  If  they 
find  us  disposed  wantonly  to  distress  them,  to  serve  our  own 
purposes,  will  they  not  look  out  for  some  method  to  do 
without  us  ?  Will  they  not  seek  elsewhere  for  a  supply  of 
those  articles  which  they  used  to  take  from  us  ?  They 
would  deserve  to  be  despised  for  their  meanness,  did  they 
not."  Thus,  this  proposed  measure  of  the  Congress  will 
seriously  damage  our  interests  as  farmers, — for  example, 
it  will  ruin  our  market  for  flaxseed,  for  which  our  best 
customers  have  always  been  the  Irish.  "  You  know,  .my 
friends,  that  the  sale  of  your  seed  not  only  pays  your  taxes, 
but  furnishes  you  with  many  of  the  little  conveniences  and 

"  Free  Thoughts,"  etc.,  4.     I  use  the  first  edition,  "  Printed  in  the  Year 
M.DCC.LXXIV." 
*  "Free  Thoughts,  "etc.,  5. 


THE   WESTCHESTER  FARMER. 


337 


comforts  of  life.  The  loss  of  it  for  one  year  would  be  of 
more  damage  to  you,  than  paying  the  three-penny  duty  on 
tea  for  twenty.  Let  us  compare  matters  a  little.  It  was 
inconvenient  for  me  this  year  to  sow  more  than  one  bushel 
of  seed.  I  have  threshed  and  cleaned  up  eleven  bushels. 
The  common  price  now  is  at  least  ten  shillings.  My  seed, 
then,  will  fetch  me  five  pounds  ten  shillings.  But  I  will 
throw  in  the  ten  shillings  for  expenses.  There  remain  five 
pounds:  in  five  pounds,  are  four  hundred  three-pences. 
Four  hundred  three-pences,  currency,  will  pay  the  duty 
upon  two  hundred  pounds  of  tea, — evsn  reckoning  the 
exchange  with  London  at  200  per  cent.,  that  is,  reckoning 
ioo/.  sterling  to  be  equal  to  2OO/.  currency ;  whereas,  in 
fact,  it  is  only  equal  to  i/5/  or  i8o/.  at  the  most.  I  use  in 
my  family  about  six  pounds  of  tea.  Few  farmers  in  my 
neighborhood  use  so  much ;  but  I  hate  to  stint  my  wife  and 
daughters,  or  my  friendly  neighbors  when  they  come  to  see 
me.  Besides,  I  like  a  dish  of  tea  too,  especially  after  a 
little  more  than  ordinary  fatigue  in  hot  weather.  Now, 
200  pounds  of  tea,  at  six  pounds  a  year,  will  last  just  33 
years  and  eight  months.  So  that,  in  order  to  pay  this 
monstrous  duty  on  tea,  which  has  raised  all  this  confounded 
combustion  in  the  country,  I  have  only  to  sell  the  pro- 
duce of  a  bushel  of  flaxseed  once  in  thirty-three  years. 
Ridiculous! 

"  But,  to  leave  jesting.  The  loss  of  the  sale  of  your  seed 
only  for  one  year,  would  be  a  considerable  damage  to  you. 
And  yet  the  Congress  have  been  so  inattentive  to  your 
interests,  that  they  have  laid  you  under  almost  an  absolute 
necessity  of  losing  it  the  next  year.  They  have  decreed 
and  proclaimed  a  non-exportation,  to  commence  in  Septem- 
ber next.  The  Irish  will  be  alarmed :  they  will  look  out 
somewhere  else.  Or,  should  they  determine  to  send  their 
ships  the  earlier,  we  cannot,  without  the  utmost  inconven- 
ience, get  our  seed  to  market  by  that  time, — especially  not 
from  the  remoter  parts  of  the  province.  The  consequence 
will  be,  that  we  must  sell  our  seed  at  the  oil  mills  in  New 


338  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

York,  just  at  the  price  the  manufacturers  shall  please  to 
give  us. 

"  Upon  the  whole,  then,  it  is  highly  improbable  that  we 
shall  succeed  in  distressing  the  people  of  Great  Britain,  Ire- 
land, and  the  West  Indies,  so  far  as  to  oblige  them  to  join 
with  us  in  getting  the  acts  of  parliament,  which  we  complain 
of,  repealed.  The  first  distress  will  fall  on  ourselves :  it  will 
be  more  severely  felt  by  us,  than  by  any  part  of  all  his 
majesty's  dominions;  and  it  will  affect  us  the  longest." 

But  this  is  only  the  beginning  of  the  misfortunes  which  are 
coming  upon  us  should  the  scheme  of  the  Congress  go  into 
effect/  Not  only  will  it  lower  the  market  for  the  things  we 
have  to  sell,  but  it  will  raise  it  for  the  things  we  have  to 
buy.  ]  Even  now,  "  many  of  you  find  it  difficult  at  the 
year's  end  to  pay  the  shopkeeper  for  what  the  necessities  of 
your  families  have  obliged  you  to  take  up.  What  will  you 
do  when  the  prices  of  goods  are  advanced  a  quarter,  for 
instance,  or  a  half  ?  "  Moreover,  what  will  happen  next  ? 
Why,  that  this  scheme  of  the  Congress,  after  throwing  us 
into  all  these  embarrassments,  will  put  the  finishing  touch 
to  them,  by  provoking  the  home  government  to  block  up 
our  ports.  Of  course,  this  means  the  cessation  of  all  our 
trade.  And  even  if  the  home  government  should  not  do 
this,  the  Congress  will— only  in  a  different  way ;  for  they 
have  decreed  that  within  the  next  ten  months  all  our  trade 
is  to  be  stopped  anyhow.  In  either  case,  then,  the  result 
of  this  Congressional  interference  will  be  the  same. 
"  Should  the  government  interpose,  we  shall  have  no  trade 
at  all,  and  consequently  no  vent  for  the  produce  of  our 
farms.  Such  part  of  our  wheat,  flaxseed,  corn,  beef,  pork, 
butter,  cheese,  as  was  not  consumed  in  the  province,  must 
be  left  to  rot  and  stink  upon  our  hands.  Should  the 
government  leave  us  to  ourselves,  the  little  trade  that  would 
be  open,  would  never  keep  these  articles  at  such  a  price  as 
to  make  it  worth  while  to  raise  more  of  them  than  we  want 
for  our  own  consumption. ' '  Therefore,  "  look  well  to  your- 

1  "  Free  Thoughts,"  etc.,  7-8. 


THE  WESTCHESTER  FARMER. 


339 


selves,  I  beseech  you.  From  the  day  that  the  exports  from 
this  province  are  stopped,  the  farmers  may  date  the  com- 
mencement of  their  ruin.  Can  you  live  without  money  ? 
Will  the  shopkeeper  give  you  his  goods  ?  Will  the  weaver, 
shoemaker,  blacksmith,  carpenter,  work  for  you  without 
pay  ?  If  they  will,  it  is  more  than  they  will  do  for  me. 
And  unless  you  can  sell  your  produce,  how  are  you  to  get 
money  ?  Nor  will  the  case  be  better  if  you  are  obliged  to 
sell  your  produce  at  an  under-rate;  for  then  it  will  not  pay 
you  for  the  labor  and  expense  of  raising  it.  But  this  is  the 
least  part  of  the  distress  that  will  come  upon  you. 

"  Unhappily,  many  of  you  are  in  debt,  and  obliged  to 
pay  the  enormous  interest  of  seven  pounds  on  the  hundred, 
for  considerable  sums.  It  matters  not  whether  your  debts 
have  been  contracted  through  necessity  or  carelessness :  you 
must  pay  them,  at  least  the  interest,  punctually.  The 
usurer  will  not  wait  long;  indeed,  you  cannot  expect  he 
should.  You  have  had  his  money,  and  are  obliged  in  jus- 
tice to  pay  him  the  principal  and  interest  according  to  agree- 
ment. But  without  selling  your  produce,  you  can  neither 
pay  the  one  nor  the  other.  The  consequence  will  be  that 
after  a  while  a  process  of  law  will  be  commenced  against 
you,  and  your  farms  must  be  sold  by  execution;  and  then 
you  will  have  to  pay  not  only  principal  and  interest,  but 
sheriff's  fees,  lawyer's  fees,  and  a  long  list  of  et  oeteras. 
Nor,  under  these  circumstances,  will  your  farms  fetch  half 
what  they  cost  you.  What  is  a  farm  good  for,  the  produce 
of  which  cannot  be  sold  ?  .  .  .  Your  creditor,  then,  or 
some  rich  merchant,  or  usurer,  must  take  it  at  their  own 
price.  To  you  it  is  of  no  consequence  who  takes  it — for 
you  are  ruined,  stripped  of  your  farm,  and  very  probably  of 
the  means  of  subsistence  for  yourself  and  family.  Glorious 
effect  of  non-exportation !  Think  a  little,  and  then  tell  me 
— when  the  Congress  adopted  this  cursed  scheme,  did  they 
in  the  least  consider  your  interest  ?  No,  impossible !  They 
ignorantly  misunderstood,  carelessly  neglected,  or  basely 
betrayed  you!  .  .  .  Blessed  fruits  of  non-importation 


34O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

and  non-exportation  !  The  farmer  that  is  in  debt  will  be 
ruined.  The  farmer  that  is  clear  in  the  world,  will  be 
obliged  to  run  in  debt,  ta  support  his  family ;  and  while  the 
proud  merchant,  and  the  forsworn  smuggler,  riot  in  their  ill- 
gotten  wealth,  the  laborious  farmers,  the  grand  support  of 
every  well-regulated  country,  must  all  go  to  the  dogs  to- 
gether. Vile,  shameful,  diabolical  device!  "  1 

Not  even  yet  is  the  case  complete,  as  against  the  scheme 
of  the  Congress.  All  these  disasters  are  to  follow  from 
only  one  part  of  that  scheme.  Let  us  now  attend  to 
another  part  of  it,  namely,  that  relating  to  n2iL-rr'ncj*l11fir 
tion>  "  After  the  first  of  March,  we  are  not  to  purchase  or 
use  any  East  India  tea  whatsoever,  nor  any  goods,  wares, 
or  merchandise  from  Great  Britain  or  Ireland  .  .  .  nor 
any  molasses,  syrups,  etc.,  from  the  British  plantations  in 
the  West  Indies,  or  from  Dominica,  nor  wine  from  Madeira 
or  the  Western  Islands,  nor  foreign  indigo. 

"  Will  you  submit  to  this  slavish  regulation  ?  You  must : 
our  sovereign  lords  and  masters,  the  high  and  mighty  dele- 
gates, in  grand  Continental  Congress  assembled,  have  ordered 
and  directed  it!  They  have  directed  the  committees  in  the 
respective  colonies  to  establish  such  further  regulations  as 
they  may  think  proper  for  carrying  their  association  .  .  . 
into  execution.  .  .  .  Will  you  be  instrumental  in  bring- 
ing the  most  abject  slavery  on  yourselves  ?  Will  you  choose 
such  committees  ?  Will  you  submit  to  them,  should  they  be 
chosen  by  the  weak,  foolish,  turbulent  part  of  the  country 
people  ?  Do  as  you  please ;  but,  by  Him  that  made  me,  I 
will  not!  No_,  if  I  must  be  enslaved,  let  it  be  by  a  KING 
at  least,  and  not  by  a  parcel  of  upstart,  lawless  committee- 
men.  If  I  must  be  devoured,  let  me  be  devoured  by  the 
jaws  of  a  lion,  and  not  gnawed  to  death  by  rats  and  ver- 
min! .  .  .  If  you  like  it  better,  choose  your  committee, 
or  suffer  it  to  be  chosen  by  half  a  dozen  fools  in  your 
neighborhood :  open  your  doors  to  them — let  them  examine 
your  tea  canisters,  and  molasses  jugs,  and  your  wives'  and 
1  "  Free  Thoughts,"  etc.,  9—17. 


THE  WESTCHESTER  FARMER.  341 

daughters'  petticoats — bow,  and  cringe,  and  tremble,  and 
quake — fall  down  and  worship  our  sovereign  Lord,  the  Mob ! 
But,  I  repeat  it,  by  Heaven  I  will  not!  No,  my  house  is 
my  castle :  as  such  I  will  consider  it,  as  such  I  will  defend 
it,  while  I  have  breath.  No  king's  officer  shall  enter  it 
without  my  permission,  unless  supported  by  a  warrant  from 
a  magistrate.  And  shall  my.  house  be  entered,  and  my 
mode  of  living  enquired  into,  by  a  domineering  committee- 
man  ?  Before  I  submit,  I  will  die :  live  you,  and  be  slaves. 

"  Do,  I  say,  as  you  please;  but  should  any  pragmatical 
committee-gentleman  come  to  my  house,  and  give  himself 
airs,  I  shall  shew  him  the  door,  and  if  he  does  not  soon  take 
himself  away,  a  good  hickory  cudgel  shall  teach  him  better 
manners." 

"  But  perhaps  you  will  say  that  these  men  are  contending 
for  our  rights;  that  they  are  defending  our  liberties;  and 
though  they  act  against  law,  yet  that  the  necessity  of  the 
time  will  justify  them.  .  .  .  These  men  defend  our  rights 
and  liberties  ?  .  No,  they  are  making  us  the  most 

abject  slaves  that  ever  existed.  The  necessity  of  the  times 
justify  them  in  violating  the  first  principles  of  civil  society  ? 
Who  induced  this  necessity  ?  Who  involved  the  province 
in  discord,  anarchy,  and  confusion  ?  They  created  that 
necessity,  which  they  now  plead  in  their  own  justification. 

"  Let  me  entreat  you,  my  friends,  to  have  nothing  to  do 
with  these  men,  or  with  any  of  the  same  stamp.  Peace 
and  quietness  suit  you  best.  Confusion,  and  discord,  and 
violence,  and  war,  are  sure  destruction  to  the  farmer. 
.  .  .  .  Peace,  indeed,  is  departed  from  us  for  the  present, 
and  the  protection  of  the  laws  has  ceased.  But,  I  trust  in 
God,  there  is  yet  one  method  left,  which  by  prudent  man- 
agement will  free  us  from  all  our  difficulties,  restore  peace 
again  to  our  dwellings,  and  give  us  the  firm  security  of  the 
laws  for  our  protection.  jlenojince-aJf  tlependence  uu  cou- 
gresses  and  committees.  They  have  neglected  or  betrayed 
youFTnterests.  Turn,  then,  your  eyes  to  your  consntu- 

1  "  Free  Thoughts,"  etc.,  13-19. 


342  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTWX. 

tional  representatives.  They  are  the  true,  and  legal,  and 
have  been  hitherto  the  faithful,  defenders  of  your  rights  and 
liberties ;  and  you  have  no  reason  to  think  but  that  they  will 
ever  be  so.  They  will  probably  soon  meet  in  general  assem- 
bly. Address  yourselves  to  them.  They  are  the  proper 
persons  to  obtain  redress  for  any  grievances  that  you 
can  justly  complain  of.  You  can  trust  their  wisdom  and 
prudence,  that  they  will  use  the  most  reasonable,  constitu- 
tional, and  effectual  methods  of  restoring  that  peace  and 
harmony  between  Great  Britain  and  this  province,  which  is 
so  earnestly  wished  for  by  all  good  men,  and  which  is  so 
absolutely  necessary  for  the  happiness  of  all."  ' 

Thus,  then,  into  the  arena  of  the  great  debate  leaped  this 
fearless  intellectual  gladiator.  To  right  and  to  left  were 
dealt  his  tremendous  blows — to  the  ground  tumbled  many 
an  antagonist — far  and  fierce  rang  shouts  of  exultation,  or 
howls  of  anger  and  hate.  Can  he  hold  his  own  at  this  great 
pace  ?  Can  he  keep  up  for  long  this  superb  fighting  ? 

IV. 

The  first  pamphlet  of  the  "  Westchester  Farmer"  was 
dated  November  16,  1774.  Twelve  days  from  that  date 
came  his  second  one — as  keen,  as  fiery,  as  powerful  as  the 
first:  "  The  Congress  Canvassed a ;  or,  An  Examination  into 
the  Conduct  of  the  Delegates  at  their  Grand  Convention, 
held  in  Philadelphia,  September  i,  1774."  Addressing  now 
the  merchants  of  New  York,  even  as  in  his  first  pamphlet  he 
had  addressed  its  farmers,  he  declines  to  offer  any  apology 
for  laying  his  opinions  before  them:  "  You  must  be  content 
with  plain  English,  from  a  plain  countryman :  I  must  have 
the  privilege  of  calling  a  fig — a  fig,  an  egg — an  egg."  ' 

"  Free  Thoughts,"  etc.,  22-23. 

*  In  a  list  of  the  pamphlets  of  the  "  Westchester  Farmer,"  as  given  by  the 
author  of  them,  probably  from  memory,  in  1783,  he  mentions  one  as  being  "An 
Address  to  the  Merchants  of  New  York."     I  have  not  met  with  any  pamphlet 
of  his  having  that  for  its  chief  title  ;  while  the  pamphlet  above  cited  is  declared, 
on  its  title-page,  to  be  "  Addressed  to  the  Merchants  of  New  York."     I  think 
that  this,  therefore,  is  the  pamphlet  intended. 

*  "The  Congress  Canvassed."  3. 


THE   WESTCHESTER  FARMER. 


343 


From  first  to  last,  then,  he  preserves  the  tone  and  bearing 
of  a  blunt,  unterrified  farmer,  but  with  a  mastery  of  elo- 
quent statement,  and  of  philosophy,  history,  politics,  and 
constitutional  law,  not  commonly  to  be  met  with  in  men  of 
his  class — or  of  any  class.  Launching  out  into  a  wider 
range  of  discussion  than  he  had  previously  taken,  he  yet 
holds  himself  steady  to  his  main  purpose  of  exposing  what 
he  regards  as  the  imposture,  the  assumption,  the  tyranny, 
and  the  folly  of  the  late  Congress.  It  was  a  law-making 
body  unknown  to  the  law  or  to  the  constitution  of  the 
country ;  its  members  had  no  real  claim  to  represent  the 
government  or  the  people  of  their  several  provinces;  in 
many  cases  their  election  was  a  sham,  in  all  cases  invalid; 
the  doctrines  they  have  put  forth  are  unsound,  misleading, 
dangerous;  from  beginning  to  end,  the  measures  they  have 
undertaken  to  force  upon  the  people,  are  without  authority, 
are  tyrannical,  will  bring  on  unspeakable  calamity. 

As  to  their  doctrines,  all  run  back  to  this  new  and  shallow 
heresy,  that  the  allegiance  of  the  American  colonies  is  due 
to  the  king  alone,  and  not  to  the  parliament.  "  It  is  a  dis- 
tinction made  by  the  American  republicans  to  serve  their 
own  rebellious  purposes, — a  gilding  with  which  they  have 
enclosed  the  pill  of  sedition,  to  entice  the  unwary  colonists 
to  swallow  it  the  more  readily  down.  The  king  of  Great 
Britain  was  placed  on  the  throne  by  virtue  of  an  act  of  par- 
liament ;  and  he  is  king  of  America  by  virtue  of  being  king 
of  Great  Britain.  He  is,  therefore,  king  of  America  by  act 
of  parliament.  And  if  we  disclaim  that  authority  of  parlia- 
ment which  made  him  our  king,  we,  in  fact,  reject  him  from 
being  our  king, — for  we  disclaim  that  authority  by  which  he 
is  king  at  all. 

"  Let  us  not,  gentlemen,  be  led  away  from  our  duty  and 
allegiance  by  such  fantastical  distinctions.  They  are  too 
nice  and  subtile  for  practice,  and  fit  only  for  Utopian  schemes 
of  government.  We  have  so  long  paid  attention  to  sophis- 
tical declamations  about  liberty  and  property,  the  power  of 
government  and  the  rights  of  the  people,  the  force  of  laws 
and  the  benefit  of  the  constitution,  that  we  have  very  little 


344  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

of  any  of  them  left  among  us;  and  if  we  continue  to  support 
and  imitate  the  mad  schemes  of  our  Eastern  neighbors,  in 
the  manner  we  have  done,  in  a  very  short  time  we  shall 
have  none  at  all." 

Indeed,  it  would  be  most  fortunate  if  the  doctrines  pro- 
mulgated by  the  Congress  were  merely  false  in  theory :  for 
they  will  surely  prove  most  disastrous  in  practice.  "  We 
have  hitherto  proceeded  from  bad  to  worse.  It  is  time  to 
consider  and  correct  our  conduct.  As  yet,  it  has  done  us 
no  good:  if  persisted  in  too  far,  it  will  bring  ruin  upon  us.. 
It  is  our  duty  to  make  some  proposals  of  accommodation 
with  our  parent  country.  And  they  ought  to  be  reasonable 
ones, — such  as  might  be  made  with  safety  on  our  part,  and 
accepted  with  dignity  on  hers.  But  if  we  expect  to  oblige 
her  to  propose  a  reconciliation,  to  ask  and  entreat  us  to 
accept  of  such  and  such  terms,  to  force  her  to  concede  every- 
thing, while  we  will  concede  nothing, — if  we  are  determined 
to  proceed  as  we  have  done,  continually  rising  in  our 
demands  and  increasing  our  opposition, — I  dread  to  think 
of  the  consequence.  The  authority  of  Great  Britain  over 
the  colonies  must  cease,  or  the  force  of  arms  must  finally 
decide  the  dispute.  Many  Americans  are  hardy  enough  to 
suppose  that,  in  such  a  contest,  we  should  come  off  victori- 
ous. But  horrid  indeed  would  be  the  consequence  of  our 
success!  We  should  presently  turn  our  arms  on  one  an- 
other, province  against  province,  and  destruction  and 
carnage  would  desolate  the  land.  Probably  it  would  cost 
the  blood  of  a  great  part  of  the  inhabitants  of  America  to 
determine  what  kind  of  a  government  we  should  have, 
whether  a  monarchy  or  a  republic.  Another  effusion  of 
blood  would  be  necessary  to  fix  a  monarch,  or  to  establish 
the  commonwealth.  But  it  is  much  more  probable,  that 
the  power  of  the  British  arms  would  prevail;  and  then,  after 
the  most  dreadful  scenes  of  violence  and  slaughter,  confis- 
cations and  executions  must  close  the  horrid  tragedy."  3 

"  The  Congress  Canvassed,"  26.  2  Ibid.  26-27. 


THE  WESTCHESTER  FARMER.  345 

V. 

Such  was  the  second  pamphlet  of  the  "  Westchester 
Farmer."  In  the  meantime,  his  first  pamphlet  had  already 
caused  great  commotion  in  the  camp  of  the  radical  party. 
It  could  not  be  suffered  to  go  unanswered.  Answers, 
accordingly,  sprang  up  on  every  hand, — the  most  notable 
one  being  "A  Full  Vindication  of  the  Measures  of  the  Con- 
gress, from  the  Calumnies  of  their  Enemies,"  by  a  writer 
whose  name  was  then  concealed,  but  who  is  now  known  to 
have  been  Alexander  Hamilton — "  the  marvellous  boy  " — 
then  but  seventeen  years  of  age  and  an  undergraduate  of 
King's  College.  On  the  twenty-fourth  of  December,  1774, 
in  less  than  four  weeks  from  the  day  of  his  second  pam- 
phlet, the  undaunted  farmer  was  ready  with  a  third  one, 
— this  being  in  reply  to  Hamilton's  attack,  and  entitled 
"'A  View  of  the  Controversy  between  Great  Britain  and  her 
Colonies:  Including  a  Mode  of  determining  their  present 
Disputes  finally  and  effectually,  and  preventing  all  future 
Contentions."  The  method  of  this  pamphlet  is  that  of  a 
strong  fighter  conscious  of  having  come  into  close  quarters 
with  an  antagonist  worthy  of  him :  he  is  self-possessed, 
wary,  expert,  full  of  resource,  aroused,  determined,  watch- 
ing to  give  the  thrust  which  shall  kill.  Here,  again,  the 
range  of  the  discussion  is  still  further  widened ;  and,  indeed, 
the  whole  vast  question  then  at  issue  between  England  and 
America,  in  its  every  aspect  of  constitutional  law,  of  equity, 
of  general  expediency,  is  here  discussed  by  this  masterful 
farmer,  and  discussed  with  learning,  acuteness,  lucidity, 
with  occasional  bursts  of  stormy  eloquence,  with  no  little 
cleverness  of  humorous  and  sarcastic  phrase.  Here,  like- 
wise, as  in  every  other  pamphlet  by  the  same  writer,  care  is 
taken  to  keep  prominent  the  fact  that  the  American  oppo- 
nents of  revolutionary  measures  are  themselves  dissatisfied 
with  the  existing  relations  of  America  toward  the  parent 
state ;  and  that,  while  they  reject  the  disloyal  and  exasperat- 
ing remedy  proposed  by  the  Congress,  they  are  not  without 
a  remedy  of  their  own,  namely,  "  the  settlement  of  an 


346  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

American  constitution  "  '  providing  for  colonial  home-rule 
under  the  sovereign  authbrity  of  the  imperial  parliament. 
"  This  is  a  scheme  which  we  shall  probably  succeed  in,  if  we 
attempt  it  with  proper  prudence  and  temper."2  "  If  we 
grasp  at  too  much,  we  shall  lose  everything."3  "This 
scheme  will  secure  us  from  slavery,  and  too  abject  a  depend- 
ence on  our  fellow-subjects  in  England."  "  At  the  same 
time,  "the  dependence  of .  the  colonies  on  the  mother 
country,  will  be  fixed  on  a  firm  foundation ;  the  sovereign 
authority  of  parliament  over  all  the  dominions  of  the  empire, 
will  be  established ;  and  the  mother  country  and  all  her  col- 
onies will  be  knit  together  in  one  grand,  firm,  and  compact 
body."  "  You,  sir,  may,  if  you  please,  pride  yourself  in 
this  suspicious,  jealous,  parsimonious,  stingy,  contracted, 
disposition  of  the  Congress;  you  may  call  it  '  equity,'  '  wis- 
dom,' '  dignity.'  Be  it  my  glory  to  have  contributed,  even 
in  the  smallest  degree,  to  the  honor,  splendor,  and  majesty 
of  the  British  empire.  My  ancestors  were  among  the  first 
Englishmen  who  settled  in  America.  I  have  no  interest  but 
in  America.  I  have  not  a  relation  out  of  it  that  I  know  of. 
Yet,  let  me  die!  but  I  had  rather  be  reduced  to  the  last 
shilling,  than  that  the  imperial  dignity  of  Great  Britain 
should  sink,  or  be  controlled  by  any  people  or  power  on 
earth."6 

No  sooner  was  this  pamphlet  off  his  hands,  and  a  stun- 
ning blow  thus  given  to  his  chief  assailant,  than  the  "  West- 
chester  Farmer  "  seems  to  have  set  to  work  upon  his  fourth 
pamphlet,  wherein,  turning  away  from  all  unauthorized 
political  bodies — congresses,  committees,  associations,  and 
the  like — he  addresses  himself  most  solemnly  to  the  one 
political  body  in  the  province  which  had  any  legal  character, 
and  was  competent,  besides,  to  interpose  in  that  frightful 
emergency,  and. to  lead  all  good  citizens  into  a  line  of  action 
certain  to  result  in  a  manly,  free,  and  loyal  solution  of  their 

1  "  A  View  of  the  Controversy,"  etc.,  23.  4  Ibid. 

2  Ibid.  21.  5  Ibid    2| 
8  Ibid-  22-  •  Ibid.  23 


THE  WESTCHESTER  FARMER.  347 

difficulties.  The  pamphlet  thus  sent  forth  to  the  world  had 
this  title:  "  An  Alarm  to  the  Legislature  of  the  Province  of 
New  York,  occasioned  by  the  present  political  Disturbances 
in  North  America :  addressed  to  the  honorable  Representa- 
tives in  General  Assembly  convened."  ' 

Although  they  are,  as  he  tells  them,  the  only  legal  repre- 
sentatives of  the  people  of  the  province,  yet  they  have  of 
late  been  utterly  disregarded,  their  dignity  trampled  on, 
their  authority  contravened.  "  A  committee,  chosen  in  a 
tumultuous,  illegal  manner,  usurped  the  most  despotic 
authority  over  the  province.  They  entered  into  contracts, 
compacts,  combinations,  treaties  of  alliance,  with  the  other 
colonies,  without  any  power  from  the  legislature  of  this 
province."2  "A  foreign  power  is  brought  in  to  govern 
this  province.  Laws  made  at  Philadelphia,  by  factious  men 
from  New  England,  New  Jersey,  Pennyslvania,  Maryland, 
Virginia,  and  the  Carolinas,  are  imposed  upon  us  by  the 
most  imperious  menaces.  Money  is  levied  upon  us  without 
the  consent  of  our  representatives, — which  very  money, 
under  color  of  relieving  the  poor  of  Boston,  it  is  too  prob- 
able, will  be  employed  to  raise  an  army  against  the  king. 
Mobs  and  riots  are  encouraged,  in  order  to  force  submission 
to  the  tyranny  of  the  Congress."  "  To  you,  gentlemen, 
the  good  people  of  this  province  look  for  relief :  on  you  they 
have  fixed  their  hopes ;  from  you  they  expect  deliverance 
from  this  intolerable  state  of  slavery.  ...  If  you  assert 
your  own  dignity,  if  you  maintain  your  own  rights  and  priv- 
ileges, we  shall  again  be  a  free  and  happy,  and,  I  trust,  not 
an  ungrateful  people.  ...  If  laws  made  and  decrees 
passed  at  Philadelphia,  by  the  enthusiastic  republicans  of 
New  England  and  Virginia,  are  to  bind  the  people  of  this 
province,  and  extort  money  from  them,  why,  gentlemen, 
do  you  meet  ?  Is  it  barely  to  register  their  edicts,  and  to 
rivet  the  fetters  of  their  tyranny  on  your  constituents  ? 

1  This  pamphlet  was  not  signed  ;  but  it  has  all  the  characteristic  traits  of  the 
"  Westchester  Farmer,"  and  was  afterward  avowed  by  him  as  his. 
9  "  An  Alarm,"  etc.,  4-5.  3  Ibid-  ?• 


348  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

.  .  .  Your  duty  requires  you  to  interpose  your  author- 
ity, and  to  break  up  this  horrid  combination  of  seditious 
men,  which  has  already  enslaved  this  province,  and  which 
was  intended  to  draw  the  faithful  subjects  of  our  most 
gracious  sovereign  into  rebellion  and  civil  war."  l 

The  date  of  this  fourth  pamphlet  is  January  17,  1775. 
On  the  twentieth  of  the  following  April, — only  one  day 
after  the  ghastly  business  at  Lexington  and  Concord,  but 
several  days  before  the  story  of  it  could  have  reached  New 
York, — there  appeared  in  the  "New  York  Gazetteer" 
the  advertisement  of  still  another  pamphlet  by  a  West- 
chester  Farmer,"  as  "  speedily  to  be  published."  This 
pamphlet  was  to  have  had  for  its  title/'  The  Republi- 
can Dissected;  or,  The  Anatomy  of  an  American  Whig." 
It  is  not  unlikely  that  the  events  of  the  nineteenth  of  April, 
as  the  tidings  of  them  flew  across  the  land,  may  have  seemed 
to  the  public  to  be  so  literal  and  realistic  a  presentation  of 
the  very  theme  undertaken  by  this  intended  pamphlet,  that 
its  publication  was  prudently  withheld.4  At  any  rate,  no 
copy  of  it  is  known  to  exist. 

VI. 

Without  doubt,  the  pamphlets  of  the  "  Westchester  Far- 
mer "  which  thus  came  from  the  press  in  swift  succession, 
reveal  in  their  writer  extraordinary  gifts  for  authorship — 
particularly  for  popular  controversial  authorship.  In  the 
course  of  that  long  and  savage  debate,  some  pamphlets  were 
written  even  on  the  same  side,  more  learned  than  these, 
more  elaborate  and  more  deliberate  in  their  treatment  of 
constitutional  law,  more  conciliatory  in  tone,  more  elegant 
in  style ;  but  no  other  pamphlets  on  the  Loyalist  side,  and 

1  "  An  Alarm,"  etc.,  7-8. 

9  In  a  note  by  Dr.  T.  B.  Chandler  written  in  a  copy  of  "  The  Farmer  Re- 
futed," it  is  stated  that  "  The  Republican  Dissected  "  was  a  rejoinder  to  that 
pamphlet,  but  was  not  published  because,  "  by  a  sudden  and  unexpected  revo- 
lution, the  liberty  of  the  press  was  totally  destroyed,  and  nothing  could  be 
printed  on  the  side  of  government."  Paul  Leicester  Ford,  "  Bibliotheca 
Hamiltoniana,"  5. 


THE   WESTCHESTER  FARMER.  349 

perhaps  the  pamphlets  of  but  one  writer  '  on  the  side  of 
the  Revolutionists,  were  a  match  for  these  writings  of  the 
"  Westchester  Farmer"  for  immediate  effect  upon  the 
mass  of  readers  in  a  time  of  violent  stir  and  commotion. 
Indeed,  the  purely  literary  merits  of  these  essays  are  such  as 
to  entitle  them  to  a  high  and  a  permanent  reputation  in  the 
literature  of  the  American  Revolution.  Even  now,  no  one 
can  fail  to  find  pleasure  in  them,  who  delights  in  genuine 
English  —  pure,  Saxon,  sinewy  ;  in  a  style  that  moves 
straight  to  the  mark,  every  epithet  a  flash  of  fire,  every  sen- 
tence a  spear-point ;  in  pages  all  alive,  and  charged  to  the 
full  with  force  or  humor  or  satire,  with  telling  illustration, 
with  picturesqueness,  with  repartee,  with  outbursts  of  elo- 
quent indignation,  with  bravuras  of  patriotic  enthusiasm  or 
scorn.  Probably  no  pamphlets  more  readable,  none  more 
witty  and  brilliant,  none  argumentatively  more  effective, 
were  called  forth  on  either  side  of  the  question  during  the 
whole  controversy.  Even  after  the  lapse  of  a  hundred 
years,  and  after  the  facts  of  history  have  set  at  naught  the 
dire  prophecies  of  the  "  Westchester  Farmer,"  and  have 
made  void  his  logic,  and  have  covered  his  political  philos- 
ophy with  the  contempt  commonly  given  to  futile  things, 
any  person  properly  acquainted  with  the  historic  situation 
out  of  which  these  pamphlets  sprang  into  life,  may  still  find 
for  himself  the  secret  of  their  original  power,  may  still  feel 
in  his  own  soul  something  of  the  enormous  effects  they 
wrought,  as  they  first  swept  through  the  country,  and  over- 
powered every  reader,  and  carried  him  along  in  a  mighty 
flood  of  sympathetic  argument  and  passion,  or  else  set  him 
awrithing  with  intellectual  anguish — disconcerted  him,  mad- 
dened him — by  their  magnificent  championship  of  political 
doctrines  which  he  loathed. 

VII. 

As  to  the  authorship  of  these  celebrated  pamphlets,  the 
popular  suspicion  almost  immediately  fastened  upon  Samuel 

1  I  refer  to  Thomas  Paine. 


350  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Seabury,  at  that  time  rector  of  the  parish  of  St.  Peter,  in 
Westchester;  forty-five  years  of  age,  a  native  of  Connec- 
ticut, a  graduate  of  Yale  College,  himself  descended  from 
some  of  the  earliest  settlers  in  New  England — including 
John  Alden;  after  the  Revolution,  renowned  as  the  first 
bishop  of  the  American  Episcopal  Church.  Although  in 
the  present  century  and  by  many  American  scholars,  the 
glory  or  the  shame  of  having  written  the  essays  of  the 
"Westchester  Farmer"  has  been  awarded  to  others — to 
Chandler,  to  Inglis,  to  Myles  Cooper,  and  particularly  to 
Isaac  Wilkins — it  has  at  last  been  placed  beyond  dispute 
that  the  contemporaneous  popular  instinct,  which  attributed 
these  essays  to  Samuel.  Seabury,  was  correct.1 

As  the  actual  cultivator  of  the  glebe  attached  to  his  bene- 
fice, Seabury  had  a  literal  claim  to  his  assumed  title  of 
"  Westchester  Farmer."  He  was  a  man  builded  after  an 
heroic  pattern :  a  man  of  powerful  frame,  of  robust  health, 
of  tremendous  energy — physical,  mental,  moral ;  of  great 
and  varied  experience  in  the  affairs  of  life ;  a  physician,  a 
theologian,  a  scholar;  a  terse  and  vigorous  writer  ;  an 
orator  of  impassioned  and  commanding  speech;  his  mind 
firmly  made  up  to  clear  and  reverent  conclusions  on  all 

1  In  the  first  place,  it  is  not  true,  as  is  sometimes  said,  that  Seabury  himself 
ever  denied  that  he  was  the  author  of  the  "Westchester  Farmer"  pamphlets. 
While  in  peril  of  his  life  at  New  Haven  in  1775,  he  did  plead  "  not  guilty"  to 
the  charge  of  having  written  "  pamphlets  and  newspapers  against  the  liberties 
of  America "  ;  hut  that  description  did  not,  in  his  opinion,  apply  to  the 
pamphlets  of  the  "  Westchester  Farmer,"  which,  as  he  always  insisted,  were 
on  behalf  of  "the  liberties  of  America,"  and  not  against  them.  Seabury's 
"  Memorial,"  in  Beardsley,  38-39.  During  the  same  imprisonment,  when  the 
authorship  of  those  particular  pamphlets  was  by  name  charged  upon  him,  he 
refused  to  disavow  them,  although,  as  he  wrote  soon  afterward,  such  disavowal 
would  have  occasioned  his  speedy  release.  Letter  by  Seabury,  in  Beardsley, 
45-46.  In  the  second  place,  while  Seabury  never  denied  their  authorship,  he 
did  expressly  lay  claim  to  it,  and  that  under  circumstances  of  great  seriousness. 
In  the  year  1783,  being  then  in  London  seeking  consecration  as  bishop,  he  sub- 
mitted a  memorial  to  the  commissioners  appointed  by  the  British  government  to 
consider  the  claims  of  the  American  Loyalists  ;  and  in  that  memorial  he  declares 
himself  to  be  the  author  of  the  pamphlets  of  the  "  Westchester  Farmer,"  the 
titles  of  which  he  gives.  I  have  had  in  my  hands  Seabury's  manuscript  first 


THE  WESTCHESTER  FARMER.  351 

the  great  subjects  that  man,  either  alone  or  in  society, 
has  to  deal  with.  Moreover,  there  were  in  Seabury  a  sin- 
gular courage  of  opinion,  a  downrightness  of  utterance,  a 
necessity  for  the  frank  and  emphatic  expression  of  whatso- 
ever convictions  were  within  him,  an  inability  to  dodge  im- 
portant issues,  or  to  shuffle  off  responsibility,  or  to  shirk  a 
painful  duty;  with  all  this,  too,  a  grave  and  manly  pru- 
dence, entire  freedom  from  frothy  zeal,  or  from  light-headed 
impetuosity,  or  from  ambition  for  social  martyrdom. 

Almost  at  once  after  the  appearance  of  his  first  pamphlet, 
the  "  Westchester  Farmer"  began  to  be  threatened  with 
dire  vengeance.  Not  being  able  to  lay  their  hands  upon 
his  person,  some  of  those  who  were  incensed  at  him  gath- 
ered up  copies  of  his  pamphlets,  and  burned  them  at  the 
stake ;  or,  covering  them  with  a  coat  of  tar  and  feathers, 
they  nailed  them  to  a  whipping-post, — all  as  a  dramatic 
intimation  of  the  sort  of  treatment  which  he  himself  might 
expect,  should  he  fall  into  their  hands.1 

Within  a  year  from  the  date  of  the  first  of  his  pamphlets, 
the  public  anger  against  Seabury,  especially  in  the  colony 
of  Connecticut,  had  risen  to  such  a  pitch  as  to  lead  to  a 
bold  and  a  perfectly  lawless  plan  for  suppres.-'ng  him  by 
force — possibly,  even  for  putting  him  to  death.  On  Wed- 

draft  of  this  memorial,  still  in  the  possession  of  the  Reverend  Professor  W.  J. 
Seabury,  of  the  General  Theological  Seminary  in  New  York  ;  and  it  has  since 
been  printed  in  full  in  "The  Magazine  of  American  History,"  viii.  119-121. 
In  the  third  place,  in  the  year  1797,  one  year  after  Seabury's  death,  his  author- 
ship of  these  pamphlets  was  expressly  re-affirmed  by  one  of  his  most  intimate 
and  most  confidential  friends,  the  Reverend  Jonathan  Boucher,  in  "  A  View  of 
the  Causes  and  Consequences  of  the  American  Revolution,"  556-557  n.  Finally, 
the  only  person  who,  besides  Seabury,  has  been  in  our  time  regarded  as  having 
any  serious  claim  to  this  authorship,  is  Isaac  Wilkins  ;  but  in  his  memorial,  en- 
titled "  My  Services  and  Losses,"  etc.,  edited  by  Paul  Leicester  Ford,  Brook- 
lyn, 1890,  while  stating  freely  what  he  had  done  "  in  aid  of  the  king's  cause 
during  the  American  Revolution,"  he  makes  no  mention  of  having  been  even  in 
part  the  author  of  the  "Westchester  Farmer"  pamphlets.  I  think  it  may 
fairly  be  said  that,  among  persons  who  have  seen  all  the  evidence,  the  question 
as  to  the  authorship  of  these  pamphlets  is  no  longer  an  open  one. 

1  "  What  Think  Ye  of  the  Congress  Now?"  4~5  ;  E.  E.  Beardsley,  "  Life  of 
Seabury,"  28-29. 


352  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTIOX. 

nesday,  the  22d  of  November,  1775,  while  engaged  in  the 
beneficent  duties  of  his  calling,  he  was  suddenly  seized,  like 
a  malefactor,  by  a  band  of  armed  men  acting  without  any 
color  of  authority — excepting  that  of  mob-law.  The  place 
of  his  arrest  was  at  some  distance  from  his  home, — at  a 
little  school-house,  where  he  was  just  then  at  work  among 
his  pupils.  As  he  was  being  dragged  away  from  it,  towards 
the  rectory,  he  was  met  by  one  of  his  daughters,  who,  in 
great  terror,  with  hat  torn  from  her  head  and  hair  hanging 
disheveled  over  her  shoulders,  had  fled  to  him  from  their 
home.  A  dreadful  story  she  had  to  relate  to  her  father,  of 
an  experience  unexampled,  we  may  be  well  assured,  in  that 
orderly  community,  in  that  virtuous  and  honored  house- 
hold. These  armed  men,  it  seems, — mostly  strangers  in  the 
village  and  even  in  the  colony, — had  at  first  gone  straight 
to  the  rectory,  which  they  had  rudely  entered — demanding 
the  person  of  its  master.  Not  finding  him  there,  they  had 
insulted  and  terrified  his  daughters,  in  the  effort  to  compel 
them  to  say  where  their  father  could  be  found, — thrusting 
a  bayonet  through  the  cap  of  one  of  them,  piercing  with  a 
bayonet  the  handkerchief  about  her  neck,  and  pushing  a 
bayonet  against  her  bosom,  with  a  threat  to  kill  her;  the 
men  likewise  amusing  themselves  by  tossing  and  tearing 
with  their  bayonets  the  needlework  on  which  the  young 
ladies  had  been  engaged.  From  this  scene  of  outrage,  one 
of  the  daughters  had  escaped,  and  had  fled  for  help  in  the 
direction  of  her  father, — but  only  to  find  him  overpowered 
and  a  prisoner  in  the  hands  of  about  forty  of  the  same  band 
of  men  who  had  taken  possession  of  his  house. 

And  now  hurried  thither  by  these  men,  he  was  given 
merely  time  to  send  for  his  horse;  and  this  interval  his 
captors  used  in  compelling  his  wife  to  open  his  desk,  which 
they  ransacked  at  will — peering  into  his  most  private  papers, 
carrying  off  the  money  which  they  found  there — besides  pil- 
laging the  house  of  silver  spoons,  and  such  other  valuable 
articles  as  these  sons  of  liberty  were  able  to  lay  their  hands 
on.  As  soon  as  his  horse  was  brought  to  him,  the  reverend 


THE  WESTCHESTER  FARMER.  353 

prisoner  was  forced  to  mount,  and  to  go  off  with  his  cap- 
tors ;  and,  in  gross  violation  of  every  legal  right,  he  was 
conducted  across  the  borders  of  his  own  colony  into  Con- 
necticut, and  taken  to  New  Haven.  Through  the  streets  of 
that  city  he  was  borne  in  insulting  triumph,  by  a  large 
number  of  men  on  horseback  and  in  carriages;  and  after 
much  shouting,  and  firing  of  cannon,  he  was  committed  as 
a  close  prisoner  to  the  care  of  four  or  five  guards ;  he  was 
denied  all  visits  from  friends  except  in  the  presence  of  his 
guards;  he  was  deprived  the  use  of  pen,  ink,  and  paper, 
except  for  the  purpose  of  writing  to  his  family,  and  then 
only  under  the  inspection  of  his  captors;  he  was  refused 
the  sight  of  all  letters  from  his  family,  excepting  in  one 
instance,  where,  however,  the  letter  had  been  already  broken 
open  and  read  before  it  was  handed  to  him.1 

The  principal  charge  against  Seabury  was,  that  he  had 
written  the  pamphlets  of  the  "  Westchester  Farmer." 
After  more  than  a  month's  imprisonment,  and  in  default  of 
evidence  to  prove  that  charge,  his  guards  were  taken  off, 
and  he  was  allowed  to  return  to  his  home.  Thenceforward, 
as  much  as  possible  he  had  to  avoid  appearing  upon  the 
streets,  always  to  sleep  elsewhere  than  in  his  own  house, 
never  to  be  at  home  even  by  day  for  more  than  an  hour  or 
two  at  a  time,  and  to  have  faithful  friends  constantly  on  the 
watch  to  warn  him  of  approaching  danger.  At  one  time, 
under  stress  of  extraordinary  danger,  he  and  his  friends, 
Chandler  of  New  Jersey,  and  Myles  Cooper,  the  president 
of  King's  College,  were  forced  to  flee  for  their  lives;  and, 
for  several  days  and  nights,  they  lay  in  the  old  Wilkins 
mansion  on  Castle  Hill  Neck,  where  they  were  hidden  in  a 
secret  room,  in  the  upper  part  of  the  house,  behind  a  chim- 
ney— their  food  and  drink  being  conveyed  to  them  from 
time  to  time  through  a  trap-door  in  the  floor.'  In  the 

1  My  account  of  Seabury's  arrest  and  imprisonment  is  based  chiefly  on  his 
own  testimony,,  as  given  in  his  memorial  to  the  general  assembly  of  Connecti- 
cut. Beardsley,  "  Life  of  Seabury,"  36-42. 

8  R.  Bolton,  Jr.,  "  Hist,  of  the  P.  E.  Church  in  the  County  of  Westchester." 
86. 


354 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


spring  of  1776,  when  the  American  soldiers  began  moving 
from  the  neighborhood  of  Boston  towards  New  York, 
"  bodies  of  them,"  as  Seabury  then  wrote,  "  consisting  of 
twenty  or  thirty  men,  would,  every  day  or  two,  sometimes 
two  or  three  times  a  day,  come  through  Westchester, 
though  five  miles  out  of  their  way,  and  never  failed  to  stop 
at  my  house,  I  believe  only  for  the  malicious  pleasure  of 
insulting  me  by  reviling  the  king,  the  parliament,  Lord 
North,  the  church,  the  bishops,  the  clergy,  and  the  society, 
and,  above  all,  that  vilest  of  all  miscreants,  a  '  Westchester 
Farmer."  One  would  give  one  hundred  dollars  to  know 
who  he  was,  that  he  might  plunge  his  bayonet  into  his 
heart;  another  would  crawl  fifty  miles  to  see  him  roasted."  ' 
Of  course,  no  human  strength  could  bear  a  pressure  like 
this  for  very  long.  After  the  battle  of  Long  Island,  and 
the  occupation  of  his  neighborhood  by  soldiers,  it  became 
necessary  for  Seabury  to  flee  for  his  life  into  the*  British 
lines.  Then  complete  wreck  and  desolation  fell  upon  his 
parish.  A  troop  of  cavalry  were  quartered  in  the  rectory, 
and  "  consumed  all  the  produce  of  his  glebe" ;  the  pews  of 
the  church  were  wrenched  out  and  burned  for  firewood ; 
the  church  itself  was  turned  into  a  hospital;  and  "  the 
whole  region  for  thirty  miles  around  was  pillaged  and  laid 
waste  by  the  marches  and  depredations,  sometimes  of  one 
army  and  sometimes  of  the  other."  a  Once  within  the  Brit- 
ish lines,  Seabury  was,  of  course,  safe  from  physical  outrage 
. — from  the  insults  of  armed  partisans,  from  the  menaces  of 
mobs;  and  at  headquarters,  as  was  to  be  expected,  he  was 
admitted  into  confidence  and  honor.  In  New  York  he 
remained  till  the  close  of  hostilities,  practising  his  profession 
as  a  physician  to  men's  bodies,  and  losing  no  opportunity 
to  serve  them,  also,  in  his  higher  capacity  as  a  physician  to 
sick  and  troubled  souls.  In  1778,  by  Sir  Henry  Clinton  he 
was  made  a  chaplain  in  the  army,  and  assigned  to  a  regi- 
ment of  American  Loyalists.3  Finally,  in  the  spring  of  the 

1  Letter  by  Seabury,  29  December,  1776,  in  Beardsley,  45-47. 

s  Beardsley,  49-50.  »  Ibid.  53-54. 


THE  WESTCHESTER  FARMER.  355 

year  1783 — a  year  so  exhilarating  to  a  majority  of  the 
American  people,  so  sad  and  so  fatal  to  a  minority  of  them, 
but  a  minority  in  part  composed  of  men  as  noble  as  ever 
manned  a  forlorn  hope  or  went  down  for  a  sacred  idea — a 
little  company  of  clergymen,  assembled  in  a  lonely  parson- 
age at  Woodbury,  Connecticut,  solemnly  designated  Samuel 
Seabury  as  the  first  bishop  of  the  American  Episcopal 
Church,  and  requested  him  to  go  to  England  for  consecra- 
tion.1 At  that  time,  and  to  the  mass  of  the  American  peo- 
ple, the  man  thus  chosen  for  bishop  was  probably  the  most 
obnoxious -clergyman  of  any  religious  denomination,  to  be 
found  in  all  the  thirteen  States.  But  the  great  trust  thus 
laid  upon  him,  Seabury  accepted ;  the  burdens  of  it  he  bore 
for  many  years  with  singular  wisdom,  energy,  patience, 
fidelity,  success;  and  when,  in  the  latter  part  of  Washing- 
ton's second  term  in  the  presidency,  Seabury  laid  down  his 
office  with  his  life,  a  multitude  of  persons  who  formerly  hated 
him,  had  come  to  pay  him  honor,  as  one  of  a  sort  of  men 
always  likely  to  be  much  needed  in  this  part  of  the  world — 
men  who,  for  a  cause  they  believe  to  be  right,  are  capable  of 
sacrificing  public  favor,  private  comfort,  even  life  itself. 

1  Beardsley,  7&-79« 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

THE  LOYALISTS  IN  ARGUMENT  AGAINST  THE  MEASURES 
OF  THE  FIRST  CONGRESS:  "  MASSACHUSETTENSIS. " 

I. — The  letters  of  "  Massachusettensis,  '  December,  1774-April,  1775 — John 
Adams's  high  estimate  of  their  literary  power — Previous  career  of  their 
author,  Daniel  Leonard — Satirized  by  Mercy  Warren  as  "  Beau  Trumps  " 
— John  Adams  suggests  a  corrupt  motive  in  his  politics. 

II. — The  intellectual  and  moral  notes  in  "Massachusettensis" — The  writer's 
avowal  of  the  purity  and  patriotism  of  his  motives — His  denunciation  of 
the  arts  of  demagogues. 

III. — The  tone  and  method  of  "  Massachusettensis"  suited  to  the  argumenta- 
tive and  law-respecting  character  of  the  people  addressed  by  him — His 
denial  that  the  British  government  had  overstepped  its  constitutional  limits 
— The  several  topics  discussed  by  him. 

IV. — Examples  of  his  acuteness  and  literary  skill  in  controversy — The  ground- 
lessness of  the  prevailing  political  complaints — Committees  on  grievances 
our  worst  grievance — Where  are  the  traces  of  our  political  servitude? — The 
tyranny  of  the  champions  of  American  liberty — The  inevitable  approach  of 
war — The  inevitable  triumph  of  the  British  in  such  a  conflict. 

V. — The  author  of  the  letters  of  "  Massachusettensis"  a  victim  of  popular 
violence — Personal  outrages  upon  him  and  his  family — His  banishment — 
His  property  confiscated — His  later  career  in  Bermuda  and  England. 

I. 

NOT  many  weeks  after  the  "  Westchester  Farmer  "  had, 
in  one  of  the  principal  towns  of  the  Middle  Colonies,  opened 
fire  on  the  measures  promulgated  by  the  first  Continental 
Congress,  a  series  of  attacks  upon  them,  somewhat  different 
in  method  but  almost  equally  powerful,  was  begun  in  the 
chief  city  of  New  England  by  a  writer  who  became  famous 
under  the  name  of  "  Massachusettensis."  His  papers, 
seventeen  in  number,  were  in  the  form  of  letters  addressed 
"  To  the  Inhabitants  of  the  Province  of  the  Massachusetts- 
Bay,"  and  first  appeared  in  a  Boston  newspaper1  between 

"  The  Massachusetts  Gazette  and  Post  Boy,"  then  conducted  for  the  Loyalist 
side  by  Nathaniel  Mills  and  John  Hicks. 

356 


MASSACHUSETTENSIS.  357 

the  middle  of  December,  1774,  and  the  middle  of  April, 
1775.'  More  than  forty  years  afterward,  John  Adams  bore 
witness  to  the  impression  which  these  essays  originally  made 
upon  him,  by  saying  that,  on  his  return  from  the  first  Con- 
tinental Congress  late  in  the  year  1774,  he  had  found  the 
letters  of  "  Massachusettensis  "  "  shining  "  among  the  Tory 
writings  of  that  neighborhood  "  like  the  moon  among  the 
lesser  stars."  a  A  more  discriminating,  even  if  less  pictur- 
esque, indication  of  their  effectiveness  was  given  by  the 
same  vigorous  writer  in  a  memorandum  attached  to  his 

Diary  "  for  the  year  1774:  "  These  papers  were  well  writ- 
ten, abounded  with  wit,  discovered  good  information,  and 
were  conducted  with  a  subtlety  of  art  and  address  wonder- 
fully calculated  to  keep  up  the  spirits  of  their  party,  to 
depress  ours,  to  spread  intimidation,  and  to  make  proselytes 
among  those  whose  principles  and  judgment  give  way  to 
their  fears, — and  these  compose  at  least  one-third  df  man- 
kind."3 -  .' 

The   literary  champion    who,    concealing    his    identity  * 


1  The  importance  of  these  essays  was  immediately  recognized  by  friends  and 
foes.  They  were  reprinted  in  a  large  pamphlet  in  Boston,  in  1775  ;  also  in 
New  York,  in  the  same  year  ;  and  both  in  Boston  and  in  London,  in  1776.  My 
citations  are  from  this  London  reprint,  which  has  a  preface  of  its  own,  and  a 
title-page  also  well  adapted  to  its  place  and  time:  "  Massachusettensis,  or,  a 
Series  of  Letters,  containing  a  faithful  State  of  many  important  and  striking 
Facts,  which  laid  the  Foundation  of  the  present  Troubles  in  the  Province  of  the 
Massachusetts-Bay  ;  interspersed  with  Animadversions  and  Reflections,  origi- 
nally addressed  to  the  People  of  that  Province,  and  worthy  the  Consideration  of 
the  true  Patriots  of  this  Country.  By  a  Person  of  Honor  upon  the  Spot." 

*  "  Novanglus  and  Massachusettensis,"  Pref.  vi.  John  Adams  here  fixes  the 
time  at  which  he  found  the  letters  of  "  Massachusettensis  "  thus  "  shining,"  as  on 
"  his  return  from  Congress  in  the  month  of  November,  1774"  ',  but  those  letters 
did  not  begin  to  "  shine  "  until  after  the  I2th  of  December. 

3  "  The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  ii.  405. 

4  So  well,  in  fact,  did  he  conceal  his  identity,  that  John  Adams,  who  was  an 
intimate  friend  of  Leonard  and  who  became  the  chief  public  enemy  of  "  Massa- 
chusettensis," seems  not  to  have  supposed  that  the  two  were  one  :  at  least,  with 
his  usual  emphasis  he  says  that,  as  soon  as  he  saw  the  letters  of  "  Massachuset- 
tensis," he  "  knew  "  them  to  be  by  his  friend  Jonathan  Sewall.     "  Novanglus 
and  Massachusettensis,"  Pref.  vi.     In  this  state  of  blissful  knowledge  he  re- 


358  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

behind  the  visor  of  "  Massachusettensis,"  dashed  thus  gal- 
lantly into  the  lists  of  political  controversy, — unseating 
many  a  burly  antagonist,  and  with  his  mighty  lance  bring- 
ing rescue  and  courage  to  many  a  dismounted  and  disheart- 
ened friend, — was  Daniel  Leonard,  then  thirty-four  years  of 
age,  a  graduate  of  Harvard,  scion  of  an  old  and  opulent 
family  in  the  province,  as  lawyer  and  politician  noted  for 
the  acuteness,  energy,  and  eloquence  with  which  he  was 
accustomed  to  contend  for  his  own  view  of  things.  At  that 
period  of  his  life,  also,  he  seems  to  have  had  an  extraor- 
dinary fondness  for  finery  in  dress  and  for  social  display, — a 
trait  in  him  which  was  set  forth  by  Mercy  Warren  in  her 
comedy  of  "  The  Group,"  wherein  Leonard  figures  under 
the  name  of  "  Beau  Trumps."  Indeed,  according  to  the 
never-hesitant  and  ever-gossiping  John  Adams,  it  was 
through  this  very  love  of  splendor  and  of  the  wealth  needful 
to  support  it,  that  Leonard  was  gradually  seduced  from  his 
original  sympathy  with  the  politics  of  the  Revolution:  "  He 
wore  abroad  gold  lace  round  the  rim  of  his  hat,  he  made  his 
cloak  glitter  with  laces  still  broader,  he  had  set  up  his 
chariot  and  pair  and  constantly  traveled  in  it  from  Taunton 
to  Boston.  This  made  the  world  stare — it  was  a  novelty. 
Not  another  lawyer  in  the  province,  attorney  or  barrister,  of 
whatever  age,  reputation,  rank,  or  station,  presumed  to  ride 
in  a  coach  or  a  chariot.  The  discerning  ones  soon  perceived 
that  wealth  and  power  must  have  charms  to  a  heart  that 
delighted  in  so  much  finery,  and  indulged  in  such  unusuak 
expense.  Such  marks  could  not  escape  the  vigilant  eyes  of 
the  two  arch-tempters,  Hutchinson  and  Sewall,  who  had 
more  art,  insinuation,  and  address  than  all  the  rest  of  their 
party."  ' 


mained  for  nearly  fifty  years — until,  in  the  year  1821,  he  was  confronted  by 
evidence  which  compelled  him  to  admit  that  his  great  foeman  was  not  Jonathan 
Sewall  after  all,  but  Daniel  Leonard.  "  Works  of  John  Adams,"  iv.  10.  Of 
course,  from  the  start  he  had  been  aware  that  some  people  attributed  the  letters 
to  Leonard.  Ibid.  ii.  405. 
1  Ibid.  x.  194-195. 


DANIEL  LEONARD.  359 

II. 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  this  imputation  of  vanity 
and  greed,  as  explaining  Daniel  Leonard's  divergence  from 
the  political  course  taken  by  John  Adams,  certain  it  is  that 
the  letters  of  "  Massachusettensis  "  bear  no  traces  either  of 
a  shallow  or  of  a  sordid  nature:  a  disinterested  reader  of 
them  would  be  likely  to  say  that  they  express  high  cultiva- 
tion, strong  judgment,  and  courageous  moral  thoughtful- 
ness.  As  some  offset  to  John  Adams's  disparaging  account 
of  Leonard's  motives,  it  is  only  fair  to  note  his  own  decla- 
ration upon  that  subject.  In  the  third  number  of  "  Massa- 
chusettensis," he  alludes  to  the  curiosity  which  even  then 
was  asking  who  the  writer  of  those  essays  might  be:  "I 
will  tell  you :  it  is  a  native  of  this  province,  that  knew  it 
before  many,  that  are  now  basking  in  the  rays  of  political 
"SuTi shine,  had  a  being.  He  was  favored,  not  by  Whigs  or 
Tories  but  by  the  people,  with  such  a  stand  in  the  com- 
munity, as  that  he  could  distinctly  see  all  the  political 
manoeuvres  of  the  province.  He  saw  some  with  pleasure, 
others  with  pain.  If  he  condemns  the  conduct  of  the 
Whigs,  he  does  not  always  approve  of  the  conduct  of  the 
Tories.  .  .  .  He  is  now  repaying  your  favors,  if  he  knows 
his  own  heart,  from  the  purest  gratitude  and  the  most  un- 
dissembled  patriotism — which  will  one  day  be  acknowledged. 
I  saw  the  small  seed  of  sedition,  when  it  was  implanted: 
it  was  as  a  grain  of  mustard.  I  have  watched  the  plant 
until  it  has  become  a  great  tree:  the  vilest  reptiles  that 
crawl  upon  the  earth,  are  concealed  at  the  root;  the  foulest 
birds  of  the  air  rest  upon  its  branches.  I  now  would  induce 
you  to  go  to  work  immediately  with  axes  and  hatchets,  and 
cut  it  down,  for  a  two-fold  reason, — because  it  is  a  pest  to 
society,  and  lest  it  be  felled  suddenly  by  a  stronger  arm,  and 
crush  its  thousands  in  the  fall." 

Indeed,  it  was  not  at  all  necessary — even  if  it  were  cour- 
teous and  fair — to  suggest  a  corrupt  consideration  on  Leon- 

1  "  Massachusettensis,"  25-26. 


360  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

ard's  part,  in  order  to  explain  a  course  of  political  conduct 
which  logically  followed  from  his  point  of  view — a  point  of 
view  in  itself  quite  as  rational  and  as  honorable  as  that  very 
opposite  one  which  was  then  held  by  his  literary  assailant. 
As  John  Adams's  writings  down  to  the  close  of  the  Revolu- 
tion breathe  the  spirit  of  political  radicalism  and  of  a  some- 
what extreme  democracy,  so  these  writings  of  Leonard's — 
like  those  of  John  Adams  himself  after  the  Revolution — 
breathe  the  spirit  of  political  conservatism,  together  with  a 
contempt  and  an  abhorrence  for  the  arts  by  which  the 
people  are  often  led  astray  into  folly  and  crime.  "  Popular 
demagogues,"  says  Leonard,  "  always  call  themselves  '  the 
people,'  and  when  their  own  measures  are  censured,  cry  out, 
-'  The  people,  the  people  are  abused  and  insulted.'  "  * 
"  There  is  a  propensity  in  men  to  believe  themselves  injured 
and  oppressed,  whenever  they  are  told  so.""  ''Great 
allowances  are  to  be  made  for  the  crossings,  windings,  and 
tergiversations  of  a  politician:-  he  is  a  cunning  animal."3 
"  We  often  read  resolves  denying  the  authority  of  parlia- 
ment, .  .  .  gilded  over  with  professions  of  loyalty  to 
the  king;  but  the  golden  leaf  is  too  thin  to  conceal  the 
treason."  "  He  that  would  excite  a  rebellion,  whatever 
professions  of  philanthropy  he  may  make  when  he  is  insinu- 
ating and  worming  himself  into  the  good  graces  of  the  peo- 
ple, is  at  heart  as  great  a  tyrant  as  ever  wielded  the  iron  rod 
of  oppression."  B 

III. 

The  handling  of  the  argument  in  these  essays  was  exactly 
suited  to  the  people  addressed,  and  \f>  the  alarming  condi- 
tion of  their  affairs.  They  were  a  law-abiding  people :  they 
were  also  an  argumentative  people.  They  had  inherited,  and 
they  still  cherished,  the  great  English  traditions  concerning 
authority — as  a  thing  very  necessary  and  sacred,  but  as  a 

"  Massachusettensis,"  114.  2  Ibid.  12-13. 

4  Ibid'    56. 


MASSACHUSETTENSIS.  361 

thing  limited :  authority  itself  being  subject  to  authority, 
namely,  the  authority  of  those  constitutional  barriers  which 
define  its  operation.  To  them  it  seemed  as  needful  for 
government  to  yield  obedience  to  the  law  over  it,  as  to 
require  obedience  to  the  law  under  it.  They  were  good 
subjects,  therefore,  so  long  as  they  were  convinced  that 
government  was  setting  them  an  example  of  obedience  by 
wielding  its  power  within  those  barriers  which  reason  and 
justice  had  prescribed:  when  not  so  convinced,  these  good 
subjects  were  apt  to  become  good  rebels.  The  success  of 
the  Revolutionary  agitators  thus  far,  had  been  largely  due 
to  their  skill  in  convincing  the  people  that  government  had 
lost  its  claims  by  overstepping  its  limits. 

It  was  this  state  of  the  case  that  Leonard  perfectly  under- 
stood :  his  countrymen  were  on  the  verge  of  rebellion — nay, 
they  were  actually  in  rebellion — but  it  was  upon  a  theory 
which,  in  their  eyes,  took  from  rebellion  all  its  criminality. 
Their  rebellion  was  justifiable,  because,  as  they  thought,  the 
acts  of  the  government  were  unjustifiable.  The  great  busi- 
ness of  Leonard,  therefore,  was  to  convince  them  that  they 
had  been  misinformed,  that  they  were  misled ;  that  they 
were  rushing  onward  under  a  frightful  error  and  delusion; 
that  the  government  had  not  overstepped  its  limits;  that 
though  some  of  its  recent  acts  may  have  been  bad  in  policy, 
not  one  of  them  was  unconstitutional;  that  these  acts  con- 
tained no  menace  to  the  political  safety,  dignity,  or  happi- 
ness of  the  American  colonists ;  that  everything  of  value  to 
them  in  character,  duty,  property,  and  life  itself,  was 
involved  in  their  speedily  discovering  their  mistake,  casting 
off  the  sophists  and  demagogues  who  had  beguiled  them, 
and  becoming  once  more  good  subjects  of  the  just  and 
splendid  empire  within  which  lay  all  their  hopes  for  pros- 
perity and  happiness.  Accordingly,  so  distributing  these 
various  topics  as  to  mingle  history,  anecdote,  warning,  sym- 
pathy, sarcasm,  invective,  with  acute  discussions  of  consti- 
tutional law,  of  equity  of  the  higher  aspects  of  policy,  he 
shows  great  skill  in  knocking  away,  or  in  seeming  to  knock 


362  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

away,  piece  by  piece,  the  argumentative  structure  under 
cover  of  which  the  Revolutionary  agitators  had  succeeded 
in  drawing  a  loyal  and  a  logical  people  into  courses  of  action 
both  disloyal  and  dangerous.  That  the  authority  of  the 
imperial  parliament  is  and  must  be  coextensive  with  the 
empire  itself ' ;  that  its  authority  in  the  American  colonies  is 
not  invalidated  by  the  circumstance  that  distance  from  the 
capital  renders  it  impracticable  for  them  to  send  members  to 
parliament " ;  that  no  recent  assertion  of  the  taxing  power  of 
parliament  is  new — is,  in  fact,  anything  but  what  has  been 
peacefully  exercised  and  safely  granted  from  the  beginning 3 ; 
that  such  taxation  is  contained  in  the  very  terms  of  the 
original  settlement  of  the  colonies  4 ;  that  in  the  doctrine  of 
the  supremacy  of  parliament,  according  to  the  British  con- 
stitution, is  wrapped  up  our  priceless  claim  to  all  the  great 
rights  and  privileges  of  British  subjects  under  that  constitu- 
tion— the  rejection  of  the  former  carrying  with  it  the 
destruction  of  the  latter6;  that  no  American  petitions  to 
the  imperial  government  have  ever  yet  been  rejected,  except- 
ing sud»as  were  so  framed  as  to  compel  their  rejection  on 
the  parfof  any  government  that  had  the  least  respect  either 
for  the  constitution  or  for  itself6;  that  what  are  called 
American  grievances  are  largely  imaginary  7 — are  charges 
trumped  up  by  demagogues  and  conspirators  *  as  their  stock 
in  trade  while  fattening  upon  the  generous  confidence  of  a 
people  noble-minded  but  misinformed,  and  rushing  toward 
misery  and  ruin, — such  are  the  matters  principally  dealt 
with  by  this  consummate  debater. 

Of  course,  the  real  weight  and  worth  of  his  arguments  in 
support  of  these  several  propositions,  can  be  judged  only 
after  a  thorough  reading  of  them.  Meantime,  even  from 
snatches  and  fragments  of  the  discussion,  we  may  form  some 
notion  of  the  literary  power  with  which  he  states  them,  of 

"  Massachusettensis,"  39,  40-45.  *  Ibid.  43-44- 

*  Ibid.  9-10,  40,  82-83.  4  Ibid.  40-41.  5  Ibid.  41-43. 

6  Ibid.  104-5.  i  Ibid.  70,  74-75,  102-103. 

8  Ibid.  8-15,  17,  20,  21,  24,  76,  105-7. 


MASSACHUSETTENSIS.  363 

the  epigrammatic  point,  the  wit,  the  dash,  the  shrewdness 
with  which  he  presses  them  home. 

IV. 

Thus,  the  real  goundlessness  of  the  prevailing  political 
complaints,  is  an  essential  part  of  his  view  of  the  whole 
case,  and  one  of  his  strong  contentions.  "  Perhaps  the 
whole  story  of  empire  does  not  furnish  another  instance  of  a 
forcible  opposition  to  government,  with  so  much  specious 
and  so  little  real  cause."  "  Is  it  not  a  most  astonishing 
instance  of  caprice  or  infatuation,  that  a  province,  torn  from 
its  foundations,  should  be  precipitating  itself  into  a  war 
with  Great  Britain,  because  the  British  parliament  asserts 
its  right  of  raising  a  revenue  in  America, — inasmuch  as  the 
claim  of  that  right  is  as  ancient  as  the  colonies  themselves  ? 
The  parliament's  refusing  to  repeal  the  tea  act  is  the 
ostensible  foundation  of  our  quarrel.  If  we  ask  the  Whigs, 
whether  the  pitiful  three-penny  duty  upon  a  luxurious, 
unwholesome,  foreign  commodity  gives  just  occasion^  for  the 
opposition,  they  tell  us,  '  it  is  the  precedent  they  ace  con- 
tending about  ' — insinuating  that  it  is  an  innovation.  But 
this  ground  is  not  tenable ;  for  a  total  repeal  of  the  tea  act 
would  not  serve  us  upon  the  score  of  precedents.  They  are 
numerous  without  this.  The  Whigs  have  been  extremely 
partial  respecting  tea.  Poor  tea  has  been  made  the  shibbo- 
leth of  party,  while  molasses,  wine,  coffee,  indigo,  etc.,  etc., 
have  been  unmolested.  A  person  that  drinks  New  England 
rum  .distilled  from  molasses  subject  to  a  like  duty,  is  equally 
deserving  of  a  coat  of  tar  and  feathers  with  him  that  drinks 
tea.  A  coffee-drinker  is  as  culpable  as  either,  viewed  in  a 
political  light.  '  But,'  say  our  patriots,  '  if  the  British  par- 
liament may  take  a  penny  from  us  without  our  consent, 
they  may  a  pound,  and  so  on,  till  they  have  niched  away  all 
our  property.'  This  incessant  incantation  operates  like  a 
spell  or  a  charm,  and  checks  the  efforts  of  loyalty  in  many 

1  "  Massachusettensis,"  39. 


364  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

an  honest  breast.  Let  us  give  it  its  full  weight.  Do  they 
mean  that  if  the  parliament  has  a  right  to  raise  a  revenue  of 
one  penny  on  the  colonies,  they  must  therefore  have  a  right 
to  wrest  from  us  all  our  property  ?  If  this  be  their  mean- 
ing, I  deny  their  deduction ;  for  the  supreme  legislature  can 
have  no  right  to  tax  any  part  of  the  empire  to  a  greater 
amount  than  its  just  and  equitable  proportion  of  the  neces- 
sary national  expense.  This  is  a  line  drawn  by  the  consti- 
tution itself.  Do  they  mean  that,  if  we  admit  that  the 
parliament  may  constitutionally  raise  one  penny  upon  us  for 
the  purposes  of  revenue,  they  will  proceed  from  light  to 
heavy  taxes,  till  their  impositions  become  grievous  and 
intolerable  ?  This  amounts  to  no  more  than  a  denial  of  the 
right,  lest  it  should  be  abused.  But  an  argument  drawn 
from  the  actual  abuse  of  power,  will  not  conclude  to  the 
illegality  of  such  power;  much  less  will  an  argument  drawn 
from  the  capability  of  its  being  abused.  I  will  admit  that  a 
power  of  taxation  is  more  liable  to  abuse  than  legislation 
separately  considered;  and  it  would  give  me  pleasure  to  see 
some  other  line  drawn,  some  other  barrier  erected,  than 
what  the  constitution  has  already  done — if  it  be  possible — 
whereby  the  constitutional  authority  of  the  supreme  legisla- 
ture might  be  preserved  entire,  and  America  be  guaranteed 
in  every  right  and  exemption,  consistent  with  her  subordi- 
nation and  dependence.  But  this  can  only  be  done  by 
parliament."  "It  would  be  an  endless  task  to  remark 
minutely  upon  each  of  the  fancied  grievances  that  swarm 
and  cluster,  fill  and  deform,  the  American  chronicles.  An 
adeptness  at  discovering  grievances  has  lately  been  one  of 
the  principal  recommendations  to  public  notice  and  popular 
applause.  .  .  .  We  have  had  geniuses  selected  for  that 
purpose,  called  '  committees  upon  grievances  ' :  a  sagacious 
set  they  were,  and  discovered  a  multitude,  before  it  was 
known  that  they  themselves  were  the  greatest  grievances 
that  the  country  was  infested  with."2  "  Where  are  the 
trgces^  of  slavery  that  our  patriots  would  terrify  us  with  ? 
"  Massachusettensis,"  82-84.  2  Ibid.  74-75. 


MA  SSA  CHUSE  T  TEN  SIS. 


365 


The  effects  of  slavery  are  as  glaring  and  obvious  in  those 
countries  that  are  cursed  with  its  abode,  as  the  effects  of 
war,  pestilence,  or  famine.  Our  land  is  not  disgraced  by 
the  wooden  shoes  of  France,  or  the  uncombed  hair  of 
Poland.  We  have  neither  racks  nor  inquisitions,  tortures 
nor  assassinations.  The  mildness  of*  our  criminal  jurispru- 
dence is  proverbial :  '  A  man  must  have  many  friends,  to 
get  hanged  in  New  England.'  Who  has  been  arbitrarily 
imprisoned,  disseized  of  his  freehold,  or  despoiled  of  his 
goods  ?  .  .  .  My  dear  friends,  let  me  ask  each  one, 
whether  he  has  not  enjoyed  every  blessing  that  is  in  the 
power  of  civil  government  to  bestow  ?  And  yet  the  par- 
liament has,  from  the  earliest  days  of  the  colonies,  claimed 
the  lately  controverted  right  both  of  legislation  and  taxa- 
tion, and  for  more  than  a  century  has  been  in  the  exercise  of 
it.  There  is  no  grievous  exercise  of  that  right  at  this  day — 
unless  the  measures  taken  to  prevent  our  revolting  may  be 
called  grievances.  Are  we  then  to  rebel  lest  there  should 
be  grievances  ?  Are  we  to  take  up  arms  and  make  war 
against  our  parent,  lest  that  parent,  contrary  to  the  expe- 
rience of  a  century  and  a  half,  contrary  to  her  own  genius, 
inclination,  affection,  and  interest,  should  treat  us  or  our 
posterity  as  bastards,  and  not  as  sons,  and  instead  of  pro- 
tecting, should  enslave  us  ?  The  annals  of  the  world  have 
not  yet  been  deformed  with  a  single  instance  of  so  un- 
natural, so  causeless,  so  wanton,  so  wicked,  a  rebellion."  ' 

As  might  be  expected,  this  writer  is  too  alert  in  the  dis- 
covery of  logical,  and  even  sentimental,  advantages  to  fail 
to  turn  against  his  antagonists  the  charge,  that  they,  the 
champions  of  liberty,  are  themselves  perpetrators  of  the 
grossest  tyranny,  in  not  allowing  any  but  their  own  side  of 
the  controversy  to  have  an  open  and  a  safe  hearing;  "  that 
so  many  respectable  persons  have  been  abused,  and  forced  to 
sign  recantations  and  resignations ;  that  so  many  persons,  to 
avoid  such  reiterated  insults  as  are  more  to  be  deprecated  by 
a  man  of  sentiment  than  death  itself,  have  been  obliged  to 

1  "  Massachusettensis,"  102-103. 


366  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

quit  their  houses,  families,  and  business,  and  fly  to  the  army 
for  protection ;  that  husband  has  been  separated  from  wife^ 
father  from  son,  brother  from  brother,  the  sweet  intercourse 
of  conjugal  and  natural  affection  interrupted,  and  the  un- 
fortunate refugee  forced  to  abandon  all  the  comforts  of 
domestic  life.  My  countrymen,  I  beg  you  to  pause  and 
reflect  on  this  conduct.  Have  not  these  people,  that  are 
thus  insulted,  as  good  a  right  to  think  and  act  for  them- 
selves in  matters  of  the  last  importance,  as  the  Whigs  ? 
Are  they  not  as  closely  connected  with  the  interest  of  their 
country,  as  the  Whigs  ?  Do  not  their  former  lives  and 
conversations  appear  to  have  been  regulated  by  principle,  as 
much  as  those  of  the  Whigs  ?  You  must  answer— yes! 
Why,  then,  do  you  suffer  them  to  be  cruelly  treated,  for 
differing  in  sentiment  from  you  ?  Is  it  consistent  with  that 
liberty  you  profess  ?  .  Do  you  expect  to  make 

converts  by  it  ?  Persecution  has  the  same  effects  in  politics, 
that  it  has  in  religion :  it  confirms  the  sectary.  Do  you 
wish  to  silence  them,  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  province 
may  appear  unanimous  ?  The  maltreatment  they  have 
received  for  differing  from  you,  is  an  undeniable  evidence 
that  we  are  not  unanimous.  .  .  .  It  is  astonishing,  my 
friends,  that  those  who  are  in  pursuit  of  liberty,  should  ever 
suffer  arbitrary  power,  in  such  an  hideous  form  and  squalid 
hue,  to  get  a  footing  among  them."  ' 

In  his  last  letter,  which  was  finished  sixteen  days  before 
the  clash  of  arms  at  Lexington  and  Concord,  the  writer 
seems  burdened,  even  as  he  had  been  in  his  first  letter, 
written  four  months  earlier,  by  a  clear  prescience  of  that 
tragic  event  which,  as  John  Adams  said,  changed  "  the 
instruments  of  warfare  from  the  pen  to  the  sword."8 
"  The  English  nation  will  bear  much  from  its  friends;  but 
whoever  has  read  its  history  must  know,  that  there  is  a  line 
that  cannot  be  passed  with  impunity.  It  is  not  the  fault  of 
our  patriots,  if  that  line  be  not  already  passed.  They  have 

"  Massachusettensis,"  35-36. 

"  The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  ii.  405. 


DANIEL  LEONARD.  367 

demanded  of  Great  Britain  more  than  she  can  grant  consist- 
ent with  her  honor,  her  interest,  or  our  own,  and  are  now 
brandishing  the  sword  of  defiance.  Do  you  expect  to  con- 
quer in  war  ? '"  "  Can  any  of  you  that  think  soberly  upon 
the  matter,  be  so  deluded  as  to  believe  that  Great  Britain, 
who  so  lately  carried  her  arms  with  success  to  every  part  of 
the  globe,  triumphed  over  the  united  powers  of  France  and 
Spain,  and  whose  fleets  give  law  to  the  ocean,  is  unable  to 
conquer  us  ?  "  2  "  Those  that  unsheath  the  sword  of  re- 
bellion may  throw  away  the  scabbard.  .  .  .  The  con- 
quered in  other  wars  do  not  forfeit  the  rights  of  men,  nor 
all  the  rights  of  citizens ;  even  their  bravery  is  rewarded  by 
a  generous  victor.  Far  different  is  the  case  of  a  routed 
rebel  host. ' '  3 


V. 

Although,  at  the  time  of  their  first  publication,  Daniel 
Leonard  was  only  suspected  to  be  the  author  of  these 
terrible  letters  of  "  Massachusettensis,"  he  had  otherwise 
done  enough  to  entitle  himself  to  the  distinction  of  suffering 
that  personal  violence  which,  as  he  himself  charged,  was 
then  inflicted  by  the  champions  of  liberty  upon  those  who 
took  the  liberty  to  differ  from  them  in  opinion.  His  own 
house  in  the  little  town  of  Taunton  proved  to  be  no  longer 
his  castle :  bullets  were  fired  into  it  by  a  mob  of  his  political 
enemies.  With  his  family,  consisting  of  eight  persons,  he 
then  fled  for  safety  to  Boston,  and  there  he  remained  till 
its  evacuation  by  the  British  army  in  March,  1776.  He  was 
among  the  refugees  who  accompanied  the  army  to  Halifax. 
In  the  lists  of  citizens  whom  the  State  of  Massachusetts 
denounced  to  banishment4  in  September,  1778,  and  to 
confiscation  of  property '  in  April,  1779,  his  name  was 

1  "  Massachusettensis,"  116.  9  Ibid.  5.  8  Ibid.  117. 

*  The  act  is  given  entire  in  the  appendix  to  Cunven's  "  Journal  and  Letters," 
438-443. 

5  The  confiscation  act  is  given  in  Curwen,  434-436. 


368  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

included.  From  Halifax  he  went  to  England,  where  he  was 
rewarded  with  the  office  of  chief-justice  of  Bermuda.  In 
London  he  died  in  1829,  at  the  age  of  eighty-nine.1 

1  Sabine,  "  Loyalists  of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  ii.  10-12  ;  "  Appleton's  Cycl.  of  Am. 
Biog.,"  sub.  nom.  ;  Curwen's  "Journal  and  Letters,  548. 


CHAPTER   XVII. 

THE   LOYALISTS  IN  ARGUMENT    AGAINST    THE    MEASURES 
OF  THE  FIRST   CONGRESS:     JOSEPH   GALLOWAY. 

I. — Joseph  Galloway's  preeminence  as  a  Loyalist  writer  and  statesman — His 
early  activity  in  the  politics  of  Pennsylvania — Associated  in  personal  and 
political  friendship  with  Franklin — His  enmity  to  John  Dickinson  and  the 
proprietary  government  of  Pennsylvania — His  "  Speech  "  in  1764  ridiculed 
by  Dickinson. 

II. — Galloway  comes  into  general  prominence  at  the  time  of  the  first  Conti- 
nental Congress — Represents  in  that  body  the  Americans  who  desired  to 
secure  American  rights  but  without  revolutionary  violence — His  "  Plan  of 
a  Proposed  Union  between  Great  Britain  and  the  Colonies  " — Fragments  of 
his  speeches  in  Congress  in  support  thereof. 

III. — The  rejection  by  Congress  of  Galloway's  "  Plan"  marks  the  parting  of 
the  ways  between  the  conservative  and  the  revolutionary  opponents  of  par- 
liamentary taxation — Galloway  declines  a  reelection  to  Congress — Appeals 
from  the  adverse  decision  of  the  Congress  to  the  higher  tribunal  of  public 
opinion — Publishes  early  in  1775  "A  Candid  Examination  of  the  Mutual 
Claims  of  Great  Britain  and  the  Colonies  " — The  shocking  violations  of 
American  liberty  by  the  champions  of  American  liberty — The  controversy 
a  dispute  between  the  supreme  authority  of  the  state  and  some  of  its  mem- 
bers— Outline  of  his  argument  touching  the  rights  of  America  and  the  best 
way  to  secure  them. 

IV. — Great  immediate  influence  of  Galloway's  pamphlet — Whatever  its  merits, 
it  comes  too  late — His  noble  appeals  swept  out  of  sight  by  Lexington,  Con- 
cord, and  Bunker  Hill — Galloway,  following  his  convictions,  enters  the 
British  lines  in  the  autumn  of  1776 — His  important  services  therein — Seeks 
refuge  in  England  in  the  autumn  of  1778 — His  death  there  in  1803. 

V. — Galloway's  activity  as  a  writer  on  American  affairs  not  diminished  by  his 
residence    in    England — His    pamphlets,    there    produced,  fall  into  three 
groups — First,  the  constitutional  and  political  issues  of  the  controversy 
Secondly,  the  American   Revolution  as  a  physical   conflict — Thirdly,  the 
motives,  services,  and  sacrifices  of  the  American  Loyalists. 

I. 

A  LOYALIST  writer  of  less  vigor  than  Seabury,   of  less 
agility  and  sparkle  than  Daniel  Leonard,   but  probably  of 

*4  369 


370  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

greater  practical  effect  than  either,  was  Joseph  Galloway,1 
who  shared  with  Thomas  Hutchinson  the  supreme  place 
among  American  statesmen  opposed  to  the  Revolution,  and 
who  persisted  in  his  literary  activity  against  that  movement 
until  its  success  was  beyond  the  possibility  of  doubt. 
Indeed,  by  a  recent  American  critic2  Galloway  has  been 
characterized  as  "  the  giant  and  corypheus  of  the  Loyalist 
pamphleteers." 

He  was  born  in  Kent  County,3  Maryland,  in  1731,  of  a 
family  settled  in  that  province  in  the  early  part  of  the  reign 
of  Charles  the  First,  and  possessed  of  large  landed  property 
there.  Having  established  himself  in  Philadelphia  for  the 
practice  of  the  law,  he  attained  while  still  a  young  man  con- 
siderable distinction  both  as  a  barrister  and  as  a  politician. 
From  1757  until  1774,  he  was,  almost  without  interruption, 
a  member  of  the  assembly  of  Pennsylvania,  and  during  the 
last  nine  years  of  that  period  he  was  its  speaker.  In  the 
embittered  conflicts  then  raging  in  the  colony  between  the 
friends  and  enemies  of  the  proprietary  government,  Gallo- 
way stood  among  its  enemies — striving  in  close  union  with 
Franklin  to  bring  about  a  transfer  of  the  province  from  the 
control  of  the  Penn  family  to  that  of  the  crown. 

1  An  adequate  biography  of  Galloway  is  much  to  be  desired  :  it  would  be 
invaluable  for  the  removal  of  much  obscurity  and  injustice  still  prevailing  in 
the  popular  conception  of  the  American   Revolution.       The  sketch  of  him  in 
Sabine's  "  Loyalists  of  the  American   Revolution,"  i.  453-457,  is  exceptionally 
weak,  inaccurate,  and  unfair.     For  the  chief  events  of  his  life,  the  best  materials 
now  available  are  Galloway's  own  answers  to  certain  personal  questions  put  to 
him  during  his  celebrated  "Examination"  by  a  committee  of  the  house  of 
commons  in  1779;    the  notes  inserted  by  Thomas  Balch  in  a  reprint  of  this 
"  Examination,"  Philadelphia,    1855  ;  a  note  by  J.    Francis  Fisher  in   "  The 
Works  of  Benjamin  Franklin,"  Sparks's  ed.,  vii.  276-277  ;  and  the  published 
correspondence  of  Galloway's  contemporaries,  especially  of  Franklin,  Dickinson, 
John  Adams,  and  Joseph  Reed. 

2  The  late  George  Henry  Moore,  in  a  letter  to  the  author. 

3  With  respect  to  the  place  and  date  of  Galloway's  birth,  the  mistakes  made 
by  J.  Francis  Fisher  in  his  note  to  the  seventh  volume  of  Franklin's  "  WorWs," 
published  in  1838,  were  pointed  out  by  Thomas  Balch  in  1855,  in  a  note  to 
page  43  of  Galloway's  "  Examination."     The  author  of  the  sketch  of  Galloway 
in"  Appleton's  Cyclopedia  of  American  Biography,"  ii.  581-582,  seems  to  have 
trusted  to  Fisher's  note,  without  taking  account  of  Balch's  corrections  of  it. 


JOSEPH  GALLOWAY.  37! 

It  was  in  connection  with  this  movement — probably  the 
only  popular  movement  on  behalf  of  which  he  was  ever 
engaged — that  he  first  came  into  public  notice  as  a  writer, 
publishing  at  Philadelphia  in  1764  a  "  Speech  "  made  by 
him  in  the  assembly,  in  support  of  a  resolution  asking  "  his 
majesty  to  resume  the  powers  of  government  into  his  own 
hands."  This  publication  is  of  some  interest  still,  not  only 
for  its  evidence  as  to  Galloway's  intellectual  quality  at  that 
period  of  his  career,  but  as  a  symptom  of  the  early  and 
sharp  divergence  between  him  and  John  Dickinson.  His 

Speech  "  appears  to  have  been  printed  without  much 
revision,  possibly  from  the  rough  notes  jotted  down  by  him 
as  an  aid  in  the  delivery  of  it, — a  fact  which  gave  occasion 
for  Dickinson's  gibe  at  his  "  continual  breaches  of  the  rules 
of  grammar,  his  utter  ignorance  of  the  English  language, 
the  pompous  obscurity  and  sputtering  prolixity  reigning 
through  every  part  of  his  piece,  and  his  innumerable  and 
feeble  tautologies."*  Certainly,  these  memoranda  are 
clumsy  enough  in  form,  but  they  are  not  otherwise  weak; 
indeed,  they  indicate  genuine  argumentative  power,  solidity, 
sobriety,  statesmanlike  breadth  and  grasp  of  reasoning. 

II. 

Not  until  the  time  of  the  first  Continental  Congress,  did 
Galloway  come  into  prominence  beyond  the  limits  of  his 
own  colony.  Like  all  of  the  American  Loyalists,  he  had 
deprecated  the  unwise  course  of  the  English  ministry  in 
their  treatment  of  the  American  colonies,  from  the  time  of 
the  act  for  laying  stamp  duties,  onward  to  that  for  shutting 
up  the  port  of  Boston.  Nevertheless,  Galloway  held  that 

1  "  The  Speech  of  Joseph  Galloway,"  etc.,  3-  It  is  characteristic  of  the 
place  and  the  time  that,  in  order  to  reach  a  portion  of  the  inhabitants  of  Penn- 
sylvania too  important  to  be  disregarded,  this  "  Speech  "  was  circulated  in  Ger- 
man also:  "Die  Rede  Herrn  Joseph  Galloways,  eines  der  Mitglieder  des 
Hauses,"  u.  s.  w.  "  Aus  dem  Englischen  iibersetzt.  Philadelphia,  gedruckt 
und  zu  finden  bey  Heinrich  Miller,  in  der  Zweiten-strasse." 

*  "  A  Reply  to  a  Piece  called  a  Speech  of  Joseph  Galloway,  Esq.,"  Appen- 
dix, 49-50. 


372  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION'. 

all  these  bitter  incidents  were  an  inevitable  result  of  the  lack 
of  a  proper  constitutional  organization  of  the  American  col- 
onies within  the  general  system  of  the  British  empire.  In 
order  to  suppy  this  lack  in  a  statesmanlike  manner, —  that 
is,  in  order  to  frame  a  permanent  constitution  for  the 
American  colonies,  under  which  all  disagreements  between 
them  and  the  parent  state  could  be  quietly  and  wisely  dealt 
with, — he  introduced  into  the  Continental  Congress,  on  the 
twenty-eighth  of  September,  1774,  his  famous  "  Plan  of  a 
Proposed  Union  between  Great  Britain  and  the  Colonies." 

This  was  simply  a  scheme  for  American  home  rule,  on  a 
basis  of  colonial  confederation,  with  an  American  parliament 
to  be  elected  every  three  years  by  the  legislatures  of  the 
several  colonies,  and  with  a  governor  general  to  be  ap- 
pointed by  the  crown.  Galloway's  spirit  in  bringing  forward 
this  plan  may  partly  be  inferred  from  some  fragments  of  his 
remarks  in  support  of  it,  as  preserved  in  notes  taken  on  the 
spot  by  John  Adams: — "  I  am  as  much  a  friend  of  liberty 
as  exists;  and  no  man  shall  go  further  in  point  of  fortune,  or 
in  point  of  blood,  than  the  man  who  now  addresses  you." 
"  We  want  the  aid  and  assistance  and  protection  of  the  arm 
of  our  mother  country.  Protection  and  allegiance  are 
reciprocal  duties.  Can  we  lay  claim  to  the  money  and  pro- 
tection of  Great  Britain  upon  any  principles  of  honor  or  con- 
science ?  Can  we  wish  to  become  aliens  to  the  mother 
state  ?"  "  We  must  come  upon  terms  with  Great  Britain. 
Some  gentlemen  are  not  for  negotiation.  I  wish  I  could 
hear  some  reason  against  it."  "  In  every  government — patri- 
archal, monarchical,  aristocratical,  or  democratical — there 
must  be  a  supreme  legislature."  "  I  know  of  no  American 
constitution:  a  Virginia  constitution,  a  Pennyslvania  consti- 
tution, we  have;  — we  are  totally  independent  of  each 
other."  Is  it  not  necessary  that  the  trade  of  the  empire 
should  be  regulated  by  some  power  or  other  ?  Can  the 
empire  hold  together  without  it  ?  No.  Who  shall  regulate 
it  ?  Shall  the  legislature  of  Nova  Scotia  or  Georgia  regu- 
late it  ?  Massachusetts,  or  Virginia  ?  Pennsylvania  or  New 


JOSEPH  GALLOWAY.  373 

York  ?  It  can't  be  pretended.  Our  legislative  powers 
extend  no  further  than  the  limits  of  our  governments. 
Where  then  shall  it  be  placed  ?  There  is  a  necessity  that 
an  American  legislature  should  be  set  up,  or  else  that  we 
should  give  the  power  to  parliament  or  king."  ' 

This  sagacious  scheme  of  Galloway's,  which  virtually 
anticipated  the  British  statesmanship  of  the  subsequent 
century  in  the  solution  of  the  British  colonial  problem, 
came  very  near  to  adoption.  It  was  strongly  supported  in 
Congress  by  James  Duane  and  John  Jay ;  it  was  pronounced 
by  Edward  Rutledge  to  be  "  almost  a  perfect  plan  "  ;  in  the 
final  trial,  it  was  lost  only  by  a  vote  of  six  colonies  to  five. 
Had  it  been  adopted,  the  disruption  of  the  British  empire 
by  an  American  schism  would  certainly  have  been  averted 
for  that  epoch,  and,  as  an  act  of  violence  and  of  hereditary 
unkindness,  would  perhaps  have  been  averted  forever;  while 
the  English  colonies  in  America  would  have  remained  Eng- 
lish colonies,  without  ceasing  to  be  free.* 

III. 

The  rejection  by  the  first  Continental  Congress  of  this 
noble-minded  measure  for  a  practicable  and  permanent 
union  between  the  American  colonies  and  the  mother  coun- 
try,, seemed  to  Galloway  to  denote  a  final  parting  of  the 
ways  between  himself  and  many  of  his  old  political  col- 
leagues; to  be  an  indication,  also,  that  the  American  poli- 
ticians who  had  thus  succeeded  in  carrying  the  vote  of 

1  "  The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  ii.  388-391. 

*  In  giving  an  account  of  Galloway's  scheme  I  have  used,  with  some  modifi- 
cations, a  few  sentences  from  my  book  on  "  Patrick  Henry,"  102.  No  copy  of 
Galloway's  "  Plan,"  nor  any  allusion  to  it,  was  allowed  to  appear  in  the  "Jour- 
nals "  of  Congress.  The  text  of  it  was  published  at  the  time  in  newspapers  ; 
it  is  to  be  found  stitched  in  with  some  pamphlets  of  the  time,  as  the  one  en- 
titled "  What  think  ye  of  the  Congress  Now?"  ;  it  was  reproduced  entire  in 
Galloway's  pamphlet  called  "  A  Candid  Examination,"  etc.,  53~5+.  as  well  as 
in  another  famous  pamphlet,  called  "Observations  on  the  Reconciliali  >n  of 
Great  Britain  and  the  Colonies"  ;  and  it  is  now  easily  accessible  in  4  "  Am. 
Arch.,"  i.  905-906. 


374  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Congress  against  him  would  be  likely  to  impress  upon  that 
body  a  course  of  action  which,  as  he  thought,  was  intended 
to  lead  to  a  violent  rupture  with  England,  and  to  an  effort 
at  separation.  Declining  an  election  to  the  second  Conti- 
nental Congress,  where  his  presence  would  have  been  of 
little  avail,  and  would  even  have  involved  him  in  serious 
misconstruction,  he  thenceforward  devoted  himself  in  an 
independent  position  to  the  effort  to  avert,  if  possible,  the 
final  adoption  by  his  fellow-colonists  of  a  policy  having  in 
his  eyes  every  aspect  of  illegality,  of  unwisdom,  of  public 
and  private  misfortune. 

Under  these  circumstances  it  was  that,  early  in  the  year 
1775,  he  published  his  first  notable  piece  of  work  as  a  pam- 
phleteer,1— "  A  Candid  Examination- of  the  Mutual  Claims 
of  Great  Britain  and  the  Colonies :  With  a  Plan  of  Accom- 
irrGthrtion  on  Constitutional  Principles."2  It  is  probable 
that  he  had  set  to  work  on  this  pamphlet  shortly  after  the 
rejection  of  his  "  Plan  "  by  the  first  Continental  Congress. 
At  any  rate,  it  is  an  avowed  appeal  from  the  adverse  de- 
cision of  that  body  to  the  higher  tribunal  of  public  opinion. 
After  an  impressive  preamble,  in  which  he  depicts  a  condi- 
tion of  affairs  in  America,  not  only  anomalous  but  shocking 

1  Besides  his  "  Speech,"  in  1764,  and  his  "  Plan,"  in  1774,  his  hand  may  be 
traced  in  two  slight  publications  prior  to  the  serious  one  now  referred  to—"  To 
the  Public,"  1764;  "Advertisement  ...  To  the  Public,"  1765.  Each 
of  these  was  printed  on  a  single  leaf,  in  Philadelphia,  and  each  relates  to  his 
personal  concern  with  current  political  controversies.  In  1765,  he  dealt  with 
the  questions  raised  by  the  Stamp  Act,  doing  so  in  a  "  piece"  published  over 
the  signature  of  "  Americanus."  "  The  Works  of  Benjamin  Franklin,"  Sparks's 
ed.,  vii.  304.  In  January,  1766,  he  wrote  to  Franklin,  with  whom  he  was  then 
on  terms  not  only  confidential  but  affectionate,  that  he  had  nearly  finished  a 
pamphlet  entitled  "  Political  Reflections  on  the  Dispute  between  Great  Britain 
and  her  Colonies  respecting  her  Right  of  imposing  Taxes  on  them  without  their 
Assent."  Ibid.  I  have  found  no  evidence  that  he  ever  published  this  pam- 
phlet. Possibly  it  was  the  basis  for  the  one  published  by  him  in  London  in 
1780,  entitled  "  Historical  and  Political  Reflections  on  the  Rise  and  Progress  of 
the  American  Rebellion." 

51  It  is  a  sign  of  the  great  effect  of  this  pamphlet,  that  it  was  reprinted  in  many 
forms  both  in  America  and  in  England.  I  here  use  the  first  edition  printed  by 
Rivington  in  New  York  in  1775. 


JOSEPH  GALLOWAY.  375 

in  any  community  pretending  to  be  controlled  by  law, 

"  freedom  of  speech  suppressed,  the  liberty  and  secrecy  of 
the  press  destroyed,  the  voice  of  truth  silenced,  a  lawless 
power  established  throughout  the  colonies  .  .  .  depriv- 
ing men  of  their  natural  rights  and  inflicting  penalties  more 
severe  than  death  itself," — he  avows  his  determination  then 
and  there  to  lay  before  his  countrymen  a  faithful  and  fear- 
less review  of  "  the  most  important  controversy  that  ever 
was  agitated  between  a  state  and  its  members."  '  What  is 
the  standard  by  which  such  a  controversy  can  be  decided  ? 
Surely,  that  standard  is  not  found  by  those  who  have  under- 
taken to  deduce  the  political  rights  of  America  from  "  the 
laws  of  God  and  nature,"  from  "  the  common  rights  of 
mankind,"  or  from  the  "  American  charters."  Neither  is 
it  to  be  discovered  by  exploring  those  ingenious  and  fanci- 
ful distinctions  which  have  been  made  between  "  a  right  in 
parliament  to  legislate  for  the  colonies  and  a  right  to  tax 
them,  between  internal  and  external  taxation,  and  between 
taxes  laid  for  the  regulation  of  trade  and  for  the  purpose  of 
revenue."2  All  these  attempts  to  find  the  true  standard 
by  which  to  decide  the  controversy  have  been  futile,  for  the 
reason  that  they  have  been  sought  in  disregard  of  the  true 
nature  of  that  controversy.  What,  then,  is  its  nature  ?  "  It 
is^a  dicputc  between  th£_simreme  au thori.ty_fiL±he _slate-ajni_ 
a  number  of  its  members/ '_Ta.sJ:q  the  limits  nf  authority  00. 
the  part-  of  the  former  and  of  obedience  on  the  part  of  the 
latter,  i  The  very  nature  of  the  dispute,  therefore,  shows 
tKat  fheMrue  standard  for  its  settlement  is  to  be  sought  in 
the  principles  of  government  in  general  and  of  the  British 
constitution  in  particular/)  Wellr  then.,  in  every  state  there 
must  be  "  a  suprejne^ieg^latiy^^aiithority,  universal  in 
extent,"'  and~affectingevery  member  of  the  state.  f~WitHin 
the  British  empire,  such  authority  -resides  in  parliament. 
Are  the  American  colonies  members  of  the  British  empire, 
or  are  they  not  ?  j  After  a  long  and  learned  presentation  of 

1  "  A  Candid  Examination,"  etc.,  i,  2.  *  Ibid.  2-3. 

3  Ibid.  3.  4  Ibid.  4. 


376  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

the  evidence  for  and  against  the  proposition,  he  concludes 
that  they  are.1  With  this  conclusion,  however,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  reconcile  the  claim  of  the  Congress  that  in  all  cases 
of  taxation  and  of  internal  police,  the  colonies  have  exclu- 
sive control,  subject  only  to  the  negative  of  the  sovereign.4 
That  this  is  so,  he  argues  at  great  length  and  with  great 
force.  Congress,  therefore,  was  wrong  in  having  rejected 
the  "  Plan  "  which  was  submitted  to  it,  for  so  organizing 
the  constitution  of  the  colonies  as  to  open  a  path  to  a 
lasting  and  happy  reconciliation."  Instead  of  this  benefi- 
cent result,  "  nothing  has  been  the  production  of  their  two 
months'  labor,  but  the  ill-shapen,  diminutive  brat — Inde- 
pendency!" But  Independency  means  ruin.  If  England 
refuses  it,  she  will  ruin  us:  if  she  grants  it,  we  shall  ruin  our- 
selves.3 

Having  thus  set  forth  the  rights  of  parliament,  and  the 
fatal  consequences  that  must  result  from  our  refusal  to 
recognize  them,  he  next  turns  to  consider__the__rights  of 
America, — a  task  which  he  performs"7'  with  ineffable  pleas- 
ure, as  he  is  pleading  a  cause  founded  on  the  immutable 
principles  of  reason  and  justice — the  cause  of  his  country 
and  the  latest  posterity."4  What  are  the  rights  of 
America  ? — whence  derived  ? — how  has  their  exercise  been 
lost  ? — how  can  they  be  recovered  ?  fai£  rights  of  AmeHra 
are  derived  from  the  British  constitution.  They  include 
those  of  protection,  not  only  from  foreign  powers,  but  from 
domestic  injustice  as  well — especially  from  "  the  arbitrary 
and  lawless  power  of  the  state,  and  of  every  subordinate 
authority."  Furthermore,  it  is  of  the  essence  of  the  Brit- 
ish constitution  that  from  the  earliest  times  the  government 
has  derived  "  its  power  from  the  landed  interest,"  and  that 
the  proprietors  of  the  land  have  "  shared  the  power  of  mak- 
ing their  laws,"'  a  principle  which,  for  convenience,  has 
been  developed  into  the  representative  system.7  But,  with 
respect  to  this  ancient  English  right,  how  stands  the  case 

"  A  Candid  Examination,"  etc.,  24.         2  Ibid.  30.         3  Ibid.  31-32. 
4  Ibid.  33.  »  Ibid.  34.  «  Ibid.  35-36.  '  Ibid.  39. 


JOSEPH  GALLOWAY.  377 

on  behalf  of  the  English  proprietors  of  land  in  America  ? 
Certainly,  they  do  not  enjoy  it;  they  have  never  enjoyed 
it;  but  they  ought  to  enjoy  it, — they  ought  to  enjoy  it  "  in 
such  manner  as  their  circumstances  admit  of,  whenever  it 
shall  be  decently  and  respectfully  asked  for."  '  "JThe  sub- 
jects of  a  free  state^.  in  every  pAri_oLi±s-dominions,  ought  in 
good  policy  to  enjoy  the  same  fundamental  rights  and  privi- 
leges:" "Every  distinction  between  them  must  be  offensive 
and  odious,  and  cannot  fail  to  create  uneasiness  and  jeal- 
ousies which  will  ever  weaken  the  government,  and  fre- 
quently terminate  in  insurrections, — which,  in  every  society, 
ought  to  be  particularly  guarded  against.  If  the  British 
state,  therefore,  means  to  retain  the  colonies  in  a  due  obe- 
dience on  her  government,  it  will  be  wisdom  in  her  to 
restore  to  her  American  subjects  the  enjoyment  of  the  right 
of  assenting  to  and  dissenting  from  such  bills  as  shall  be 
proposed  to  regulate  their  conduct.  Laws  thus  made  will 
ever  be  obeyed,  because  by  their  assent  they  become  their 
own  acts.  It  will  place  them  in  the  same  condition  with 
their  brethren  in  Britain,  and  remove  all  cause  of  complaint ; 
or  if  they  should  conceive  any  regulations  inconvenient  or 
unjust,  they  will  petition,  not  rebel.  Without  this,  it  is 
easy  to  perceive  that  the  union  and  harmony,  which  is  pecu- 
liarly essential  to  a  free  society  whose  members  are  resident 
in  regions  so  very  remote  from  each  other,  cannot  long  sub- 
sist. The  genius,  temper,  and  circumstances  of  the  Ameri- 
cans should  be  also  duly  attended  to.  No  people  in  the 
world  have  higher  notions  of  liberty.  It  would  be  impos- 
sible ever  to  eradicate  them, — should  an  attempt  so  unjust 
be  ever  made.  Their  late  spirit  and  conduct  fully  prove  this 
assertion,  and  will  serve  as  a  clue  to  that  policy  by  which 
they  ought  to  be  governed.  The  distance  of  America  from 
Britain,  her  vast  extent  of  territory,  her  numerous  ports  and 
conveniences  of  commerce,  her  various  productions,  her 
increasing  numbers,  and  consequently  her  growing  strength 
and  power,  when  duly  considered,  all  point  out  the  policy 

1  "  A  Candid  Examination,"  etc.,  41. 


378  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

of  uniting  the  two  countries  together  upon  principles  of 
English  liberty.  Should  this  be  omitted,  the  colonies  will 
infallibly  throw  off  their  connection  with  the  mother 
country.  Their  distance  will  encourage  the  attempt ;  their 
discontent  will  give  them  spirit ;  and  their  numbers,  wealth, 
and  power,  at  some  future  time,  will  enable  them  to  effect  it. "  ' 
What,  then,  is  to  be  done  ?  Undoubtedly,  the  Americans 
are  laboring  under  grievances  which  ought  to  have  redress; 
but  Congress  is  wrong  in  the  mode  it  has  proposed  for 
obtaining  such  redress.  There  is  a  right  mode — it  is  that  of 
redress  through  a  liberal  constitutional  union  with  the 
mother  state."  "  Had  this  measure  been  adopted  in  the 
year  1766,  in  all  probability  the  rights  of  America  would 
have  been  restored,  and  the  most  perfect  harmony  would 
have  this  day  subsisted  between  the  two  countries." 
"  Great  pains  have  been  taken  by  the  American  dema- 
gogues to  delude  the  unhappy  people  whom  they  have 
doomed  to  be  the  dupes  of  their  ambition,  into  a  belief  that 
no  justice  was  to  be  obtained  of  his  majesty  and  his  houses 
of  parliament,  and  that  they  had  refused  to  hear  our  most 
reasonable  petitions.  .  .  .  It  is  high  time  that  this  fatal 
delusion  should  be  exposed,  and  the  good  people  of  America 
disabused.  It  is  true  that  his  majesty  and  the  two  houses 
of  parliament  have  treated  petitions  from  the  colonies  with 
neglect ;  but  what  were  those  petitions  ?  Did  they  rest  on 
a  denial  of  the  essential  rights  of  parliament,  or  did  they  ask 
for  the  rights  of  the  subject  in  America  ?  .  .  .  They 
disowned  the  power  of  the  supreme  legislature,  to  which  as 
subjects  they  owe  obedience."  4  "  Is  it  too  late  to  recover 
from  our  madness,  and  to  pursue  the  dictates  of  reason  and 
duty  ?  By  no  means.  But  it  is  high  time  we  had  changed 
our  measures,  and  retreated  from  the  dangers  with  which  we 
are  threatened.  Let  us,  like  men  who  love  order  and  gov- 
ernment, boldly  oppose  the  illegal  edicts  of  the  Congress, 
before  it  is  too  late, — pull  down  the  licentious  tyranny  they 

1  "A  Candid  Examination,"  etc.,  42-43.  •  Ibid.  48-49. 

3  Ibid.  49.  4  Ibid-  4Q_50> 


JOSEPH  GALLOWAY,  379 

have  established,  and  dissolve  their  inferior  committees — 
their  instruments  to  trample  on  the  sacred  laws  of  your 
country,  and  your  invaluable  rights.  This  done,  and  peace 
and  order  restored  within  your  several  provinces,  apply  to 
your  assemblies,  who  are  your  constitutional  guardians  and 
can  alone  procure  a  redress  of  your  grievances.  Entreat 
them,  in  a  respectful  and  dutiful  manner  to  petition  his 
majesty  and  his  two  houses  of  parliament,  and  in  their  peti- 
tions to  assure  them — '  That  you  are  sensible  of  the  neces- 
sity of  a  supreme  legislature  over  every  member  of  the  state; 
that  you  acknowledge  yourselves  subjects  of  the  British 
government;  that  you  have,  through  innumerable  difficul- 
ties and  perils,  settled  and  improved  a  wilderness,  extended 
the  territories,  and  greatly  increased  the  wealth  and  power 
of  the  nation ;  that  by  such  settlement  you  have  lost  the 
enjoyment  of,  though  not  the  right  to,  some  of  the  first 
and  most  excellent  of  the  privileges  of  Englishmen ;  .  ... 
that  no  part  of  the  lands  in  America  .  .  .  enjoy  their 
ancient  right  of  participating  in  the  authority  of  parliament; 
and  therefore  pray,  that  you  may  not  only  be 
restored  to  this  capacity,  but  to  all  the  rights  of  English- 
men, upon  such  principles  of  liberty  and  policy  as  shall  best 
suit  your  local  circumstances.' 

"  A  petition  of  this  kind,  so  reasonable  and  just,  and  so 
well  founded  and  established  on  the  principles  of  their  own 
government,  attended  with  such  a  plan  of  union  as  may  be 
wisely  digested  by  your  several  assemblies,  there  is  no 
reason  to  doubt,  will  be  graciously  received  and  duly 
attended  to  by  his  majesty  and  his  two  houses  of  parlia- 
ment, and  finally  terminate  in  a  full  redress  of  your  griev- 
ances, and  a  permanent  system  of  union  and  harmony,  upon 
principles  of  liberty  and  safety."  l 

IV. 

For  the  champions  of  extreme  measures,  Galloway's  pam- 
phlet became  a  somewhat  troublesome  document.  More- 

1  "•  A  Candid  Examination,"  etc.,  5Q-61- 


380  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

over,  with  people  of  moderate  and  conservative  tendencies, 
it  was  singularly  persuasive  by  reason  of  the  fact  that  it 
seemed  to  be  something  more  than  an  academic  and  irre- 
sponsible discussion  of  its  tremendous  theme;  and  that, 
besides  administering  a  dose  of  destructive  criticism  to  the 
radical  plans  of  the  Revolutionary  party,  it  was  ready  with 
a  practical  and  statesmanlike  plan  as  a  substitute  for  them. 
Finally,  an  infallible  token  of  its  effectiveness  was  to  be 
seen  in  the  fact  that  it  was  accorded  repeated  rounds  of  lit- 
erary abuse  and  refutation.  Of  only  one  of  these,  however, 
did  Galloway  take  particular  notice, — doing  so  in  a  tract, 
published  in  New  York  in  the  spring  of  1775,  called  "  Reply 
to  an  Address  to  the  Author  of  a  Pamphlet  entitled  A 
Candid  Examination." 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  merits  of  Galloway's  pam- 
phlet, it  had  one  fatal  defect, — it  was  a  good  argument 
delivered  at  a  bad  time :  in  short,  it  was  a  brave  attempt  by 
words  to  stop  and  turn  back  the  current  of  destiny.  No 
spoken  or  written  commentary  upon  his  presentation  of  the 
case  was  so  unanswerable  as  was  that  furnished  by  actual 
events  soon  after  its  publication, — -more  particularly  those 
of  Lexington,  Concord,  and  Bunker  Hill.  After  the  flash 
and  uproar  of  those  three  displays  of  the  motherly  solicitude 
of  England,  it  became  plain  that  fewer  people,  and  still 
fewer,  were  left  in  the  mood  to  attend  to  an  examination, 
whether  candid  or  otherwise,  of  the  mutual  claims  of  Great 
Britain  and  the  colonies.  Finding,  therefore,  that  an  irre- 
sistible tide  was  sweeping  against  him  and  all  his  views  of 
things,  Galloway  wisely  withdrew  from  Philadelphia  to  his 
country  seat  in  Bucks  County,  where,  according  to  his  own 
statement,  "  he  remained  several  months  in  the  utmost 
danger  from  mobs  raised  by  Mr.  Adams  to  hang  him  at  his 
own  door."  ' 

In  the  autumn  of  1776,  shortly  after  the  surrender  of 

"  The  Examination  of  Joseph  Galloway,"  etc.,  Balch  ed.,  51  n.  The  "  Mr. 
Adams  "  above  referred  to,  is  probably  the  one  who  rejoiced  in  the  baptismal 
name  of  Samuel. 


JOSEPH  GALLOWAY.  381 

Fort  Lee,  he  entered  the  British  lines,  and,  joining  the 
army,  accompanied  it  on  its  march  through  New  Jersey. 
With  that  army  he  remained  in  all  its  subsequent  marchings 
and  countermarchings  until,  in  the  autumn  of  1777,  it  took 
possession  of  Philadelphia.  During  the  British  occupation 
of  that  city,  he  held  the  important  offices  of  superintendent 
of  the  police,  of  the  port,  and  of  the  prohibited  articles ;  he 
was  much  relied  on  for  information  and  advice  by  the  chief 
officers  of  the  army;  he  was  himself  ingenious  and  enter- 
prising in  the  enlistment  and  employment  of  Loyalist 
troops.  In  June,  1778,  upon  the  British  evacuation  of 
Philadelphia,  he  accompanied  the  army  on  its  somewhat 
embarrassed  journey  back  to  New  York.1  A  few  months 
afterward,  in  the  society  of  his  only  daughter,  he  sailed  for 
England,  where  he  remained  until  his  death  in  1803. 

V. 

His  arrival  in  England  was  by  no  means  the  signal  for 
any  diminution  of  activity  on  his  part  in  the  affairs  of  his 
country  and  of  his  countrymen.  He  and  Thomas  Hutchin- 
son,  being  then  both  in  England  and  both  alike  in  American 
unpopularity,  were  also  both  alike  in  the  confidence  of  the 
king  and  ministry,  and  of  the  party  which  favored  a  vigor- 
ous prosecution  of  the  American  war.  To  them  Galloway 
was  as  valuable  for  information  respecting  the  middle  colo- 
nies, as  was  Hutchinson  for  information  respecting  those  of 
New  England.  Then  it  was,  likewise,  that  he  did  his  largest 
and  most  effective  work  as  a  pamphleteer  upon  topics  con- 
nected with  the  Revolution. 

The  pamphlets  which  he  thus  produced  may  be  said  to 
fall  into  three  principal  groups.  Of  these,  the  first  group, 
dealing  with  the  general  issues  x>f  the  American  Revolution 
as  a  constitutional  question,  as  a  political  question,  and 
as  a  question  of  general  expediency,  is  made  up  of  the 
following  pamphlets: — "  Historical  and  Political  Reflections 

1  "The  Examination  of  Joseph  Galloway,"  etc.,  Balch  ed..  72-73  n. 


382  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

on  the  Rise  and  Progress  of  the  American  Rebellion"; 
"  Plain  Truth,  or,  A  Letter  to  the  Author  of  '  Dispassion- 
ate Thoughts  on  the  American  War'  ";  "  Cool  Thoughts 
on  the  Consequences  to  Great  Britain  of  American  Inde- 
pendence, on  the  Expense  of  Great  Britain  in  the  Settle- 
ment and  Defense  of  the  American  Colonies,  on  the  Value 
and  Importance  of  the  American  Colonies  and  the  West 
Indies  to  the  British  Empire";  "  Political  Reflections  on 
the  late  Colonial  Governments,  in  which  their  original  Con- 
stitutional Defects  are  pointed  out,  and  shewn  to  have 
naturally  produced  the  Rebellion  which  has  unfortunately 
terminated  in  the  Dismemberment  of  the  British  Empire." 
The  second  group,  dealing  with  the  American  Revolu- 
tion as  a  physical  conflict,  exposes  with  terrific  force  of 
evidence  and  with  great  bitterness  of  expression,  the 
laxness,  the  stupendous  mismanagement,  and  even  the 
probable  disloyalty,  of  leading  British  officers  in  the  con- 
duct of  the  war;  pointing  out,  likewise,  the  practicability 
of  complete  and  speedy  success  for  the  British  arms  in 
America — if  only  directed  by  able  leaders  determined  to 
succeed.  This  group  is  composed  of  the  following  pam- 
phlets:— "  Letters  to  a  Nobleman  on  the  Conduct  of  the 
War  in  the  Middle  Colonies";  "  A  Letter  to  the  Right 
Honorable  Lord  Viscount  Howe,  on  his  Naval  Conduct  of 
the  American  War  "  ;  "  Observations  upon  the  Conduct  of 
Sir  William  Howe  at  the  White  Plains,  as  related  in  the 
Gazette  of  December  3<Dth,  1776";  "  The  Examination  of 
Joseph  Galloway,  Esquire  .  .  .  before  the  House  of 
Commons,  in  a  Committee  on  the  American  Papers.  With 
Explanatory  Notes";  "  A  Reply  to  the  Observations  of 
Lieutenant-General  Sir  William  Howe  on  a  Pamphlet  enti- 
tled '  Letters  to  a  Nobleman  ' — in  which  his  Misrepresenta- 
tions are  detected,  and  those  '  Letters  '  are  supported  by  a 
Variety  of  New  Matter  and  Argument  "  ;  "  An  Account  of 
the  Conduct  of  the  War  in  the  Middle  Colonies.  Extracted 
from  a  late  Author  "  ;  "A  Letter  from  Cicero  to  the  Right 
Honorable  Lord  Viscount  Howe,  occasioned  by  his  late 


JOSEPH  GALLOWAY.  383 

Speech  in  the  House  of  Commons  "  ;  "  Letters  from  Cicero 
to  Catiline  the  Second,  with  Corrections  and  Explanatory 
Notes";  "  Fabricius,  or,  Letters  to  the  People  of  Great 
Britain,  on  the  Absurdity  and  Mischiefs  of  Defensive  Ope- 
rations only  in  the  American  War,  and  on  the  Causes  of  the 
Failure  in  the  Southern  Operations."  The  pamphlets 
forming  the  third  group  seem  not  to  have  been  begun  till 
even  from  the  stern  heart  of  Galloway  had  died  away  the 
last  hope  for  the  further  and  more  competent  prosecution  of 
the  war.  With  great  ability,  and  at  times  with  much  pathos, 
he  then  set  forth  the  motives,  the  services,  and  the  sacrifices 
of  the  American  Loyalists,  and  their  claims  for  considerate 
treatment  at  the  hands  of  the  British  government,  in  support 
of  which  they  had  risked  and  lost  their  all.  These  pamphlets, 
but  two  in  number,  bear  the  following  titles : — "  Observations 
on  the  Fifth  Article  of  the  Treaty  with  America,  and  on  the 
Necessity  of  appointing  a  Judicial  Enquiry  into  the  Merits 
and  Losses  of  the  American  Loyalists  "  ;  and  "  The  Claim 
of  the  American  Loyalists  Reviewed  and  Maintained  upon 
incontrovertible  Principles  of  Law  and  Justice." 


CHAPTER    XVIII. 

THE    WHIG    PAMPHLETEERS    IN    REPLY    TO    LOYALIST 
ATTACKS:     NOVEMBER,    I/74-APRIL, 


I.  —  The  two  chief  replies  to  the  "  Westchester  Farmer"  were  "  A  Full  Vindi- 

cation of  the  Measures  of  the  Congress,"  and  "  The  Farmer  Refuted"  — 
Both  by  Alexander  Hamilton,  then  an  undergraduate  in  King's  College  — 
The  extraordinary  intellectual  ability  herein  displayed. 

II.  —  The  leading  points  of  Hamilton's  argument  both  aggressive  and  defensive 

—The  alleged  lack  of  legality  in  the  Congress—  The  essential  rights  of 
mankind  not  derived  from  parchments  —  The  purpose  of  despotism  not  to 
be  frustrated  by  the  force  of  entreaty  —  Civil  liberty  is  natural  liberty. 

III.  —  Hamilton's  anticipation  of   the  military  strategy  most  suitable  for  the 

Americans  in  the  war  then  imminent  —  His  own  confession  of  political 
faith  —  A  monarchist  and  a  believer  in  the  rights  of  man  —  The  vast  range  of 
thought  displayed  in  his  writings  during  the  Revolution. 

IV.  —  The  letters  of  "  Massachusettensis  "  replied  to  by  John  Adams   in  the 

essays  of  "Novanglus"  —  Great  reputation  of  these  essays  —  Their  merits 
and  defects. 

V.  —  The  Loyalist  writer,  Myles  Cooper  —  He  is  assailed  by  a  New  York  mob 

in  August,  1775  —  His  escape  to  England  and  his  rewards  there  —  His 
"American  Querist"  —  His  "  Friendly  Address  to  all  Reasonable  Ameri- 
cans." 

VI.  —  Cooper's  "  Friendly  Address"  replied  to  in  an  unfriendly  manner  by  Gen- 

eral Charles  Lee—  The  latter's  "  Strictures  "—His  insults  to  Cooper  as  a 
clergyman  —  Lee's  droll  discussion  of  American  military  competence  in  the 
impending  conflict  with  Great  Britain. 

I. 

AMONG  the  throng  of  replies  which  burst  forth  from  the 
press  in  opposition  to  the  tremendous  pamphlets  of  the 
"  Westchester  Farmer  "  —  first  published  between  the  mid- 
dle of  November,  1774,  and  the  latter  part  of  January,  1775, 
—  were  two  which  immediately  towered  into  chief  promi- 
nence: "  A  Full  Vindication  of  the  Measures  of  the  Con- 
gress from  the  Calumnies  of  their  Enemies,"  and  M  The 
384 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON.  385 

Farmer  Refuted."  The  extraordinary  ability  of  these  two 
pamphlets — their  fullness  in  constitutional  learning,  their 
acumen,  their  affluence  in  statement,  their  cleverness  in  con- 
troversial repartee,  their  apparent  wealth  in  the  fruits  of  an 
actual  acquaintance  with  public  business — led  both  the 
"  Westchester  Farmer  "  and  the  public  in  general  to  attrib- 
ute them  to  some  American  writer  of  mature  years  and  of 
ripe  experience — to  some  member  of  the  late  Congress,  for 
example — particularly  to  John  Jay  or  to  William  Livingston.1 
It  is  not  easy  to  overstate  the  astonishment  and  the  incre- 
dulity with  which  the  public  soon  heard  the  rumor,  that 
these  elaborate  and  shattering  literary  assaults  on  the  argu- 
mentative position  of  the  Loyalists  were,  in  reality,  the 
work  of  a  writer  who  was  then  both  a  stripling  in  years  and 
a  stranger  in  the  country — one  Alexander  Hamilton,  a  West 
Indian  by  birth,  a  Franco-Scotsman  by  parentage,  an  under- 
graduate of  King's  College  by  occupation,  a  resident  within 
the  Thirteen  Colonies  but  little  more  than  two  years,  and  at 
the  time  of  the  publication  of  his  first  pamphlet  only  seven- 
teen years  of  age.  Even  the  modern  reader  of  these  essays 
does  not  need  to  have  an  enthusiastic  temper  in  order  to  be 
able  to  agree  with  the  latest  editor  of  Hamilton  that,  in 
view  of  the  age  of  the  writer,  these  essays  are  "  little  short 
•of  wonderful."*  "  There  are  displayed  in  these  papers," 
says,  also,  George  Ticknor  Curtis,  "  a  power  of  reasoning 
and  sarcasm,  a  knowledge  of  the  principles  of  government 
and  of  the  English  constitution,  and  a  grasp  of  the  merits 
of  the  whole  controversy,  that  would  have  done  honor  to 
any  man,  at  any  age.  .  .  .  To  say  that  they  evince 
precocity  of  intellect  gives  no  idea  of  their  main  characteris- 
tics. They  show  great  maturity — a  more  remarkable  matur- 
ity than  has  ever  been  exhibited  by  any  other  person,  at  so 
•early  an  age,  in  the  same  department  of  thought." 

1  John  T.  Morse,  Jr.,  "The  Life  of  Alexander  Hamilton,"  i.  13-15  ;  Henry 
Cabot  Lodge.  "Alexander  Hamilton,"  8-9. 

*  Henry  Cabot  Lodge,  "  The  Works  of  Alexander  Hamilton,"  i.  3. 
3  "  Constitutional  History  of  the  United  States,"  i.  274. 


/ 


386  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

II. 

Of  these  two  pamphlets  by  Hamilton,  the  central  doctrine 
is  the  ultimate  one  into  which  American  political  thinking 
had  then  developed,  perhaps  in  half-conscious  preparation 
for  the  still  suppressed  and  repudiated  doctrine  of  Inde- 
pendence, namely,~~that  the-  American- eolofties^  owed_allegi- 
ance  to ^  the ^k«rg~ only7-aftd- «et  to  parliament  at  all1;  in 
short,  that  parliament  had  no  right  whatsoever  to  legislate 
for  America.8  Moreover,  in  Hamilton's  pamphlets,  and 
mustered  about  this  central  doctrine,  there  stand  in  battle 
array  those  other  propositions,  both  positive  and  negative, 
which  logically  attend  it :  especially,  that  every  attempt  at  a 
constitutional  readjustment  not  based  on  this  doctrine, 
would  be  dangerous  and  futile  3 ;  that  this  doctine  was  en- 
tirely consistent  with  colonial  fealty  to  the  empire 4 ;  that  in 
the  assertion  and  defense  of  this  doctrine,  the  American 
people  may  properly  resort  to  every  means  that  shall  be 
needful — whether  provided  by  existing  laws  or  not,  and 
whether  pacific  or  otherwise.5 

For  example,  the  "  Westchester  Farmer  "  had  made 
much  of  the  supposed  lack  of  legality  attaching  to  the  Con- 
tinental Congress.  "  Granting  your  supposition  were 
true,"  retorts  Hamilton,  "  it  would  be  a  matter  of  no  real 
importance.  When  the  first  principles  of  civil  society  are 
violated,  and  the  rights  of  a  whole  people  are  invaded,  the 
common  forms  of  municipal  law  are  not  to  be  regarded. 
Men  may  then  betake  themselves  to  the  law  of  nature;  and, 
if  they  but  conform  their  actions  to  that  standard,  all  cavils 
against  them  betray  either  ignorance  or  dishonesty.  There 
are  some  events  in  society  to  which  human  laws  cannot 
extend,  but  when  applied  to  them  lose  all  their  force  and 
efficacy.  In  short,  when  human  laws  contradict  or  discoun- 

"  The  Farmer  Refuted,"  25-38.  8  Ibid.  5-15,  49-50. 

1  "  A  Full  Vindication,"  etc.,  23-24,  33.     "  The  Farmer  Refuted,"  24-25. 
*  "The  Farmer  Refuted,"  15-17,  21. 

1  "  A  Full  Vindication,"  etc.,  4,  8,  10-12,  20-21.  "  The  Farmer  Refuted," 
50-53,  55,  58,  65-66,  70,  75. 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON.  387 

tenance  the  means  which  are  necessary  to  preserve  the 
essential  rights  of  any  society,  they  defeat  the  proper  end  of 
all  laws,  and  so  become  null  and  void. 

But  you  have  barely  asserted,  not  proved,  this  illegality. 
If  by  the  term,  you  mean  contrariety  to  law,  I  desire  you 
to  produce  the  law  against  it,  and  maintain  there  is  none  in 
being.  If  you  mean  that  there  is  no  law  the  intention  of 
which  may  authorize  such  a  contention,  I  deny  this  also.  It 
has  always  been  a  principle  of  the  law,  that  subjects  have  a 
right  to  state  their  grievances,  and  petition  the  king  for 
redress.  ...  If  so,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  when  a 
people  are  aggrieved,  and  their  circumstances  will  not  allow 
them  unitedly  to  petition  in  their  own  persons,  they  may 
appoint  representatives  to  do  it  for  them."  ' 

So,  too,  after  he  has  argued  at  great  length  and  with 
great  power,  that  the  exemption  of  the  American  colonies 
from  parliamentary  control  is  provided  for  in  their  charters, 
he  shrewdly  anticipates  the  objection  that  New  York,  at 
least,  is  an  American  colony  which  has  no  charter,  and  has 
never  had  one.  To  this  objection  he  replies  with  unruffled 
composure:  "It  is  true,  that  New  York  has  no  charter.. 
But,  if  it  could  support  its  claim  to  liberty  in  no  other  way,| 
it  might  with  justice  plead  the  common  principles  of  coloni- 
zation ;  for  it  would  be  unreasonable  to  seclude  one  colony 
from  the  enjoyment  of  the  most  important  privileges  of  the 
rest.  There  is  no  need,  however,  of  this  plea.  The  sacred 
rights  of  mankind  are  not  to  be  rummaged  for  among  old 
parchments,  or  musty  records.  They  are  written  as  with  a 
sunbeam,  in  the  whole  volume  of  human  nature,  by  the 
hand  of  the  Divinity  itself,  and  can  never  be  erased  or 
obscured  by  mortal  power."  " 

The  "  Westchester  Farmer"  had  produced  a  profound 
effect  by  his  contention  that,  while1  the  Americans  no  doubt 
had  serious  grievances  to  be  redressed,  they  had  gone  about 
the  business  in  the  wrong  way;  that,  instead  of  such  dis- 
orderly and  irritating  measures  as  they  had  resorted  to,  they 

1  "  The  Farmer  Refuted,"  52-53,  both  text  and  note.  *  Ibid.  38. 


388  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

should  have  approached  the  throne  with  loyal  and  respectful 
petitions;  and  that  loyal  and  respectful  petitions  would  have 
bsen  listened  to.  "  It  betrays,"  says  Hamilton,  "  an  igno- 
rance of  human  nature  to  suppose,  that  a  design  formed  and 
ripening  for  several  years,  against  the  liberties  of  any  peo- 
ple, might  be  frustrated  by  the  mere  force  of  entreaty. 
Men  must  cease  to  be  as  fond  of  power  as  they  are,  before 
this  can  be  the  case."  ' 

Thus,  at  every  turn  in  a  debate  which  needed  to  be  in 
part  a  technical  one,  this  marvelous  youth,  while  quick  and 
expert  in  the  use  of  technical  arguments,  never  fails  by  the 
assertion  of  some  broad,  noble,  and  illuminating  principle, 
to  lift  the  controversy  above  the  pettiness  and  the  aridity 
natural  to  all  discussion  confined  to  the  mere  letter  of  the 
legal  text.  Here  in  America  he  finds  some  millions  of  men 
and  women  fretting  themselves  over  nice  questions  touching 
the  basis  and  the  scope  of  civil  liberty;  when  straightway 
he  expels  all  pedantry  and  all  political  pharisaism  from  the 
discussion  by  the  sweet  breath  of  such  quiet  and  sane  words 
as  these:  "  Civil  liberty  is  only  natural  liberty,  modified  and 
secured  by  the  sanctions  of  civil  society.  It  is  not  a  thing 
in  its  own  nature  precarious  and  dependent  on  human  will 
and  caprice ;  but  is  conformable  to  the  constitution  of  man, 
as  well  as  necessary  to  the  well-being  of  society. ' ' " 

III. 

Even  more  astonishing,  perhaps,  is  the  evidence  here 
given  of  military  as  well  as  of  political  genius  on  the  part  of 
this  juvenile  pamphleteer.  He  shows  clear  and  complete 
foresight  of  the  exact  conditions  of  the  stupendous  physical 
conflict  which  was  approaching;  of  the  precise  way  in  which 
it  was  to  be  met  on  behalf  of  the  Americans;  and  of  the 
attitude  toward  us  and  toward  England,  which  would  inev- 
itably be  taken  by  the  nations  of  Europe — particularly  by 
France,  Spain,  and  Holland.3  Thus,  within  the  compass  of 

1  "  The  Farmer  Refuted,"  58.  2  Ibid.  22.  3  Ibid.  70-75. 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON.  389 

two  or  three  pages,  printed  several  months  before  there  was 
an  American  army  in  existence,  and  before  Washington  had 
been  appointed  to  take  command  of  it,  one  may  read  a  dis- 
tinct delineation  of  the  strategy  which  in  our  circumstances 
would  be  necessary  for  success — the  very  strategy,  in  fact, 
which  was  adopted  and  put  into  force  by  Washington,  and 
through  which  the  American  cause  won  its  weary  way  to 
victory  during  the  subsequent  eight  years.1 

Finally,  near  the  close  of  his  second  pamphlet,  this  writer 
— still  unknown  to  the  public — has  a  noble  passage  of  self- 
reference,  in  reply  to  certain  personal  allusions  which  his 
antagonist  had  made  to  him — to  his  supposed  connection 
with  Revolutionary  measures  then  in  progress,  to  his  sup- 
posed motives  for  the  part  he  was  taking  in  the  troubles  of 
the  time:  "  Whatever  opinion  may  be  entertained  of  my 
sentiments  and  intentions,  I  attest  that  Being  whose  all- 
seeing  eye  penetrates  the  inmost  recesses  of  the  heart,  that 
I  am  not  influenced,  in  the  part  I  take,  by  any  unworthy 
motive ;  that  if  I  am  in  an  error,  it  is  my  judgment,  not  my 
heart,  that  errs ;  that  I  earnestly  lament  the  unnatural  quar- 
rel between  the  parent  state  and  the  colonies,  and  most 
ardently  wish  for  a  speedy  reconciliation — a  perpetual  and 
mutually  beneficial  union ;  that  I  am  a  warm  advocate  for 
limited  monarchy,  and  an  unfeigned  well-wisher  to  the 
present  royal  family.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  I  am  invio- 
lably attached  to  the  essential  rights  of  mankind,  and  the 
true  interests  of  society.  I  consider  civil  liberty,  in  a  genu- 
ine unadulterated  sense,  as  the  greatest  of  terrestrial  bless- 
ings. I  am  convinced  that  the  whole  human  race  is  entitled 
to  it,  and  that  it  can  be  wrested  from  no  part  of  them,  with- 
out the  blackest  and  most  aggravated  guilt.  I  verily 
believe,  also,  that  the  best  way  to  secure  a  permanent  and 
happy  union  between  Great  Britain  and  the  colonies  is  to 
permit  the  latter  to  be  as  free  as  they  desire.  To  abridge 
their  liberties,  or  to  exercise  any  power  over  them  which 
they  are  unwilling  to  submit  to,  would  be  a  perpetual  source 

1  "The  Farmer  Refuted,"  72-73- 


390  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

of  discontent  and  animosity.  A  continual  jealousy  would 
exist  on  both  sides.  This  would  lead  to  tyranny  on  the  one 
hand,  and  to  sedition  and  rebellion  on  the  other.  Imposi- 
tions not  really  grievous  in  themselves,  would  be  thought 
so;  and  the  murmurs  arising  from  thence  would  be  consid- 
ered as  the  effect  of  a  turbulent  ungovernable  spirit.  These 
jarring  principles  would  at  length  throw  all  things  into  dis- 
order, and  be  productive  of  an  irreparable  breach,  and  a 
total  disunion.  That  harmony  and  mutual  confidence  may 
speedily  be  restored  between  all  parts  of  the  British  empire, 
is  the  favorite  wish  of  one  who  feels  the  warmest  sentiments 
of  good  will  to  mankind,  who  bears  no  enmity  to  you,  and 
who  is — A  sincere  Friend  of  America." 

In  the  exposition  of  his  views  touching  the  several  vast 
fields  of  thought  here  brought  under  consideration, — consti- 
tutional law,  municipal  law,  the  long  line  of  colonial  char- 
ters, colonial  laws  and  precedents,  international  polity  as 
affecting  the  chief  nations  of  Christendom,  justice  in  the 
abstract  and  justice  in  the  concrete,  human  rights  both 
natural  and  conventional,  the  physical  and  metaphysical 
conditions  underlying  the  great  conflict  then  impending, — it 
must  be  confessed,  that  this  beardless  philosopher,  this 
statesman  not  yet  out  of  school,  this  military  strategist 
scarcely  rid  of  his  roundabout,  exhibits  a  range  and  pre- 
cision of  knowledge,  a  ripeness  of  judgment,  a  serenity,  a 
justice,  a  massiveness  both  of  thought  and  of  style,  which 
would  perhaps  make  incredible  the  theory  of  his  authorship 
of  these  pamphlets,  were  not  this  theory  confirmed  by  his 
undoubted  exhibition  in  other  ways,  at  about  the  same 
period  of  his  life,  of  the  same  astonishing  qualities :  as  in 
his  "  Remarks  on  the  Quebec  Bill,"  2  published  in  1775  ;  in 
his  letters  under  the  signature  of  "  Publius,"  3  published  in 
1778;  in  his  essays  over  the  signature  of  "  The  Continent- 

1  "The  Farmer  Refuted,"  77-78. 

5  Consisting  of  two  articles,  first  printed  in  "  The  New  York  Journal,"  and 
reprinted  in  "  The  Works  of  Hamilton,"  Lodge's  ed.,  i.  171-178. 
3  Ibid.  189-200. 


JOHN  ADAMS.  391 

alist, "  '  published  in  1781;  above  all,  in  his  personal  letter 
to  James  Duane"  written  in  1780,  and  containing  a  power- 
ful statement  of  the  defects  of  the  articles  of  confederation, 
and  an  almost  miraculous  forecast  of  the  very  incidents  and 
sequences  of  the  process  by  which,  some  seven  or  eight 
years  afterward,  the  articles  of  confederation  were  actually 
developed  into  the  constitution  of  the  United  States. 

IV. 

Not  long  after  his  return  home  from  the  first  Continental 
Congress,  John  Adams  seems  to  have  been  startled  by  the 
argumentative  ability  and  the  brilliance  of  certain  essays 
then  appearing  in  a  Boston  newspaper  over  the  signature  of 
"  Massachusettensis,"  and  well  calculated,  as  he  thought,  to 
turn  away  popular  support  from  that  plan  of  American 
opposition  which  the  Congress  had  just  promulgated.  These 
essays  at  once  called  forth  many  replies, — none  more  nota- 
ble than  those  which  were  written  by  John  Adams  himself, 
and  which,  over  the  signature  of  "  Novanglus, "  were  pub- 
lished in  the  "  Boston  Gazette  "  between  the  twenty-third 
of  January  and  the  seventeenth  of  April,  1775.  Although 
the  series  was  then  abruptly  closed  by  the  outbreak  of  hos- 
tilities,— an  event  which  had  the  added  effect  of  diminishing 
to  some  extent  the  pertinence  of  any  further  verbal  discus- 
sion of  American  rights, — these  papers  were,  even  after  that 
event,  widely  read  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  and  were 
repeatedly  published  on  the  other  side;  as  in  London  by 
Almon  in  the  "  Remembrancer"  for  1775;  in  Amsterdam, 
in  a  Dutch  version,  in  1782;  and  again  in  London  by  John 
Stockdale  in  1784.  Even  so  late  as  the  year  1819,  they 
were  once  more  published  in  this  country, — bound  up  in  the 
same  volume  with  the  essays  to  which  they  were  originally 
a  reply.3 

1  Originally  published  in  "  The  New  York  Packet,"  and  reprinted  complete 
for  the  first  time  in  the  "  Works  of  Hamilton,"  Lodge's  ed.,  i.  229-273. 

•  "  The  Works  of  Hamilton,"  Lodge's  ed.,  i.  203-228. 

3  The  most  accessible  edition  of  "Novanglus"  is  that  included  in  "The 
Works  of  John  Adams,"  iv.  3-177. 


392  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Probably  no  reader  of  these  essays  can  now  avoid  the  im- 
pression that  the  celebrity  still  attaching  to  them  is  due  ta 
the  celebrity  achieved  by  their  author  in  other  fields,  rather 
than  to  any  unusual  literary  merit  in  the  essays  themselves. 
Trenchant,  pungent,  able,  and  indeed  powerful,  they  are,  as 
statements  of  the  radical  and  aggressive  side  of  the  great 
controversy.  They  contain,  also,  single  passages  of  passion- 
ate and  energetic  eloquence,  snatches  of  caustic  humor, 
clever  strokes  of  retaliatory  fencing  and  of  logical  word-play, 
occasional  sentences  which  flash  light  far  down  into  the 
crevices  of  the  great  problem  in  dispute.  Above  all,  for  a 
lawyer-like  presentation  of  the  later  American  doctrine  of 
the  allegiance  of  the  colonies  to  the  person  of  the  king  only, 
and  of  their  total  exemption  from  the  authority  of  parlia- 
ment, they  are  certainly  learned,  ingenious,  and  masterful — 
even  if  at  times  inaccurate  and  unsound.  Nevertheless,  as 
examples  of  literary  statement  they  have  many  defects: 
they  set  out  with  the  blustering  proclamation  of  a  large  pur- 
pose, which  they  speedily  forget  and  abandon  ;  they  abound 
in  whim  and  extravagance;  they  are  disjointed,  rambling, 
disproportioned ;  before  they  have  proceeded  far,  they 
plunge  into  a  vast  morass  of  technical  discussion,  into 
which,  perhaps,  no  living  reader  will  ever  follow  the  writer, 
from  which,  in  fact,  the  writer  himself  never  emerges  alive. 

V. 

Every  student  of  the  political  writings  produced  among 
us  in  the  years  1774  and  1775  will  come  upon  many  passages 
of  satire  and  invective  which  can  be  understood  only  through 
some  acquaintance  with  the  person  and  the  career  of  Myles. 
Cooper,  then  president  of  King's  College,  New  York, — an 
Anglican  clergyman  of  high  cultivation,  of  wit,  and  of 
somewhat  versatile  literary  gifts,— closely  associated  with 
Seabury,  Wilkins,  Chandler,  Inglis,  and  other  Loyalist 
writers  of  the  neighborhood,  in  the  effort  to  enlighten  their 
fellow-colonists  respecting  their  political  duty  in  those 
troublous  times.  For  his  own  part  in  this  campaign  of 


MYLES   COOPER.  393 

education,  President  Cooper  became  extremely  odious  to 
the  advocates  of  radical  measures, — a  fact  of  which  he  was 
made  painfully  aware  by  many  noisy  and  violent  demonstra- 
tions. Finally,  on  a  certain  night  in  August,  1775,  while  in 
his  rooms  in  the  college,  he  received  notice  of  the  approach 
of  a  considerable  body  of  liberty-loving  gentlemen  who, 
being  bent  on  "  seizing  him  in  his  bed,  shaving  his  head, 
cutting  off  his  ears,  slitting  his  nose,  stripping  him  naked, 
and  setting  him  adrift,"  had  merely  paused  by  the  way  to 
strengthen  themselves  for  their  noble  task  by  "  a  proper 
dose  of  Madeira."  '  Making  his  escape  through  a  back  win- 
dow, Cooper  was  piloted  by  one  of  his  pupils  to  a  place  of 
refuge  for  the  night,  and  on  the  morrow  was  taken  on  board 
an  English  ship-of-war,  wherein  he  soon  sailed  for  England. 
In  July,  of  the  following  year,  he  published  in  "  The  Gen- 
tleman's Magazine"  *  a  poem,  as  'VBy  an  Exile  from 
America,"  giving  in  sixteen  six-lined  stanzas  a  narrative  of 
the  attack  of  the  mob  upon  him  and  of  his  own  difficult 
escape  from  its  clutches, — a  poem  somewhat  whimpering  in 
tone,  and  somewhat  too  suggestive  of  a  martyr  advertising 
his  own  martyrdom  in  blissful  expectation  of  immediate 
ecclesiastical  rewards.  And,  indeed,  in  this  expectation 
Cooper  was  not  disappointed.  For  all  his  sufferings,  he 
was  duly  consoled  by  two  good  livings  in  the  church.  In 
December,  1776,  he  preached  at  Oxford  a  sermon  on  "  The 
Causes  of  the  American  Rebellion,"  which  was  published 
there  in  the  following  year.  Dying  at  Edinburgh  in  1785. 
he  was  buried,  according  to  his  own  wish,  in  a  small  and  a 
very  exclusive'cemetery  in  the  neighborhood,  and  thus,  as 
his  epitaph,  written  by  himself,  expressed  it : 

"  unobscured  by  crowds,  withdrew 
To  rest  among  a  chosen  few." 

In  consideration  of  his  painful  experience  at  the  hand  of 
crowds  in  New  York,  it  will  perhaps  be  conceded  that  this 

1  "  Appleton's  Cyclopedia  of  Am.  Biog.,"  i.  730.        s  Pages  326-327. 


394  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

preference  of  his  for  a  posthumous  avoidance  of  them,  even 
in  Edinburgh,  was  not  unnatural. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  during  portions  of  the  years 
1 774  and  1775,  the  uncommon  literary  gifts  of  Myles  Cooper 
were  freely  at  the  service  of  the  Loyalist  cause,  and  that 
from  his  pen  came  some  of  the  wittiest  and  most  stinging 
jeux-d'esprit  in  the  Loyalist  newspapers  of  that  period.  To 
him,  also,  by  common  consent,  were  attributed  two  famous 
political  pamphlets,  both  published  in  1774,  and  both  deal- 
ing with  the  controversy  precipitated  by  the  first  Conti- 
nental Congress.  Of  these,  the  first  was  "  The  American 
Querist,  or,  Some  Questions  Proposed  relative  to  the  pres- 
ent Disputes  between  Great  Britain  and  her  American  Colo- 
nies," signed  by  "  A  North  American."  It  consists  of  a 
hundred  questions,  all  having  to  do  with  the  matters  then 
at  issue.  Nothing  is  asserted;  but  the  questions  are  so 
asked  as  to  indicate  how  every  man  of  sense  and  of  right 
feeling  is  expected  to  answer  them, — a  mode  of  discussion 
whereby  the  author  can  vibrate  at  pleasure  between  concili- 
ation and  satire,  and  can  be  very  dogmatic  without  seeming 
to  be  so.  The  second  pamphlet,  "  A  Friendly  Address  to 
all  Reasonable  Americans,"  was  still  more  celebrated, — 
becoming,  indeed,  a  sort  of  standard  for  the  Loyalists  of 
the  time  to  rally  to,  and  a  favorite  target  for  the  shots  of 
their  opponents.  Taking  up  the  leading  arguments  urged 
on  behalf  of  the  radical  measures  then  in  progress,  it  replies 
to  them  in  a  fair  and  considerate  tone,  but  with  great  acute- 
ness  and  force,  and  thus  clears  the  ground  for  the  develop- 
ment of  the  conservative  American  position,  namely,  an 
assertion  of  their  constitutional  rights-^vjthin  the_  empire, 
doing  this  with  courage  and  firmness,  yet  with  decency, 
moderation,  and  good  humor,  and  the  rejection  of  every  act 
or  aspect  of  disloyalty.  "  The  great  object  in  view  should 
be  a  general  American  constitution  on  a  free  and  generous 
plan,  worthy  of  Great  Britain  to  give  and  of  the  colonies  to 
receive.  This  is  now  become  necessary  to  the  mutual  inter- 
est and  honor  both  of  the  parent  kingdom  and  of  its  Ameri- 


CHARLES  LEE. 


395 


can  offspring.  Sucb  an  establishment  is  only  to  be  obtained 
by  decent,  candid,  and  respectful  application,  and  not  by 
compulsion  or  threatening.  To  think  of  succeeding  by 
force  of  arms,  or  by  starving  the  nation  into  compliance,  is 
a  proof  of  shameful  ignorance,  pride,  and  stupidity."  ' 

VI. 

Of  the  many  replies  *  which  Cooper's  second  pamphlet 
called  forth,  probably  none  was  more  talked  about  and 
laughed  over,  and  none,  was  more  effective,  than  a  certain 
sprightly  brochure,  bearing  the  date  of  February  3,  1775,* 
and  styling  itself,  "  Strictures  on  a  Pamphlet  entitled  'A 
Friendly  Address  to  all  Reasonable  Americans.'  "  4  From 
the  first,  it  was  attributed  to  the  pen  of  General  Charles 
Lee,  and  undoubtedly  with  truth ;  for  it  has  all  the  notes  of 
that  brilliant  and  Mephistophelean  personage — eccentricity, 
fluency,  smartness,  tartness,  a  mocking  tone,  a  cosmo- 
politan air,  unusual  information,  an  easy  assumption  of 
authority  on  all  subjects — particularly  on  those  appertaining 
to  military  history  and  to  military  criticism.5 

That  the  "  Friendly  Address,"  though  an  anonymous 
publication,  was  really  the  work  of  an  Anglican  clergyman 
of  high  position,  was  a  fact  too  useful  for  purposes  of  con- 
troversy to  be  neglected  by  a  debater  like  Charles  Lee,  and 
he  does  not  fail  to  develop  it  in  his  very  first  paragraph ;  and 

1  "  A  Friendly  Address,"  etc.,  47. 

s  Among  these  replies,  a  very  striking  one  is  entitled  "  The  Other  Side  of  the 
Question,"  by  "  A  Citizen,"  and  published  in  New  York  in  1774.  I  used  the 
rare  copy  belonging  to  George  Bancroft,  now  in  the  Lenox  Library.  It  is  in  a 
tone  of  irony  and  banter,  and  its  thrusts  are  not  less  keen  than  those  of  Lee. 

3  This  date  stands  at  the  head  of  the  reprint  given  in  "  Mem.  of  the  Life  of 
the  Late  Charles  Lee,"  etc.,  136. 

4  My  quotations  are  from  an  edition  published  in  Boston,  1775. 

6  That  Lee  was  the  author  of  the  pamphlet  is  further  certified  by  its  inclusion 
among  his  "  Miscellaneous  Pieces,"  as  published  in  his  "  Memoirs,"  London, 
1792,  pages  136-155.  For  an  account  of  the  origin  of  this  book  and  of  its 
value,  the  reader  should  look  at  "  The  Writings  of  George  Washington," 
Sparks's  edition,  ix.  108  n. 


396  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

thenceforward  it  recurs,  as  an  almost  constant  refrain  of 
derision,  in  the  several  passes  and  pauses  of  his  argument: 
' '  I  know  not  whether  the  author  is  a  layman  or  ecclesiastic, 
but  he  bears  strongly  the  characters  of  the  latter.  He  has 
the  want  of  candor  and  truth,  the  apparent  spirit  of  perse- 
cution, the  unforgivingness,  the  deadly  hatred  to  dissenters, 
and  the  zeal  for  arbitrary  power,  which  has  distinguished 
churchmen  in  all  ages,  and  more  particularly  the  high  part 
of  the  Church  of  England.  I  cannot  help  considering  him 
as  one  of  this  order."  * 

For  the  convenience  of  his  readers,  he  then  gives  a  curt 
and  well-phrased  outline  of  the  pamphlet  he  is  to  deal  with : 
whereupon  he  thus  disposes  of  it  by  wholesale:  "  Now  I 
challenge  the  world  to  produce  so  many  wicked  sentiments, 
stupid  principles,  audaciously  false  assertions,  and  mon- 
strous absurdities,  crowded  together  into  so  small  a  com- 
pass."' Notwithstanding  this,  and  at  the  risk  of  offering 
"  an  insult  to  American  understandings,"  he  proceeds  to 
pick  out  and  to  reply  to  some  of  these  preposterous  argu- 
ments; as,  for  instance,  that  the  duty  on  tea  is  no  tax, 
because  "  unless  we  consent  to  the  tax,  we  are  not  to  pay 
the  duty — we  may  refuse  purchasing  it  if  we  please.  The 
same  logic  would  demonstrate  that  a  duty  on  beer,  candles, 
or  soap,  would  be  no  tax :  as  we  are  not  absolutely  obliged 
to  drink  beer — we  may  drink  water ;  we  may  go  to  bed  before 
it  is  dark;  and  we  are  not  forced  to  wash  our  shirts."  * 

Hastening  from  the  political  aspect  of  the  dispute,  the 
writer  then  turns  to  that  which  was  of  far  greater  interest  to 
him— its  military  aspect.  If  the  Americans  keep  up  their 
controversy  with  England  until  the  appeal  shall  pass  from 
arguments  to  arms,  what  reasonable  hope  for  success  can 
they  have  ?  None,  none  whatsoever,  in  the  opinion  of  the 
author  of  the  "  Friendly  Address."  "  Regular  armies  from 

1  "  Strictures,"  etc.,  2.  »  Ibid.  3-4. 

*  Ibid.  4,  The  inalienable  right  last  mentioned  by  General  Lee  in  the  above 
sentence,  is  one  which  he  is  said  to  have  habitually  exemplified  in  his  own 


CHARLES  LEE.  397 

Great  Britain,  Hessians,  Hanoverians,  royal  standards 
erected,  skillful  generals,  legions  of  Canadians,  and  unnum- 
bered tribes  of  savages,  swords  flaming  in  front  and  rear, 
pestilence,  desolation,  and  famine,  are  all  marshaled  in  a 
most  dreadful  order  by  this  church-militant  author."  * 
Moreover,  to  the  royal  standard,  as  soon  as  it  shall  be 
erected,  will  resort  "  all  who  have  the  courage  to  declare 
themselves  now  friends  to  government  " ;  and  these,  "  in  a 
good  cause,  will  be  of  themselves  formidable  to  their 
opposers.  Dreadfully  formidable  they  must  be  indeed  ! 
There  would  resort  to  it — let  me  see — .  .  .  there 
would  resort  to  it,  Mr.  Justice  Sewall,  the  Honorable  Mr. 
Paxton,  Brigadier  Ruggles,  and  about  eight  or  ten  more 
mandamus  councilmen,  with  perhaps  twice  their  number  of 
expectants,  and  not  less  than  twenty  of  the  unrecanted 
Hutchinsonian  addressers:  these  the  four  provinces  of  New 
England  alone  would  send  forth.  New  York  would  furnish 
six,  seven,  or  probably  eight  volunteers,  from  a  certain  knot 
who  are  in  possession  or  expectation  of  contracts,  and  the 
fourth  part  of  a  dozen  of  high-flying  Church-of- England 
Romanized  priests.  I  represent  to  myself  the  formidable 
countenance  they  will  make,  when  arranged  under  the 
royal  or  ministerial  standard;  but  what  will  add  to  the 
terror  of  the  appearance,  will  be  their  Reverend  Pontifex 
himself,  whom  I  conceive  marching  in  the  front,  an  inquisi- 
torial frown  upon  his  brow,  his  bands  and  canonicals  floating 
to  the  air,  bearing  a  cross  in  his  hands,  with  the  tremendous 
motto — '  in  hoc  signo  vinces ' — flaming  upon  it  in  capital 
letters  of  blood,  leading  them  on  and  exciting  them  to 
victory.  It  is  impossible  that  men  who  are  not  under  an 
infatuation  by  the  judgment  of  Heaven,  should  flatter  them- 
selves that  forty-thousand  American  yeomanry  . 
should  stand  the  shock  of  this  dreadful  phalanx. 

"  But  I  should  beg  pardon  for  attempting  to  be  ludicrous 
upon  a  subject  which  demands  our  utmost  indignation.  I 
shall  how,  therefore,  on  the  presumption  that  the  people  of 

1  "Strictures,"  etc.,  4-5. 


398  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

England  should  be  so  lost  to  sense,  virtue,  and  spirit,  as  to 
suffer  their  profligate  mis-rulers  to  persevere  in  their  present 
measures,  endeavor  to  state  to  you  what  is  their  force,  and 
what  is  yours.  I  shall  endeavor  to  remove  the  false  terrors 
which  this  writer  would  hold  out,  in  order  to  intimidate  you 
from  the  defense  of  your  liberties  and  those  of  posterity — 
that  he  and  his  similars  may  wallow  in  sinecures  and  bene- 
fices heaped  up  from  the  fruits  of  your  labor  and  industry. 
Great  Britain  has,  I  believe,  of  infantry  at  home,  compre- 
hending Ireland,  and  exclusive  of  the  guards,  fifteen  thou- 
sand men.  They  find  the  greatest  difficulty  in  keeping  the 
regiments  up  to  anything  near  their  establishment :  what 
they  are  able  to  procure  are  of  the  worst  sort.  They  are 
composed  of  the  most  debauched  weavers,  apprentices,  the 
scum  of  the  Irish  Roman  Catholics  who  desert  upon  every 
occasion,  and  a  very  few  Scotch  who  are  not  strong  enough 
to  carry  packs.  This  is  no  exaggeration :  those  who  have 
lately  been  at  Boston  represent  the  soldiers  there,  one  or 
two  regiments  excepted,  as  very  defective  in  size,  and 
apparently  in  strength.  But  we  shall  be  told  they  are  still 
regulars,  and  regulars  have  an  irresistible  advantage.  There 
is,  perhaps,  more  imposition  in  the  term  regular  troops,  than 
in  any  of  the  jargon  which  issues  from  the  mouth  of  a  quack 
doctor.  I  do  not  mean  to  insinuate,  that  a  disorderly  mob 
are  equal  to  a  trained,  disciplined  body  of  men  ;  but  I  mean, 
that  all  the  essentials  necessary  to  form  infantry  for  real 
service,  may  be  acquired  in  a  few  months.  I  mean  that  it 
is  very  possible  for  men  to  be  clothed  in  red,  to  be  expert  in 
all  the  tricks  of  the  parade,  to  call  themselves  regular  troops, 
and  yet,  by  attaching  themselves  principally  or  solely  to  the 
tinsel  and  show  of  war,  be  totally  unfit  for  real  service. 
This,  I  am  told,  is  a  good  deal  the  case  of  the  present  Brit- 
ish army.-  If  they  can  acquit  themselves  tolerably  in  the 
puerile  reviews  exhibited  for  the  amusement  of  royal  mas- 
ters and  misses  in  Hyde  Park  or  Wimbledon  Common,  it  is 
sufficient.  In  the  beginning  of  the  late  war,  some  of  the 


CHARLES  LEE. 


399 


most  esteemed  regular  regiments  were  sent  over  to  'this 
country:  they  were  well  dressed,  they  were  well  powdered, 
they  were  perfect  masters  of  their  manual  exercise,  they 
fired  together  in  platoons, — but  fatal  experience  taught  us, 
that  they  knew  not  how  to  fight.  While  your  militia  were 
frequently  crowned  with  success,  these  regulars  were 
defeated  or  baffled  for  three  years  successively  in  every 
part  of  the  continent.  At  length,  indeed,  after  repeated 
losses  and  disgraces,  they  became  excellent  troops,  but  not 
until  they  had  absolutely  forgotten  everything  which,  we 
are  assured,  must  render  regulars  quite  irresistible.  .  .  . 
Upon  the  whole,  it  is  most  certain  that  men  may  be  smartly 
dressed,  keep  their  arms  bright,  be  called  regulars,  be  expert 
in  all  the  antics  of  a  review,  and  yet  be  very  unfit  for  real 
action.  It  is  equally  certain,  that  a  militia,  by  confining 
themselves  to  essentials,  by  a  simplification  of  the  neces- 
sary manoeuvres,  may  become  in  a  very  few  months  a  most 
formidable  infantry.  The  yeomanry  of  America  have, 
besides,  infinite  advantages  over  the  peasantry  of  other 
countries:  they  are  accustomed  from  their  infancy  to  fire- 
arms, they  are  expert  in  the  use  of  them ;  whereas  the  lower 
and  middle  people  of  England  are,  by  the  tyranny  of  certain 
laws,  almost  as  ignorant  in  the  use  of  a  musket,  as  they  are 
of  the  ancient  catapulta.  The  Americans  are,  likewise,  to  a 
man,  skillful  in  the  management  of  the  instruments  necessary 
for  all  military  works,  such  as  spades,  pickaxes,  hatchets, 
etc.  Taking,  therefore,  all  circumstances  into  consideration, 
there  will  be  no  rashness  in  affirming  that  this  continent 
may  have,  formed  for  action,  in  three  or  four  months,  an 
hundred  thousand  infantry."  ' 

Finally,  is  it  to  be  inferred  from  all  this,  that  the  writer 
of  "  Strictures  "  is  desirous  of  precipitating  a  civil  war  ? 
Nay,  he  declares,  that  would  be  to  do  him  "  great  injus- 
tice." Nevertheless,  "he  is  convinced  that  being  pre- 
pared for  a  civil  war,  is  the  surest  means  of  preventing 

1  "Strictures,"  etc.,  7-9. 


400  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

it ;  that  to  keep  the  swords  of  your  enemies  in  their  scab- 
bards, you  must  whet  your  own." 

1 "  Strictures,"  etc.,i  i.  Other  examples  of  Charles  Lee's  work  as  a  lively  writer 
on  American  affairs  during  the  Revolution  are,  "A  Breakfast  for  Rivington,"  in 
"  Memoirs"  of  Lee,  130-135  ;  "  To  the  Gentlemen  of  the  Provincial  Congress 
of  Virginia,"  ibid.  156-164;  "A  Short  History  of  the  Treatment  of  Major 
General  Conway,  Late  in  the  Service  of  America,"  ibid.  173-182  ;  and  "  Some 
•Queries,  Political  and  Military,  Humbly  offered  to  the  Consideration  of  the 
Public,"  183-188.  The  last  two  pieces  are  fine  specimens  of  his  capacity  in 
malice  toward  Washington.  Perhaps  nothing  that  he  ever  wrote  gives  us  a  bet- 
ter idea  of  his  wit,  his  eccentricity  both  in  loving  and  in  loathing,  and  his  mock- 
ery of  things  sacred,  than  his  "  Last  Will  and  Testament,"  ibid.  189-193.  Of 
course,  the  question  of  his  political  character  is  not  now  before  us  ;  but  in  dis- 
missing him  from  further  consideration  in  this  place,  it  may  be  remarked  that 
Charles  Lee's  treason  to  the  American  government  was  perhaps  more  profligate, 
and  certainly  more  damaging,  than  that  of  Benedict  Arnold  ;  but  that  Lee  had 
the  singular  luck  to  escape  public  exposure,  and  therefore  the  extreme  infamy  he 
deserved,  until  after  he  had  been  in  his  grave  for  three  quarters  of  a  century. 
He  died  in  1782  ;  and  not  until  1858  was  George  Henry  Moore's  monograph 
on  "  The  Treason  of  Charles  Lee,  Major  General,  Second  in  Command  of  the 
Army  of  the  Revolution,"  first  given  to  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

THE  ENTRANCE  OF  SATIRE  INTO  THE  REVOLUTIONARY 
CONTROVERSY:  PHILIP  FRENEAU,  17/5. 

I. — The  transition  from  political  debate  to  civil  war,  April  19,  1775,  as  de- 
scribed by  two  British  officers — The  military  incidents  of  the  year — The 
new  world  of  ideas  opened  to  the  Americans  by  this  change  in  the  sphere 
of  the  controversy. 

II. — Contemporary  comments  on  these  events  as  made  by  Franklin  in  letters  to 
Priestley  and  other  friends  in  England. 

III. — The  change  in  American  literary  expression  caused  by  the  transfer  of  the 
issue  from  reason  to  force — The  development  of  satire  as  a  prominent  form 
of  literature  in  the  Revolution. 

IV. — The  materials  for  satire  furnished  by  the  character  and  results  of  the 
earliest  collisions  between  the  British  regulars  and  the  American  militia — 
British  opinion  as  to  the  lack  of  military  courage  and  of  military  discipline 
among  the  Americans — The  first  experience  of  the  regulars  with  the  militia 
at  Lexington  and  Concord — The  military  anti-climax  presented  by  the 
British  retreat — The  ironical  ballad  of  "  The  King's  Own  Regulars,  and 
their  Triumph  over  the  Irregulars." 

V. — The  Hibernian- Yankee's  epistle,  "  To  the  Troops  in  Boston  "—The  scorn- 
ful  tone  of  "  A  New  Song  to  the  Tune  of  '  The  British  Grenadiers  ' " — The 
materials  for  ridicule  furnished  by  the  military  situation  in  1775,  call  into 
the  service  of  the  Revolution  two  great  artists  in  satire,  Philip  Freneau  and 
John  Trumbull. 

VI. — Freneau's  abandonment  of  higher  poetic  work  for  the  service  of  satire — 
His  fierceness  as  a  satirist — Lines  of  self-description — His  careful  training 
for  this  work. 

VII. — Freneau  begins  his  work  as  a  Revolutionary  satirist  in  1775— Five  satiri- 
cal poems  produced  by  him  in  the  latter  half  of  that  year— His  response  to 
General  Gage's  salutation  of  the  Americans  as  rebels — "  On  the  Conqueror 
of  America  Shut  up  in  Boston." 

VIIL— Freneau's  satire,  "  The  Midnight  Consultations,  or,  a  Trip  to  Boston" 
—Declares  for  American  Independence  nearly  a  year  before  its  official 
proclamation— He  predicts  American  national  greatness— He  relents  in 
favor  of  reconciliation  with  England. 

IX.  —Freneau  renews  more  fiercely  than  ever  his  demand  for  a  total  separation 
from  the  country  that  was  so  injuring  us — His  "  Libera  Nos,  Domine." 
26  401 


402  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

I. 


"  AFTER  a  variety  of  commotions,  all  of  which  portended 
bloodshed,  a  rebellious  war  broke  out  on  the  nineteenth  of 
this  month.  On  that  day,  our  troops  were  attacked  at 
Lexington  and  Concord,  the  whole  country  rising  upon 
them ;  and  a  straggling  encounter  ensued  from  these  towns 
to  this  place."  '  Such  is  the  euphemistic  version  of  the 
leading  events  of  an  unforgetable  day,  as  given  by  a  British 
officer  in  a  letter  written  from  Boston  on  the  25th  of  April, 
1775.  "  From  Concord  back  to  Lexington,"  wrote  another 
British  officer,  with  less  disposition  to  smooth  the  rough 
edges  of  history,  "  we  sustained  a  constant  fire  from  every 
fence,  house,  hollow  way,  and  height,  as  we  passed  along. 
Here  Lord  Percy  joined  us  with  the  first  brigade:  he  had 
left  Boston  at  nine  o'clock  that  morning.  It  was  a  necessary 
reinforcement,  for  the  whole  country  were  in  arms,  and  all 
the  picked  men  for  forty  miles  around.  We  got  back  to 
Boston  with  the  loss  of  upwards  of  fifty  men,  and  many 
more  wounded.  This  finished  our  excursions  against  rebel 
magazines.  I  cannot  tell  the  rebel  loss."  * 

Perhaps  the  first  visible  result  of  this  "  straggling  en- 
counter "  was  that,  on  the  following  morning,  the  British 
army  awoke  to  find  itself  closely  shut  up  within  the  town  of 
Boston,  and  its  curiosity  to  become  better  acquainted  with 
the  interior  of  New  England  thereafter  effectually  restrained 
by  a  motley  rabble  of  armed  peasants  encamped  in  its 
neighborhood.  Moreover,  it  should  be  here  noted  that, 
for  the  remainder  of  this  year  1775,  among  the  direct  conse- 
quences of  what  happened  on  the  nineteenth  of  April,  were 
the  American  capture  of  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point,  on 
the  loth  of  May;  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  on  the  i/th  of 
June;  the  appointment  of  Washington  as  commander-in- 
chief,  on  the  iQth  of  June;  the  capture  of  Montreal  by  an 

"The  Detail' and  Conduct  of  the  American  War,  under  Generals   Gagev 
Howe,  and  Burgoyne,  and  Vice  Admiral  Lord  Howe,"  5. 
2  Ibid.  9-10. 


FROM  DEBATE    TO    WAR.  403 

American  force  under  Montgomery,  on  the  I2th  of  Novem- 
ber; and,  finally,  the  disastrous  failure  of  the  American 
attack  on  Quebec,  on  the  3ist  of  December. 

So  ended  the  year  in  which  the  physical  conflict  of  the 
Revolution  began.  And,  thus,  all  tokens  point  to  that  day 
of  evil,  April  the  nineteenth,  1775,  as  the  one  by  which  the 
entire  period  of  the  Revolution  is  cut  into  two  nearly  equal 
but  sharply  contrasted  sections.  After  ten  years  of  words, 
the  disputants  come  at  last  to  blows.  Prior  to  this  day,  the 
Revolutionary  controversy  was  a  political  debate :  after  that, 
it  was  a  civil  war.  Of  the  immense  transformation  then  and 
there  made  in  the  very  character  and  atmosphere  of  the 
struggle — in  its  ideas,  its  purposes,  its  spirit,  its  tone — no 
modern  person  can  in  any  other  way  procure  for  himself  so 
just  and  so  vivid  a  picture  as  by  studying  the  writings  pro- 
duced among  us  immediately  before  and  immediately  after 
that  fatal  day.  Of  the  former,  we  have  just  inspected  the 
most  characteristic  examples.  It  remains  for  us  now  to  look 
at  the  chief  representatives  of  the  latter. 

II. 

There  was  then  at  Philadelphia,  watching  all  these  dread- 
ful developments,  a  very  wise  old  man,  who  loathed  war, 
not  merely  as  a  brutal  way  of  solving  practical  difficulties 
among  men,  but  as  a  singularly  inapt,  clumsy,  and  incon- 
clusive way ;  a  man  who,  having  been  resident  in  England 
during  the  previous  ten  years,  had  there  put  all  hi's  genius, 
all  the  energy  of  his  heart  and  will,  all  his  tact  and  shrewd- 
ness, all  his  powers  of  fascination,  into  the  effort  to  keep 
the  peace  between  these  two  kindred  peoples,  to  save  from 
disruption  their  glorious  and  already  planetary  empire,  and 
especially  to  avert  the  very  appeal  to  force  which  had  at  last 
been  made.  By  a  glance  at  the  comments  upon  the  new 
situation,  which  Benjamin  Franklin  then  made  .from  day  to 
day,  chiefly  in  the  form  of  letters  to  a  few  distinguished 
friends  in  England,  as  Joseph  Priestley  and  William  Strahan, 


404  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

we  may  now  most  surely  introduce  ourselves  to  the  very 
thoughts  and  passions  of  the  noblest  Americans  in  that 
sorrowful  time,  and  may  perceive  both  the  prodigious  trans- 
formation in  the  nature  of  the  controversy  wrought  through 
this  change  in  its  method,  and  also  by  how  impassable  a 
gulf  the  America  subsequent  to  April  nineteenth,  1775,  is 
separated  from  the  America  prior  to  that  fatal  day. 

Thus,  on  the  sixteenth  of  May,  Franklin  writes  to 
Priestley:  "  You  will  have  heard,  before  this  reaches  you, 
of  a  march  stolen  by  the  regulars  into  the  country  by  night, 
and  of  their  expedition  back  again.  They  retreated  twenty 
miles  in  six  hours.  The  governor  had  called  the  assembly 
to  propose  Lord  North's  pacific  plan,  but,  before  the  time 
of  their  meeting,  began  cutting  their  throats.  You  know  it 
was  said  he  carried  the  sword  in  one  hand  and  the  olive 
branch  in  the  other ;  and  it  seems  he  chose  to  give  them  a 
taste  of  the  sword  first.  .  .  .  All  America  is  exasper- 
ated by  his  conduct,  and  more  firmly  united  than  ever. 
The  breach  between  the  two  countries  is  grown  wider 
and  in  danger  of  becoming  irreparable."  '  On  the  fifth  of 
July,  he  writes  to  Strahan :  "  You  have  begun  to  burn  our 
towns,  and  murder  our  people.  Look  upon  your  hands — 
they  are  stained  with  the  blood  of  your  relations !  You  and 
I  were  long  friends;  you  are  now  my  enemy,  and  I  am, 
Yours,  B.  Franklin." •*  On  the  seventh  of  July,  to  Priest- 
ley he  writes:  "  The  Congress  met  at  a  time  when  all  minds 
were  so  exasperated  by  the  perfidy  of  General  Gage,  and  his 
attack  on  the  country  people,  that  propositions  for  attempt- 
ing an  accommodation  were  not  much  relished;  and  it  has 
been  with  difficulty  that  we  have  carried  another  humble 
petition  to  the  crown,  to  give  Britain  one  more  chance,  one 
opportunity  more,  of  recovering  the  friendship  of  the  colo- 
nies; which,  however,  I  think  she  has  not  sense  enough  to 
embrace,  and  so  I  conclude  she  has  lost  them  forever.  She 
has  begun  to  burn  our  seaport  towns.  .  .  .  She  may 
doubtless  destroy  them;  but,  if  she  wishes  to  recover  our 

"  Works  of  Franklin,"  Bigelow  ed.,  v.  532-533.  2  Ibid.  534. 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.  405 

commerce,  are  these  the  probable  means  ?  ...  If  she 
wishes  to  have  us  subjects,  and  that  we  should  submit  to 
her  as  our  compound  sovereign,  she  is  now  giving  us  such 
miserable  specimens  of  her  government,  that  we  shall  detest 
and  avoid  it,  as  a  complication  of  robbery,  murder,  famine, 
fire,  and  pestilence."  1 

On  the  third  of  October,  Franklin  again  writes  to  Priest- 
ley: "  Tell  our  dear  good  friend,  Dr.  Price,  who  sometimes 
has  his  doubts  and  despondencies  about  our  firmness,  that 
America  is  determined  and  unanimous, — a  very  few  Tories 
and  placemen  excepted,  who  will  probably  soon  export 
themselves.  Britain,  at  the  expense  of  three  millions,  has 
killed  one  hundred  and  fifty  Yankees  this  campaign — which 
is  twenty  thousand  pounds  a  head;  and  at  Bunker's  Hill 
she  gained  a  mile  of  ground,  half  of  which  she  lost  again  by 
our  taking  post  on  Ploughed  Hill.  During  the  same  time 
sixty  thousand  children  have  been  born  in  America.  From 
these  data,  his  mathematical  head  will  easily  calculate  the 
time  and  expense  necessary  to  kill  us  all,  and  conquer  our 
whole  territory. ' '  a 

On  the  same  date,  to  another  friend  in  England,  he 
writes:  "  I  wish  as  ardently  as  you  can  do  for  peace,  and 
should  rejoice  exceedingly  in  cooperating  with  you  to  that 
end.  But  every  ship  from  Britain  brings  some  intelligence 
of  new  measures  that  tend  more  and  more  to  exasperate; 
and  it  seems  to  me  that  until  you  have  found  by  dear  ex- 
perience the  reducing  us  by  force  impracticable,  you  will 
think  of  nothing  fair  and  reasonable.  ...  If  you  would 
recall  your  forces  and  stay  at  home,  we  should  meditate 
nothing  to  injure  you.  A  little  time  so  given  for  cooling 
on  both  sides,  would  have  excellent  effects.  But  you  will 
goad  and  provoke  us.  You  despise  us  too  much ;  and  you 
are  insensible  of  the  Italian  adage,  that  '  there  is  no  little 
enemy. '  I  am  persuaded  that  the  body  of  the  British  peo- 
ple are  our  friends ;  but  they  are  changeable,  and  by  your 
lying  gazettes  may  soon  be  made  our  enemies.  Our  re.-pect 

1  "  Works  of  Franklin,"  Bigelow  ed.,  v.  534-535-  * Ibid-  539~54O. 


406  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

for  them  will  proportionately  diminish,  and  I  see  clearly  \ve 
are  on  the  highroad  to  mutual  enmity,  hatred,  and  detesta- 
tion. A  separation  of  course  will  be  inevitable.  It  is  a 
million  of  pities,  so  fair  a  plan  as  we  have  hitherto  been 
engaged  in  for  increasing  strength  and  empire  with  public 
felicity,  should  be  destroyed  by  the  mangling  hands  of  a 
few  blundering  ministers.  .  .  .  We  hear  that  more 
ships  and  troops  are  coming  out.  We  know  that  you  may 
do  us  a  great  deal  of  mischief ;  .  .  .  but  if  you  flatter 
yourselves  with  beating  us  into  submission,  you  know 
neither  the  people  nor  the  country." 

III. 

Of  course,  a  swift  change  in  the  literary  expression  of  the 
controversy  resulted  from  this  change  in  its  sphere  and  its 
weapons, — this  transition  from  reason  to  force,  this  aban- 
donment of  arguments  for  arms. 

The  deep,  true  love  of  Americans  for  the  mother  country, 
their  pride  in  the  British  empire,  their  sincerity  in  the  belief 
that  all  their  political  demands  were  compatible  with  their 
own  loyalty  and  with  the  honor  of  England,  their  desire 
that  the  solution  of  every  vexing  problem  should  be  reached 
in  peace, — all  these  were  realities,  realities  as  genuine  as 
they  were  pathetic.  In  the  transactions  of  the  nineteenth 
of  April,  1775,  at  the  hands  of  official  representatives  of  the 
mother  country,  all  these  sacred  realities  were  foully  dealt 
with, — they  were  stamped  upon,  were  spit  upon,  they  were 
stabbed  and  shot  at  and  covered  with  blood  and  cast  into 
the  mire.  Accordingly,  reaching  this  fatal  point  in  his  jour- 
ney across  the  period  of  the  Revolution,  the  student  of  its 
literature  becomes  then  and  there  conscious  of  crossing  a 
great  spiritual  chasm — of  moving  from  one  world  of  ideas 
and  sentiments  to  a  world  of  ideas  and  sentiments  quite 
other  and  very  different.  As  the  news  of  the  transactions 
of  that  day  travels  from  man  to  man,  upon  white  lips,  up 
and  down  the  country,  all  at  once  with  each  group  of  listen- 

1  "  Works  of  Franklin,"  Bigelovv  ed.,  v.  540-541. 


THE    TRANSITION    TO   SATIRE. 


407 


ers  there  seems  to  come  a  spiritual  revolution :  in  place  of 
what  was  before  in  their  hearts,  are  now  mute  astonishment 
as  of  persons  stunned,  a  shock  of  horror  and  pain,  the 
anguish  born  of  affection  spurned  with  insult  and  of  patri- 
otic devotion  crushed  under  outrage;  next,  a  consciousness 
of  the  futility  of  all  further  appeals  to  reason,  to  tradition, 
to  law,  to  right ;  then,  the  conviction  that  henceforward  all 
these  wonderful  questions  about  stamps  and  paints  and  glass 
and  tea,  about  the  right  of  representation  and  the  right  of 
petition,  about  the  British  parliament  and  the  British  crown, 
are  simply  things  of  a  very  dead  past,  mere  antiquarian 
trinkets  and  gew-gaws,  themes  for  human  discourse  as  obso- 
lete as  the  gossip  of  that  polite  society  that  went  down 
under  the  Deluge.  Moreover,  instead  of  all  these  politico- 
metaphysical  conundrums,  Americans  find  staring  them  in 
the  face  this  altogether  serious  and  not  at  all  metaphysi- 
cal question, — whether  their  homes  are  to  be  forcibly  entered 
by  red-coated  ruffians,  their  property  to  be  seized,  their 
wives  and  daughters  to  be  outraged,  and  themselves  to  be 
shot  down  on  their  own  doorsills  for  making  objection. 
Certainly,  the  thing  next  to  be  done  by  them,  is  to  fight; 
but  for  what  ?  For  the  privilege  of  resuming,  on  better 
terms,  their  old  place  in  the  British  empire  ?  Away  with 
the  British  empire  on  any  terms  !  For  the  red  flag  of  their 
king  ?  What  care  they  any  more  for  the  red  flag  of  a  king 
who  has  made  that  flag  redder  yet  in  the  blood  of  subjects 
who  loved  him  and  who  never  meant  to  be  disloyal  to  him  ? 
As  to  American  literature,  from  this  day  forward  it  can 
only  be  in  the  moods  and  forms  of  the  new  situation :  for 
the  enemy,  words  of  loathing,  of  scorn,  of  defiance,  gibes, 
scoffings,  mockings,  taunts;  for  friends,  words  of  faith, 
words  of  deathless  resolution,  words  of  indomitable  cheer, 
with  songs  that  may  move  men  to  fight  in  the  cause  of  the 
new  fatherland  and  gaily  to  die  for  it.  As  it  proved,  the 
most  prominent  and  the  most  characteristic  form  of  litera- 
ture developed  under  the  conditions  of  American  society 
after  the  nineteenth  of  April,  1775,  was  Satire. 


408  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

IV. 

A  most  enticing  opportunity  for  satire  was  furnished, 
during  the  year  1775,  by  the  character  and  results  of  these 
first  collisions  between  the  British  troops  and  the  poor,  ill- 
equipped,  and  ill-disciplined  provincials,  who,  as  had  been 
frankly  promised,  were  to  be  scared  or  beaten  into  submis- 
sion at  a  single  display  of  imperial  force. 

If  we  would  now  perceive  the  point  and  edge  of  this  earli- 
est development  of  regular  satire  during  the  Revolutionary 
controversy,  we  must  remember  that,  as  was  not  at  all 
strange,  the  British  entered  upon  the  war  with  no  expecta- 
tion that  it  was  to  be  a  long  and  a  desperate  one,  and  espe- 
cially with  extreme  contempt  for  the  military  resources  and 
for  the  military  qualities  of  their  insubordinate  colonists, 
basing  their  judgment,  apparently,  upon  two  supposed 
facts  :  first,  that  the  Americans  were  a  people  lacking  in 
warlike  courage,  and,  secondly,  that  being  quite  without 
military  discipline,  and  quite  without  the  willingness  to  sub- 
mit themselves  to  it,  their  volunteer  troops  could  never 
stand  up  against  British  regulars.  Moreover,  as  it  hap- 
pened, in  the  months  immediately  before  the  opening  of 
hostilities,  this  strong  Britannic  contempt  was  again  and 
again  flung  into  speech  by  indiscreet  representatives  of  it, 
and  in  a  way  admirably  calculated  to  give  it  the  widest 
celebrity  and  the  sharpest  sting.  Thus,  in  the  house  of 
lords,  the  Earl  of  Sandwich,  a  member  of  the  ministry,  had 
declared  that  as  soldiers  the  Americans  were  "  raw,  undis- 
ciplined, and  cowardly"  ;  that  they  could  never  "  look 
British  regulars  in  the  face";  that  "  the  very  sound  of  a 
cannon  would  send  them  off  as  fast  as  their  feet  could  carry 
them."  So,  also,  Major  Pitcairn,  who  was  shot  dead 
while  gallantly  entering  the  American  redoubt  at  Bunker 
Hill,  had  boasted,  on  embarking  at  Portsmouth  for  America, 
that  "  if  he  drew  his  sword  but  half  out  of  the  scabbard,  the 

1  Geo.  Bancroft,  "  Hist.  U.  S.,"  last  rev.,  iv.  137-138  ;  F.  Moore,  "  Diary  of 
the  Am.  Rev. , "  i.  344. 


THE    TAUNT  OF  COWARDICE.  409 

whole  banditti  of  Massachusetts  Bay  would  flee  from  him."  ' 
Sir  Jeffrey  Amherst,  likewise,  was  reported  to  have  said 
that  "  with  five  thousand  English  regulars  he  would  engage 
to  march  from  one  end  to  the  other  of  the  continent  of 
North  America."  a 

When,  accordingly,  early  one  morning  in  the  spring  of 
1775,  on  Lexington  common,  a  considerable  force  of  these 
invincible  British  regulars  first  saw  in  front  of  them  a  little 
group  of  undisciplined  and  cowardly  yeomen,  they  very 
promptly  fired  upon  them ;  and  having  thus  killed  eight, 
and  wounded  nine,  they  burst  into  a  laugh,  and  with  a  few 
good  round  British  oaths  they  swore  that,  of  course,  the 
Yankees  could  never  bear  the  smell  of  gunpowder.  Never- 
theless, on  that  same  day,  and  even  before  many  hours  had 
passed  by,  these  same  British  regulars,  having  ceased  to 
laugh,  and  having  found  rather  urgent  occasion  to  return 
speedily  to  Boston,  were  so  chased,  and  fired  upon,  and 
otherwise  harassed,  by  the  cowardly  provincials,  that  they 
themselves  were  thought  to  have  manifested  some  anti- 
pathy to  gunpowder,  and  even  to  have  illustrated  their 
martial  prowess  chiefly  by  the  quality  of  speed  in  making  a 
retreat.  Certainly,  the  despicable  Yankees  must  have  been 
superhuman  beings  to  have  foreborne  from  the  uproar  of 
loud  derision  in  the  presence  of  this  grotesque  example  of 
the  military  anti-climax,  in  which,  indeed,  were  materials 
for  satire  too  choice  to  be  disregarded  by  our  young  brood 
of  American  versifiers  then  and  there  looking  on. 

A  rough  specimen  of  such  satirical  work  as  they  then  did, 
may  be  seen  in  an  anonymous  ballad  soon  afterward  scat- 
tered broadside  over  the  land,  and  entitled  "  The  King's 
Own  Regulars,  and  their  Triumph  over  the  Irregulars;  a 
New  Song,  to  the  Tune  of  'An  Old  Courtier  of  the  Queen's, 
and  the  Queen's  Old  Courtier.'  "  Thus  adopting  for  his 

1  F.  Moore,  "  Diary  of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  i.  344. 

s  This  was  stated  in  a  London  paper  for  April  15,  1775,  and  reprinted  in  the 
"  Pennsylvania  Packet  "  for  June  I2th  of  the  same  year.  F.  Moore,  "  Diary  of 
the  Am.  Rev.,"  i.  96. 


4io 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


ballad  the  long,  rambling,  ludicrous  verse  then  familiar  to  all 
in  the  famous  English  ballad  bearing  the  first  part  of  the 
same  title,  the  poet  represents  one  of  these  British  regulars 
in  America  as  giving  a  blunt,  soldierly  account  of  the 
achievements  of  the  force  to  which  he  belonged,  and  espe- 
cially of  the  little  incident  of  their  retreat  from  Concord, 
palliating  the  disgrace  of  it  by  ironical  excuses  which  really 
cut  the  other  way  and  made  the  disgrace  more  obvious: 

"  Since  you  all  will  have  singing,  and  won't  be  said  nay, 
I  cannot  refuse,  when  you  so  beg  and  pray  ; 
So  I  '11  sing  you  a  song,  as  a  body  may  say, — 
'T  is  of  the  King's  Regulars,  who  ne'er  ran  away. 
O  !   the   Old   Soldiers  of    the   King,   and   the   King's    Own 
Regulars. 

"  No  troops  perform  better  than  we  at  reviews, — 
We  march,  and  we  wheel,  and  whatever  you  choose  ; 
George  would  see  how  we  fight,  and  we  never  refuse  ; 
There  we  all  fight  with  courage — you  may  see 't  in  the  news. 

"  Grown  proud  at  reviews,  great  George  had  no  rest  ; 
Each  grandsire,  he  had  heard,  a  rebellion  suppressed  ; 
He  wished  a  rebellion — looked  round,  and  saw  none — 
So  resolved  a  rebellion  to  make — of  his  own. 

"  The  Yankees  he  bravely  pitched  on,  because  he  thought  they 

would  n't  fight, 

And  so  he  sent  us  over  to  take  away  their  right  ; 
But  lest  they  should  spoil  our  review  clothes,  he  cried  braver 

and  louder, 
For  God's   sake,  brother  kings,  don't  sell  the  cowards  any 

powder. 

"  Our  General  with  his  council  of  war  did  advise, 
How  at  Lexington  we  might  the  Yankees  surprise  ; 
We  marched — and  re-marched — all  surprised  at  being  beat, 
And  so  our  wise  General's  plan  of  surprise  was  complete. 


THE  KING'S  OWN  REGULARS.  411 

*'  For  fifteen  miles,  they  follow'd  and  pelted  us — we  scarce  had 

time  to  draw  a  trigger  ; 

But  did  you  ever  know  a  retreat  performed  with  more  vigor  ? 
For  we  did  it  in  two  hours,  which  saved  us  from  perdition  ; 
'T  was  not  in  going  out,  but  in  returning,  consisted  our  ex- 
pedition. 

"  Of  their  firing  from  behind  fences,  he  makes  a  great  pother  : 
Every  fence  has  two  sides,  they  made  use  of  one,  and  we  only 

forgot  to  use  the  other  ; 
That  we  turned  our  backs  and  ran  away  so  fast, — don't  let 

that  disgrace  us, — 
'T  was  only  to  make  good  what  Sandwich  said,  that  the  Yankees 

could  not  face  us  ! 

"  As  they  could  not  get  before  us,  how  could  they  look  us  in  the 

face? 
We   took   good   care   they   should  n't — by   scampering   away 

apace ; 

That  they  had  not  much  to  brag  of,  is  a  very  plain  case — 
For  if  they  beat  us  in  the  fight,  we  beat  them  in  the  race ! 

0  !    the   Old   Soldiers   of    the    King,   and   the    King's   Own 

Regulars."  l 

V. 

Another  satirical  versifier,  dwelling  upon  the  comic  aspects 
of  the  retreat  of  the  British  regulars  from  Concord,  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  adding  to  the  general  mirth  and  of  still 
further  making  light  of  these  light-footed  gentlemen,  by 
means  of  a  pretended  epistle,  as  from  the  pen  of  a  shrewd 
and  grinning  Irishman  on  the  Yankee  side  of  the  line,  and 
addressed 

"To  the  Troops  in  Boston. 

"  By  me  faith,  but  I  think  ye  're  all  makers  of  bulls, 
Wid  your  brains  in  your  breeches,  your  guts  in  your  skulls  ! 

1  This  ballad,  which  was  circulated  during  the  Revolution  in  many  forms,  is 
given  in  full  by  F.  Moore,  "  Diary  of  the  Am.   Rev.,"  i.  214-216,  as  from  the 
"  Pennsylvania  Evening  Post,"  for  March  30,  1776. 


412  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Get  home  wid  your  muskets,  and  put  up  your  swords, 
And  look  in  your  books  for  the  maneing  of  words  : 
Ye  see  now,  me  honeys,  how  much  ye  're  mistaken, — 
For  Concord  by  discord  can  never  be  baten  ! 

"  How  brave  ye  wint  out  wid  your  muskets  all  bright, 
And  thought  to  befrighten  the  folks  wid  the  sight ; 
But  whin  ye  got  there,  how  they  powder'd  your  pums, 

And  all  the  way  home  how  they  pepper'd  your ; 

And  is  it  not,  honeys,  a  comical  crack, 

To  be  proud  in  the  face,  and  be  shot  in  the  back  ! 

"  How  came  ye  to  think,  now,  they  did  not  know  how 
To  be  afther  their  firelocks  as  smartly  as  you  ? 
Why,  ye  see  now,  me  honeys,  't  is  nothing  at  all — 
But  to  pull  at  the  trigger — and  pop  goes  the  ball. 

"  And  what  have  ye  got  now,  wid  all  your  designin', 
But  a  town  widout  victuals  to  sit  down  and  dine  in  ; 
And  to  look  on  the  ground  like  a  parcel  of  noodles, 
And  sing  how  the  Yankees  have  conquer'd  the  Doodles  ? 
I  'm  sure  if  ye  're  wise,  ye  '11  make  peace  for  a  dinner, — 
For  fightin'  and  fastin'  will  soon  make  ye  thinner."  ' 

From  mere  irony,  from  playful  ridicule  to  stern  derision, 
to  proud  and  scoffing  defiance,  was  for  the  American  satir- 
ists in  1775  an  easy  transition,  as  the  spring  of  that  year 
advanced  into  the  summer  and  the  autumn,  and  as  the 
incompetence  of  British  generalship  in  America  continued 
to  develop  its  almost  incredible  score  of  blunders  and 
disasters : 

"  Your  dark,  unfathomed  councils,  our  weakest  heads  defeat, 
Our  children  rout  your  armies,  our  boats  destroy  your  fleet ; 

1  This  Hibernian-Yankee  ballad  seems  to  have  made  a  great  hit,  as  may  be 
easily  imagined  ;  and  it  was  printed  off  in  various  versions  both  in  the  news- 
papers and  on  separate  sheets.  F.  Moore,  who  gives  a  version  of  it  printed  in 
May,  1775,  says  that  the  trifle  first  appeared  in  the  "  Pennsylvania  Magazine." 
— "  Songs  and  Ballads  of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  92-93. 


DERISION  OF  BRITISH   TROOPS. 


413 


And  to  complete  the  dire  disgrace,  coop'd  up  within  a  town, 
You  live  the  scorn  of  all  our  host,  the  slaves  of  Washington  ! 

"  Great  heaven  ! — is  this   the   nation,  whose   thundering  arms 

were  hurled 

Through  Europe,  Afric,  India  ? — whose  navy  ruled  the  world  ? 
The  lustre  of  whose  former  deeds,  whose  ages  of  renown, 
Lost  in  a  moment,  are  transferred  to  us  and  Washington  ?  "  ' 

These  examples  of  spontaneous  and  artless  satire,  from 
American  verse-writers  whose  names  are  lost  perhaps 
beyond  recovery,  may  suffice  to  show  us  how  the  new  ideas, 
the  new  hatreds,  the  new  hopes,  begotten  of  the  first  clash 
of  arms,  of  the  first  blood  and  anguish  of  defeat  or  victory, 
found  their  prompt  and  almost  unstudied  utterance  among 
us  in  a  vast  miscellany  of  humorous  and  sarcastic  rhymes. 
It  is  now  our  pleasant  duty  to  extend  and  deepen  our 
studies  in  this  field,  and  to  note  how  the  copious  materials 
for  satire  furnished  by  this  earliest  chapter  of  military  expe- 
rience in  the  Revolution,  called  into  the  American  service 
two  great,  and  indeed  still  unrivaled,  artists  in  satire,  Philip 
Freneau  and  John  Trumbull. 

VI. 

In  a  former  part  *  of  this  work,  the  attempt  has  already 
been  made  to  trace  the  poetic  career  of  Freneau  down  to  a 
time  just  prior  to  the  events  now  reached  by  us.  Though  he 
had  already  given  ample  proof  of  his  capacity  for  higher  and 
sweeter  work  than  that  of  satire,  he  then  turned  away  from 
such  work  with  full  deliberation,  as  from  something  for 

1  These  lines  are  from  "  A   New  Song  to  the  Tune  of  '  The  British  Grena- 
diers,' "  consisting  of  twelve  vigorous  stanzas.     It  seems  to  have  escaped  the 
researches  of  other  explorers  in  this  field,   and  was  found  by  me  among  the 
Revolutionary  broadsides  belonging  to  the  Pennsylvania  Historical  Society.     Of 
course,  the  typographical  execution  of  such  broadsides  was  very  careless  ;  and  in 
the  last  two  lines  of  the  portion  above  quoted,  I  have  corrected  two  obvious  errors 
of  the  press. 

2  See  chapter  viii. 


414  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

which  his  own  age  and  country  did  not  care,  and  devoted 
his  whole  strength  as  a  poet  to  the  service  of  satire  —  of 
satire  upon  the  political  and  military  enemies  of  the  Revo- 
lution. Whether  it  was  by  nature,  whether  it  was  by  cul- 
ture, Freneau  succeeded  in  confronting  the  enemy,  both 
foreign  and  domestic,  with  a  visage  as  stern,  with  a  scorn  as 
bitter,  with  a  loathing  as  ruthless  as  that  required  by  the 
unamiable  muse  whom  he  had  chosen  for  his  mistress.  It 
will  scarcely  be  doubted  by  any  reader  of  Frerieau's  verse, 
that,  in  the  development  of  that  awful  tempest  of  partisan 
rancor  and  race  hatred  which  we  call  the  American  Revolu- 
tion, this  man  was  faithful  to  his  vocation  of  stimulating  its 
violence  to  the  utmost;  or  that,  at  its  close,  the  thought 
could  ever  have  rested  as  a  burden  upon  his  conscience,  that 
any  lull  or  pause  in  the  ferocity  of  the  great  conflict  had 
been  due  to  the  least  self-restraint  on  his  part  in  the  expres- 
sion of  political  and  personal  acrimony  towards  the  armed 
or  the  unarmed  foes  of  the  Revolution.  Indeed,  in  one  of 
his  earliest  satires  he  acknowledges  the  pitiless  nature  of  his 
purpose,  the  implacable  fierceness  of  his  method : 

"  Rage  gives  me  wings,  and,  fearless,  prompts  me  on 
To  conquer  brutes  the  world  should  blush  to  own  ; 
No  peace,  no  quarter,  to  such  imps  I  lend — 
Death  and  perdition  on  each  line  I  send."  * 

In  one  of  his  latest  satires,  also,  he  causes  the  party-shifting 
printer,  Hugh  Gaine,  in  confessing  the  publication  of  some 
of  Freneau's  verses,  to  give  a  powerful  and  a  really  just 
description  of  the  poet's  relent-less  asperity  in  satire: 

"  To  gain  a  mere  trifle,  a  shilling  or  so, 
I  printed  some  treason  for  Philip  Freneau, — 
Some  damnable  poems  reflecting  on  Gage, 
The  king,  and  his  council,  and  writ  with  such  rage, 
So  full  of  invective  and  loaded  with  spleen, 
So  pointedly  sharp,  and  so  hellishly  keen, 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  86. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  415 

That,  at  least  in  the  judgment  of  half  our  wise  men, 
Alecto  herself  made  the  nib  to  his  pen."  * 

Freneau's  training  for  the  business  of  a  satirist  was  thor- 
ough. From  his  youth  up,  he  had  been  a  particular  student 
of  Latin  literature — that  literature,  the  only  original  and 
supremely  powerful  element  in  which  is  satire.  As  could 
be  said  of  but  few  of  his  American  contemporaries,  he  had 
found  his  way,  also,  to  the  French  poets  and  satirists.  If 
the  minor  English  poets  of  his  own  early  manhood,  feeble 
and  even  bastard  as  was  their  art, — Shenstone,  Macpherson, 
Mason,  Akenside,  Warton — seem  to  have  had  for  him  as  a 
contemporary  a  charm  which  they  can  never  have,  it  may  be 
hoped,  for  any  later  member  of  the  human  family,  it  still 
remains  to  be  told  that  his  true  masters  in  English  verse 
were  Churchill,  Pope,  and  Dryden,  and  in  their  special  work 
as  satirists. 

VII. 

Moreover,  Freneau  began  his  career  as  a  satirist  at  a  for- 
tunate moment, — at  a  moment  when  just  such  a  satirist  was 
in  demand,  and  when  the  materials  for  just  such  satire — sin- 
cere, infuriate,  savage,  remorseless  satire — were  furnished  to 
his  hand  in  profuse  abundance  by  the  political  and  the  mili- 
tary incidents  that  were  transacting  all  around  him.  The 
first  unmistakable  flashes  of  his  satiric  power  which  can  now 
be  recognized  on  themes  connected  with  the  Revolution, 
belong  to  that  pathetic  and  heroic  year,  1775,  when,  at  last, 
after  more  than  a  decade  of  'intellectual  controversy,  the 
crash  of  the  physical  controversy  began  to  be  heard,  rever- 
berating all  along  the  continent  from  Lexington  common 
and  from  the  grim  hill  by  the  side  of-  Charlestown.  As 
many  as  four  or  five  poems,  all  elastic  with  vigor,  and  all 
steeped  in  satiric  passion  and  acerbity,  leaped  from  his  pen 
that  year: — "  On  the  Conqueror  of  America  Shut  up  in 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  283-284. 


41 6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Boston,"1  and  "General  Gage's  Soliloquy,""  both  pub- 
lished in  August;  "  The  Midnight  Consultations,  or,  A  Trip 
to  Boston,"  s  and  "  Libera  Nos,  Domine,"  4  both  published 
in  September;  and,  finally,  "  MacSwiggen,"  '  published 
probably  in  November  or  December. 

Thus,  the  first  four  of  these  poems  appeared  within  the 
two  months  of  August  and  September;  and  the  American 
situation  at  that  very  time  both  illustrates,  and  is  illustrated 
by,  them.  In  the  last  of  the  four  the  vision  sweeps  over  the 
entire  scene,  up  and  down  the  continent,  and  takes  account 
of  all  our  chief  assailants  there.  In  the  first  three,  the  scene 
is  confined  to  the  neighborhood  of  Boston,  the  conspicuous 
person  in  it  being  General  Thomas  Gage,  who,  after  two 
futile  and  disastrous  attempts  at  penetrating  the  interior  of 
the  country,  is  with  his  half-fed  army  shut  up  in  Boston 
and  there  beleaguered  by  a  despicable  mob  composed  of 
those  American  peasants  whom  he  had  just  before,  with 
great  bluster  and  pomp  of  words,  denounced  as  rebels,  and 
doomed  to  the  halter.  These  are  the  salient  facts  upon 
which  the  eye  of  the  American  satirist  fastens;  and  first 
catching  up  the  damning  name  which  the  British  general 
had  sought  to  fix  upon  two  millions  of  people,  their  poet 
flings  back  the  sombre  compliment  with  ample  reparation : 

" '  Rebels  you  are  * — the  British  champion  cries. 
Truth,  stand  thou  forth,  and  tell  Tom  Gage  he  lies  ! 
'  Rebels  ! ' — and  see,  this  mock  imperial  Lord 
Already  threats  those  '  rebels  '  with  the  cord  ! 

"  The  hour  draws  nigh,  the  glass  is  almost  run, 
When  truth  must  shine,  and  scoundrels  be  undone, 
When  this  base  miscreant  shall  forbear  to  sneer — 
And  curse  his  taunts  and  bitter  insults  here."  6 

"  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  74-75.  9  Ibid.  59-63. 

3  Ibid.  63-72.  « Ibid.  58-59. 

•  Ibid. 83-88.  «  Ibid.  74-75- 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  417 

Of  course,  never  has  any  man  of  Anglo-Saxon  blood 
delighted,  at  first,  in  the  name  of  rebel:  the  taste  for  it 
among  us  is  an  acquisition  attainable  only  through  culture. 
In  the  bestowment  of  that  sort  of  culture,  Freneau  was 
quite  ready  to  be  of  use  to  his  countrymen : 

"  If  to  control  the  cunning  of  a  knave, 
Freedom  adore,  and  scorn  the  name  of  slave, 
If  to  protest  against  a  tyrant's  laws, 
And  arm  for  vengeance  in  a  righteous  cause, 
Be  deemed  rebellion — 't  is  a  harmless  thing, 
This  bug-bear  name,  like  death,  has  lost  its  sting."  * 

At  the  same  time  he  warns  them  not  to  forget  that  the 
mighty  Power  which,  through  its  representative,  now  ap- 
plies to  Americans  the  word  rebels,  has  an  awful  record  for 
unshrinking  thoroughness  in  dealing  with  such  offenders : 

"  If  Britain  conquers,  help  us,  Heaven,  to  fly  ! 
Lend  me  your  wings,  ye  ravens  of  the  sky. 
If  Britain  conquers, — we  exist  no  more  : 
These  lands  shall  redden  with  their  children's  gore, 
Who  turned  to  slaves,  their  fruitless  toils  shall  moan- 
Toils  in  these  fields  that  once  they  called  their  own ! 

*'  To  arms  !  to  arms  ! — and  let  the  trusty  sword 
Decide  who  best  deserves  the  hangman's  cord  ; 
Nor  think  the  hills  of  Canada  too  bleak, 
When  desperate  freedom  is  the  prize  you  seek. 

"  Haste  !  to  your  tents  in  fetters  bring 
These  slaves  that  serve  their  tyrant  of  a  king. 
So  just,  so  virtuous,  is  your  cause,  I  say 
Hell  must  prevail— if  Britain  wins  the  day  !  " ' 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  75. 
«  Ibid. 


418  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

VIII. 

The  longest  and  perhaps  also  the  most  powerful  of  these 
satires  for  the  year  17/5,  is  the  one  entitled  "  The  Midnight 
Consultations,  or,  A  Trip  to  Boston."  Though  not  pub- 
lished until  September,  its  time  is  a  midnight  in  June, — the 
midnight  following  the  Bunker  Hill  fight;  and  the  British 
chiefs,  again  baffled  by  the  rebels  as  they  had  been  two 
months  before,  and  now  disheartened  by  the  amazing 
power  of  resistance,  and  even  of  aggression,  displayed  by 
these  ill-armed  rustics,  are  represented  as  having  come 
together  for  consultation  at  the  house  of  General  Gage. 
The  poet,  guided  by  what  he  calls  the  "  glimmering  beam  " 
of  the  polestar,  has  in  a  vision  made  his  journey  thither  at 
that  very  time,  in  order,  as  he  says, — 

"  To  view  the  peevish,  half-starved  spectres  there," 

and  to  see  for  himself  just  how  these,  our  lately  confident 
assailants, 

"  sicken  in  these  hostile  climes, 
Themes  for  the  stage,  and  subjects  for  our  rhymes." ' 

As  he  comes  upon  the  scene,  and  remembers  the  sufferings 
which  these  brutal  invaders  have  already  brought,  and  the 
still  greater  sufferings  which  they  are  destined  to  bring — 
unless  driven  back — his  anger  breaks  out  in  the  form  of  an 
impassioned  apostrophe  to  his  imperiled  country,  imploring 
her,  at  last,  to  call  forth  and  to  use  the  enormous  resources 
for  destruction  which  nature  has  deposited  in  her  forests 
and  her  mines: 

"  Know  your  own  strength — in  rocky  deserts  bred, 
Shall  the  fierce  tiger  by  the  dog  be  led, 
And  bear  all  insults  from  that  snarling  race 
Whose  courage  lies  in  impudence  of  face  ?  "  * 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  64.  *  Ibid.  64-65. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU. 


419 


After  this  gust  of  wrath,  the  poet  comes  into  the  beleaguered 
city,  and  soon  finds  his  way 

"  to  the  dome  of  state 

Where  Gage  resides — our  western  potentate, 
Chief  of  ten-thousand,  all  a  race  of  Huns, 
Sent  to  be  slaughtered  by  our  rifle-guns  ; 
Sent  by  our  angry  Jove — sent  sword  in  hand 
To  murder,  burn,  and  ravage  through  the  land."  * 

At  Gage's  house,  he  looks  in  upon  the  chiefs  assembled 
there, — seeing,  of  course,  Gage  himself;  and  Admiral 
Graves,  commander  of  the  British  war-ships  in  the  harbor; 
and  General  Burgoyne  already  known  in  America  for  his 
personal  vanity  and  his  windy  rhetoric;  and  Lord  Percy, 
who  was  accused  of  having  shown  rather  too  much  agility 
in  getting  away  from  the  scene  of  danger;  and,  finally, 
General  Howe: 

"  Twelve  was  the  hour — congenial  darkness  reigned, 
And  no  bright  star  a  mimic  daylight  feigned. 
First,  Gage  we  saw — a  crimson  chair  of  state 
Received  the  honor  of  his  Honor's  weight. 
This  man  of  straw  the  regal  purple  bound, 
But  dullness,  deepest  dullness,  hovered  round. 

Next  Graves,  who  wields  the  trident  of  the  brine, 
The  tall  arch-captain  of  the  embattled  line, 
All  gloomy  sate — mumbling  of  flame  and  fire, 
Balls,  cannons,  ships,  and  all  their  damned  attire ; 
Well  pleased  to  live  in  never-ending  hum, 
But  empty  as  the  interior  of  his  drum. 

Hard  by,  Burgoyne  assumes  an  ample  space, 
And  seemed  to  meditate  with  studious  face, 
As  if  again  he  wished  our  world  to  see 
Long,  dull,  dry,  letters  writ  to  General  Lee — 
Huge  scrawls  of  words  through  endless  circuits  drawn, 
Unmeaning  as  the  errand  he  's  upon. 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  65. 


420  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

>    Is  he  to  conquer — he  subdue  our  land — 
This  buckram  hero,  with  his  lady's  hand  ? 
By  Caesars  to  be  vanquished  is  a  curse, 
But  by  a  scribbling  fop — by  heaven,  is  worse  ! " 

"  Lord  Percy  seemed  to  snore — but  may  the  muse 
This  ill-timed  snoring  to  the  peer  excuse  : 
Tired  was  the  long  boy  of  his  toilsome  day — 
Full  fifteen  miles  he  fled,  a  tedious  way. 

Howe,  vext  to  see  his  starving  army's  doom, 
Once  more  besought  the  skies  for  '  elbow  room.' 

He  cursed  the  brainless  minister  that  planned 
His  bootless  errand  to  this  hostile  land  ; 
But  awed  by  Gage,  his  bursting  wrath  recoiled, 
And  in  his  inmost  bosom  doubly  boiled."  * 

These,  then,  are  the  British  chiefs  who,  occupying  the 
high  places  in  the  council  room,  are  surrounded  by  a  crowd 
of  inferior  officers — 

"  a  pensioned  clan, 
A  sample  of  the  multitudes  that  wait, 
Pale  sons  of  famine  at  Perdition's  gate  ; 

Knights,  captains,  squires — a  wonder-working  band  ! 
Held  at  small  wages  till  they  gain  the  land." a 

The  deliberations  are  opened  by  General  Gage,  who,  humil- 
iated and  angry  over  the  result  of  the  war  thus  far,  and 
especially  over  the  battle  of  that  day,  gives  vent  to  his 
spleen,  and  meanly  trying  to  fasten  the  blame  upon  his 
subordinates,  has  only  courage  enough  to  fling  a  taunt  at 
young  Percy : 

"  Now  Gage,  rebounding  from  his  cushioned  seat, 
Swore  thrice,  and  cried  '  T  is  nonsense  to  be  beat  ! 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  65-67.  s  Ibid.  66-67. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  421 

Thus  to  be  drubbed  !    Pray,  warriors,  let  me  know 
Which  be  in  fault,  myself,  the  fates,  or  you  ! 
Henceforth  let  Britain  deem  her  men  mere  toys  ! 
Gods  !  to  be  frighted  thus  by  country  boys. 
Why,  if  our  army  had  a  mind  to  sup, 
They  might  have  eat  that  schoolboy  army  up  ! 
Three  thousand  to  twelve  hundred  thus  to  yield, 
And  twice  five  hundred  stretched  upon  the  field  ! — 
O  shame  to  Britain,  and  the  British  name  ; 
Shame  damps  my  heart,  and  I  must  die  with  shame, 
Thus  to  be  worsted,  thus  disgraced  and  beat ! — 
You  have  the  knack,  Lord  Percy,  to  retreat ; 
The  death  you  'scaped  my  warmest  blood  congeals, 
Heaven  grant  me,  too,  so  swift  a  pair  of  heels  ! ' 

Thus  spoke  the  great  man  in  disdainful  tone 
To  the  gay  peer, — not  meant  for  him  alone."  ' 

By  this  taunt  roused  from  his  slumber,  Lord  Percy  mildly 
defends  himself, — arguing  that,  since  a  well-aimed  ball  may 
hit  a  peer  as  well  as  a  peasant,  he  is  the  wise  peer  who 
keeps  aloof  from  danger  as  much  as  he  may ;  and  then  he 
turns  upon  General  Howe  with  the  insinuation  that;  what- 
ever may  have  been  his  own  blame  that  day,  the  disaster 
on  Bunker  Hill  was  due  chiefly  to  that  officer.  Of  course, 
to  this  charge  General  Howe  makes  reply ;  and  then,  at  the 
close  of  his  speech,  turning  from  their  miserable  past  to 
their  still  more  miserable  future,  he  appeals  to  his  comrades 
to  unite  in  some  plan  to  save  themselves  at  least  from  star- 
vation. Under  this  appeal,  Gage  solemnly  announces  to 
the  council  the  great  decision  to  which  his  mind  has  been 
brought  in  consequence  of  their  deliberations : 

"  Gage  smote  upon  his  breast, 
And  cried,  '  What  fate  determines  must  be  best. 


The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  67. 


422  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Three  weeks — ye  gods  !  nay,  three  long  years  it  seems, 
Since  roast  beef  I  have  touched,  except  in  dreams. 
In  sleep,  choice  dishes  to  my  view  repair, — 
Waking,  I  gape  and  champ  the  empty  air. 
Say,  is  it  just  that  I,  who  rule  these  bands, 
Should  live  on  husks,  like  rakes  in  foreign  lands  ?— 
Come,  let  us  plan  some  project  ere  we  sleep, 
And  drink  destruction  to  the  rebel  sheep. 
On  neighboring  isles  uncounted  cattle  stray, 
Fat  beeves,  and  swine — an  ill  defended  prey  ; 
These  are  fit  victims  for  my  noonday  dish, 
These,  if  my  soldiers  act  as  I  would  wish, 
In  one  short  week  would  glad  your  maws  and  mine- 
On  mutton  we  will  sup,  on  roast  beef  dine  !  ' 

Shouts  of  applause  reechoed  through  the  hall, 
And  what  pleased  one  as  surely  pleased  them  all  ; 
Wallace  was  named  to  execute  the  plan, 
And  thus  sheep-stealing  pleased  them  to  a  man."  ' 

Certainly,  the  satire  in  all  this  is  genuine.  The  comedy  of 
such  a  situation, — the  invincible  troops  of  Great  Britain  dis- 
comfited by  provincial  militia,  and,  pent  up  in  a  seaboard 
town,  saving  themselves  from  actual  starvation  by  a  con- 
certed resort  to  sheep-stealing  on  the  undefended  islands  in 
Boston  harbor, — not  only  has  in  it  something  extremely 
grotesque,  but  has,  likewise,  a  logical  bearing  on  American 
hopes  and  fears  touching  the  issue  of  the  contest  that  still 
lies  before  them; — and  all  this  the  poet  fails  not  to  make 
use  of: 

"  What  are  these  upstarts  from  a  foreign  isle, 
That  we  should  fear  their  hate,  or  court  their  smile  ? 

Laughs  not  the  soul  when  an  imprisoned  crew 

Affect  to  pardon  those  they  can't  subdue  ; 

Though  thrice  repulsed,  and  hemmed  up  to  their  stations, 

Yet  issue  pardons,  oaths,  and  proclamations  ?  "  * 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  70.  9  Ibid.  70-71. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  423 

And  then  it  was — nearly  a  year  before  the  project  for  Inde- 
pendence was  to  find  official  sanction — that  this  poet  bit- 
terly and  boldly  proclaimed  Independence  as  the  only 
sensible  and  adequate  remedy  for  American  wrongs : 

"  Too  long  our  patient  country  wears  their  chains, 
Too  long  our  wealth  all-grasping  Britain  drains ! 
Why  still  a  handmaid  to  that  distant  land  ? 
Why  still  subservient  to  their  proud  command  ? 
Britain  the  bold,  the  generous,  and  the  brave, 
Still  treats  our  country  like  the  meanest  slave ; 
Her  haughty  lords  already  share  the  prey, 
Live  on  our  labors,  and  with  scorn  repay  ! 
Rise,  sleeper,  rise,  while  yet  the  power  remains, 
And  bind  their  nobles  and  their  chiefs  in  chains. 
Fallen  on  disastrous  times,  they  scorn  our  plea  ; — 
'T  is  our  own  efforts  that  must  make  us  free. 
Born  to  contend,  our  lives  we  place  at  stake, 
And  grow  immortal  by  the  stand  we  make."  ' 

Nay,  as  upon  their  own  unconquerable  spirits,  so  upon 
the  face  of  nature  itself,  is  written  the  promise  of  a  great 
destiny  for  the  American  people ;  and  with  the  unhesitant 
tone  and  gesture  of  a  prophet,  the  poet  proceeds  to  unroll 
the  canvas  on  which  is  painted  the  future  of  their  nation, 
as  one  vast,  united,  free,  and  peaceful  empire  of  human- 
ity, filling  all  the  vast  domain  from  the  Atlantic  to  the 
Mississippi : 

"  The  time  shall  come  when  strangers  rule  no  more, 
Nor  cruel  mandates  vex  from  Britain's  shore  ; 
When  commerce  shall  extend  her  shortened  wing, 
And  her  rich  freights  from  every  climate  bring  ; 
When  mighty  towns  shall  flourish  free  and  great, — 
Vast  their  dominion,  opulent  their  state  ; 
When  one  vast  cultivated  region  teems 
From  ocean's  side  to  Mississippi's  streams, 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  71. 


424 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

While  each  enjoys  his  vine  tree's  peaceful  shade, 
And  even  the  meanest  has  no  foe  to  dread."  ' 


It  is  a  touching  fact, — it  tells,  indeed,  of  the  deep  reluc- 
tance with  which  the  American  colonists  accepted  this 
robust  remedy  of  national  Independence,  and  even  of  their 
early  fluctuations  in  mood  after  they  had  accepted  it, — that 
at  the  close  of  this  very  satire,  in  which  Freneau  so  early 
and  so  passionately  demanded  the  rupture  of  every  tie  that 
bound  us  to  the  mother  land,  even  he  relented — he,  the  im- 
personation of  Revolutionary  radicalism  and  fierceness — and 
yielding,  for  one  brief  moment,  to  the  strong  plea  of  filial 
affection,  himself  sent  forth  a  touching  prayer  for  peace — 
for  reconciliation — for  a  lasting  union  between  the  colonies 
and  the  mother  country,  such  as  they  had  enjoyed  under 
the  one  English  king  who  was  ever  fondly  loved  in  America : 

"  O  heaven-born  Peace,  renew  thy  wonted  charms  ; 
Far  be  this  rancor,  and  this  din  of  arms  ; 
To  warring  lands  return,  an  honored  guest, 
And  bless  our  crimson  shore  among  the  rest. 
Long  may  Britannia  rule  our  hearts  again — 
Rule  as  she  ruled  in  George  the  Second's  reign  ; 
May  ages  hence  her  growing  grandeur  see, 
And  she  be  glorious — but  ourselves  be  free  !  " a 

IX. 

It  must  be  told,  however,  that  this  sob  of  wounded  affec- 
tion— this  burst  of  natural  grief  over  sacred  ties  that  were 
breaking— this  naive  cry  for  an  arrest  of  Revolutionary  fury 
and  hurly-burly,  and  for  a  return  to  the  subordination  and 
the  quietude  of  the  old  colonial  times — all  this  was,  on 
Freneau 's  part,  but  a  momentary  relapse  into  political  soft- 
heartedness.  As  if  to  proclaim  his  remorse  for  such  weak- 
ness, and  his  full  recovery  from  it,  almost  immediately 
afterward  he  sent  forth  his  "  Libera  Nos,  Domine,"— a 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  71.  3  Ibid.  72. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU. 


425 


slashing,   contemptuous,  and  fierce  litany  for  total  and  final 
deliverance  from  every  shred  of  British  rule  and  contact: 

"  From  a  junto  that  labor  for  absolute  power, 
Whose  schemes  disappointed  have  made  them  look  sour ; 
From  the  lords  of  the  council,  who  fight  against  freedom, 
Who  still  follow  on  where  the  devil  shall  lead  'em  ; 

"  From  the  group  at  St.  James's,  that  slight  our  petitions, 
And  fools  that  are  waiting  for  further  submissions  ; 
From  a  nation  whose  manners  are  rough  and  abrupt, 
From  scoundrels  and  rascals  whom  gold  can  corrupt ; 

"  From  pirates  sent  out  by  command  of  the  king 
To  murder  and  plunder,  but  never  to  swing, — 
From  Wallace,  and  Graves,  and  Vipers  and  Roses, 
Whom,  if  heaven  pleases,  we  '11  give  bloody  noses  ; 

"  From  the  valiant  Dunmore,  with  his  crew  of  banditti, 
Who  plunder  Virginians  at  Williamsburgh  city  ; 
From  hot-headed  Montague,  mighty  to  swear, 
The  little  fat  man  with  his  pretty  white  hair  ; 

"  From  bishops  in  Britain,  who  butchers  are  grown, 
From  slaves  that  would  die  for  a  smile  from  the  throne ; 
From  assemblies  that  vote  against  Congress  proceedings — 
(Who  now  see  the  fruit  of  their  stupid  misleadings  )  ; 

"  From  Tryon  the  mighty,  who  flies  from  our  city, 
And  swelled  with  importance,  disdains  the  committee, — 
(But  since  he  is  pleased  to  proclaim  us  his  foes, 
What  the  devil  care  we  where  the  devil  he  goes)  ; 

"  From  the  scoundrel,  Lord  North,  who  would  bind  us  in  chains, 
From  a  dunce  of  a  king  who  was  born  without  brains, 
The  utmost  extent  of  whose  sense  is  to  see 
That  reigning  and  making  of  buttons  agree  ; 

"  From  an  island  that  bullies,  and  hectors,  and  swears, 
I  send  up  to  heaven  my  wishes  and  prayers 
That  we,  disunited,  may  freemen  be  still, 

And  Britain  go  on — to  be  damned,  if  she  will  !  " ' 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,  58-59. 


CHAPTER   XX. 


THE  SATIRICAL  MASTERPIECE  OF  JOHN  TRUMBULL:    1775. 

I. — John  Trumbull  in  1773  abandons  letters  for  the  law — Enters  the  law  office 
of  John  Adams  in  Boston — His  verses  bidding  farewell  to  verse-making — 
Finds  himself  in  the  vortex  of  Revolutionary  politics. 

II. — He  relapses  into  verse-making — "  The  Prophecy  of  Balaam,"  "  The  De- 
struction of  Babylon,"  "An  Elegy  on  the  Times,  Composed  at  Boston 
during  the  Operation  of  the  Port  Bill  " — His  first  words  of  harshness  to- 
ward the  mother  country,  whose  ruin  he  predicts — His  reluctance  to  sur- 
render himself  to  the  domination  of  politics. 

III. — Trumbull  returns  to  New  Haven  in  November,  1774 — Publishes  in 
August,  1775,  a  Hudibrastic  burlesque  on  General  Gage's  Proclamation — 
The  first  canto  of  "  M'Fingal"  is  sent  to  the  press  before  the  end  of  1775 
— Is  published  in  January,  1776 — The  action  of  the  poem  is  just  after  the 
day  of  Lexington  and  Concord — The  hero,  Squire  M'Fingal — John  Adams 
portrayed  as  Honorius. 

IV. — The  town  meeting  to  consider  the  outbreak  of  hostilities — Speech  of  Ho- 
norius against  British  aggressions,  General  Gage,  and  the  Tories. 

V. — Squire  M'Fingal  makes  reply — Denounces  the  Whigs  for  stupidity,  for  lack 
of  patriotism,  for  greed  and  cowardice — Vindicates  the  military  proceedings 
of  General  Gage — Predicts  the  utter  defeat  of  the  rebellion,  with  titles  and 
estates  in  the  hands  of  the  Tories,  and  the  Whigs  all  hanged  or  reduced  to 
slavery — The  indignant  reply  of  Honorius  is  drowned  in  Tory  catcalls — 
The  meeting  breaks  up  in  confusion. 

VI. — Such  was  the  plot  of  the  poem  in  its  original  form— The  poem  completed 
in  four  cantos  and  published  in  1782— Outline  of  the  story  as  finished— Its 
adherence  to  the  three  unities. 

VII. — The  traditional  criticism  of  "  M'Fingal"  as  an  imitation  of  "  Hudibras  " 
— Particulars  of  resemblance  and  of  dissimilarity  between  the  two  poems — 
Trumbull's  real  master  in  satire  not  Butler,  but  Churchill. 

VIII. — The  breadth  and  variety  of  Trumbull's  literary  training  shown  in  this 
poem — His  delicate  and  effective  use  of  parody — The  essential  originality 
of  "  M'Fingal  "—A  genuine  embodiment  of  the  spirit  and  life  of  the 
American  people  in  1775 — It  employs  satire  on  behalf  of  lofty  and  humane 
objects— Contrast  therein  with  "  Hudibras "  and  "The  Dunciad  "— The 
enormous  popularity  and  influence  of  "  M'Fingal"  during  the  Revolution 
and  in  several  national  emergencies  since  then. 
426 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  427 

I. 

AFTER  an  early  literary  career  altogether  notable  for  its 
versatility  and  its  brilliance,  John  Trumbull,1  like  so  many 
other  young  Americans,  before  and  since  then,  with  an 
inward  vocation  for  a  life  of  letters,  turned  away  to  a  call- 
ing far  more  likely  to  supply  him  with  bread — the  profession 
of  the  law.  It  was  in  November,  1773, — at  the  very  time 
when  the  tea  ships  were  sailing  toward  us  with  their  cargoes 
of  unimagined  disquietude, — that  he  was  admitted  to  the 
bar  of  Connecticut.  Being  then  but  twenty-three  years  of 
age  and  not  desirous  of  settling  down  immediately  to  prac- 
tice, he  went  to  Boston  with  the  view  of  spending  a  year  of 
study  in  the  law  office  of  John  Adams,  having  his  residence 
during  that  time  in  the  house  of  another  political  chieftain, 
Thomas  Gushing.  At  this  important  moment  in  his  life,  as 
he  was  giving  up  the  cloistered  service  of  poetry  and  of  fine 
letters  for  that  of  a  worldly  and  stormy  profession,  he  wrote 
in  verse  an  eternal  farewell  to  verse-making,  and  said  to 

"  nonsense,  sighs,  and  love,  good-bye  "  ; 

at  the  same  time  saluting,  with  a  rather  mocking  reverence, 
those  bewigged  and  august  masters,  in  whose  well-rewarded 
footsteps  he  hoped  soon  to  tread : 

"  In  solemn  coif  before  my  eyes, 
I  see  the  awful  Coke  arise  ; 
There  Bracton,  Fleta,  Blackstone,  Wood, 
And  fifty  more,  not  understood, 

Enthroned  appear  in  awful  state, 
And  point  and  call  me  to  their  seat. 
I  come,  ye  lawyers  !  oh  prepare 
The  wig  of  wide,  portentous  air  ; 
The  robe  of  law,  whose  solemn  grace 

1  A  full  account  of  Trumbull's  earlier  career,  is  given  in  Chapter  ix.  of  the 
present  work. 


428  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Gives  wisdom  to  the  important  face  ; 
The  conscience  mild  that  sleeps  at  ease, 
Nor  trembles  at  the  touch  of  fees  ; 
The  look  triumphant  in  the  wrong, 
And  endless  impudence  of  tongue."  ' 

The  single  year  which  Trumbull  thus  passed  in  Boston, 
proved  to  be  one  of  stirring  and  even  world-famous  business 
for  that  city,  which  was  then,  in  fact,  the  very  vortex  of 
Revolutionary  politics.  Not  long  after  his  arrival  there,  he 
may  have  seen  the  British  tea  ships,  as  they  came  sailing  up 
the  harbor,  and  may  have  heard  the  yells  of  those  amateur 
Mohawks  who  soon  afterward  rose  upon  the  well-paved  war- 
path, and  presented  in  person  their  effectual  argument 
against  the  landing  of  the  execrated  cargo.  In  Boston  he 
must  have  been,  when,  a  few  months  later,  there  fell  upon 
the  city  the  assurance  of  the  choice  and  peculiar  wrath  of 
the  king,  and  the  doom  of  commercial  annihilation  at  the 
hands  of  a  parliament  bought  and  owned  by  the  king. 
Many  weeks  before  Trumbull  had  ended  his  term  of  legal 
study  in  Boston,  his  illustrious  preceptor  had  entirely 
ceased  to  receive  clients,  and  had  gone  away  to  Philadelphia 
to  take  his  seat  in  the  first  Continental  Congress;  while 
Boston  itself  had  become  inexorably  committed  to  a  huge 
law  suit,  to  which  the  parties  were  two  angry  nations, — a 
bit  of  energetic  litigation  to  which  none  of  the  precedents 
which  Trumbull  was  then  studying  would  apply,  and  in 
which  the  advocates  most  actively  engaged  on  either  side 
would  be  unlikely  to  wear  wigs  or  silk  gowns. 

II. 

Notwithstanding  all  his  vows  of  devotion  to  the  new  mis- 
tress whom  he  was  there  to  serve,  Trumbull  could  not  forget 
his  earlier  love.  Even  during  the  hurly-burly  of  this  year 
in  Boston,  and  amid  his  ostensible  preoccupation  with  legal 

'  Trumbull  MSS. 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  429 

studies,  he  yielded  his  secret  homage  to  poetry,  writing,  in 
December,  1773,  "  The  Prophecy  of  Balaam  "  l ;  in  January, 
1774,  "  The  Destruction  of  Babylon"2;  and  in  August, 
1774,  "  An  Elegy  on  the  Times  :  Composed  at  Boston 
during  the  operation  of  the  Port  Bill."  s  It  might  well  be 
that  his  environment  should  furnish  the  tints  and  even  the 
materials  of  his  verse.  Certain  it  is,  that  there  runs  through 
these  several  poems  a  vein  of  sternness,  and  even  of  melan- 
choly: they  abound  in  the  imagery  of  tumult,  of  blood- 
shed, of  desolated  cities,  of  empires  given  over  to  wreck  and 
decay.  In  the  last  of  the  three,  the  poet  utters  for  the  first 
time  words  of  harshness  toward  the  mother  country ;  and 
he  closes  the  poem  with  a  prophetic  picture  in  which — more 
than  half  a  century  before  Macaulay  had  foreseen  the  arrival 
at  London  Bridge  of  his  fatal  New  Zealander — Trumbull 
portrays  England  as  slumbering  in  a  desert  isle  "  in  the 
skirt  of  day,"  her  fields  thick  with  matted  thorns,  piles  of 
ruin  loading  her  dreary  shore,  her  baffled  genius  sobbing  a 
futile  prayer  to  Oblivion  to  come  and  draw  a  veil  over  her 
latest  shame — her  unmotherly  and  unnatural  treatment  of 
her  American  children. 

This  fierce  note,  which  one  now  for  the  first  time  ob- 
serves in  Trumbull's  verses, — this  strain  of  passionate  sym- 
pathy with  the  direction  and  tone  of  later  Revolutionary 
politics — marks  the  moment  of  his  arrival  at  that  cul- 
minating stage  in  his  career  as  a  writer,  wherein  he  be- 
comes an  historical  personage,  one  of  the  real  forces  to  be 
reckoned  with  as  we  study  the  epoch  which  brought  to  us 
our  national  Independence.  Henceforward,  all  his  fine 
literary  accomplishments,  his  subtlety,  his  wit,  his  gift  for 
ridicule,  his  training  in  satire,  are  to  be  at  the  service  of 
the  popular  cause,  and  are  to  produce  in  "  M'Fingal,"  one 
of  the  world's  masterpieces  in  political  badinage.  From 
such  an  engulf ment  and  absorption  of  himself  in  a  grim 
practical  struggle,  he  seems  for  a  time  to  have  drawn  back, — 

1  "  Poetical  Works,"  ii.  141-146.  *  Ibid.  195-201. 

3  Ibid.  205-217. 


43<D  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

moved  thereto  doubtless  by  his  instincts  as  a  man  of  letters, 
and  by  his  love  for  the  amenities  and  the  gayeties  of  that 
form  of  literature  which  then  took  pains  to  define  itself  as 
polite.  In  the  earlier  part  of  the  year  1773,  for  example,  as 
he  was  projecting  a  series  of  entertaining  literary  essays,  he 
had  congratulated  himself  on  the  fact  that  "  the  ferment  of 
politics"  was,  as  he  supposed,  "  pretty  much  subsided," 
and  that  at  last  the  country  was  to  enjoy  a  "  mild  interval 
from  the  struggles  of  patriotism  and  self-interest,  from  noise 
and  confusion,  Wilkes  and  liberty."1  But,  as  the  weeks 
and  the  months  passed  over  him  in  Boston,  and  as  he  con- 
tinued to  view  all  incidents  from  the  fiery  interior  of  that 
political  circle  which  included  many  of  the  most  radical 
leaders  in  the  Revolutionary  movement,  it  is  not  strange 
that,  in  his  mind,  all  merely  aesthetic  or  dainty  considera- 
tions gave  way  before  the  rugged  necessities  of  the  situation. 
Thenceforward,  with  no  hesitation,  with  no  half-heartedness, 
Trumbull  is  the  scholar  in  politics,  —  the  poet  and  the  wit 
fighting  the  common  enemy  with  an  exquisite  weapon  which 
but  one  other  American  at  that  time  could  use  so  effectively 
as  he. 


Already  during  this  stirring  year  in  Boston,  his  pen  had 
been  far  busier  than  is  indicated  by  the  foregoing  list  of 
poems  which  he  wrote  at  that  time.  He  knew  by  instinct 
the  uses  to  be  made  of  anonymous  journalism  ;  and  from  his 
secret  armory,  he  shot  forth  through  the  newspapers  his 
own  sparkling  and  caustic  comments  on  the  fateful  events 
with  which  that  year  was  so  thickly  strown,  and  through 
which  the  American  people  were  hastening,  half-uncon- 
sciously,  toward  an  inappeasable  revolt,  and  toward  national 
autonomy.  Moreover,  after  his  return  to  New  Haven  in 
November,  1774,  he  still  kept  up  this  sort  of  literary  - 

"  The  Correspondent,"  No.  9,  in  "  Connecticut  Journal,"  etc.,  for  Feb.  12, 
1773- 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  431 

political  warfare,  becoming  for  the  purpose  a  regular  con- 
tributor to  "  The  Connecticut  Courant."  It  was  in  that 
paper  that  he  published  on  the  /th  and  I4th  of  August, 
1775,  a  Hudibrastic  burlesque  of  General  Gage's  magnilo- 
quent proclamation  to  "  the  infatuated  multitude," — a 
poem  of  some  two  hundred  and  sixteen  lines,  from  which  at 
least  fifty  were  shortly  afterward  reproduced  in  his  great 
satire  of  "  M'Fingal."1  Upon  the  writing  of  that  cele- 
brated satire  he  must  have  been  engaged  during  the  autumn 
of  1775  ;  for  it  was  in  January,  1776,  at  Philadelphia — in  the 
same  place,  and  almost  at  the  same  time  with  Thomas 
Paine's  pamphlet,  "  Common  Sense  " — that  the  first  canto 
of  "  M'Fingal  "  made  its  appearance.* 

The  time  of  the  poem  is  shortly  after  the  igth  of  April, 
1775, — within  those  hot-footed  weeks  of  astonishment, 
grief,  anger,  derision,  and  defiance,  which  followed  the 
news  of  bloodshed  at  Lexington  and  Concord,  and  of  the 
scrambling  retreat  of  the  ministerial  troops  from  those  two 
glorious  massacres  back  again  to  Boston.  The  scene  of  the 
poem  is  laid  in  a  certain  unnamed  New  England  town, 
apparently  not  far  from  Boston.  The  distinction  of  this 
town  arises  from  the  fact  that  it  is  the  home  of  one 
Squire  M'Fingal,  a  Scottish-American  politician,  who  is 
at  once  a  blustering  champion  of  the  doctrine  of  unlim- 
ited submission  to  parliament,  and  an  orator  of  stentorian 
lungs,  whose  appalling  volubility,  when  engaged  in  the  ora- 
torical act,  is  subject  to  an  occasional  reinforcement  from 

1  This  fact  was  first  pointed  out  by  J.  Hammond  Trumbull,  in  "  The  Hist. 
Mag.,"  for  Jan.,  1868,  in  an  article  entitled  "The  Origin  of  M'Fingal." 
Copies  of  this  article  were  issued  separately,  to  one  of  which  my  references  are 
made. 

8  "  M'Fingal  :  A  Modern  Epic  Poem.  Canto  First,  or  the  Town  Meeting. 
Philadelphia.  Printed  and  Sold  by  William  and  Thomas  Bradford,  at  the 
London  Coffee  House,  1775."  Notwithstanding  this  date,  the  poem  was  not 
published  till  Jan.,  1776.  It  has  40  pages,  and  closes  thus  :  "  End  of  Canto 
First."  The  only  copy  I  have  seen  is  that  of  the  N.  Y.  Hist.  Soc.  The  copy 
from  which  I  shall  quote,  is  the  London  reprint  of  the  same  year,  formerly  be- 
longing to  Jared  Sparks,  and  now  to  Cornell  University. 


432  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

a  "  Scottish  gift  of  second-sight," — a  mysterious  access 
of  cerebral  excitement  under  which  he  ascends  and  soars 
above  all  sublunar  trammels  of  fact  and  common  sense,  and 
pours  torrents  of  prophetic  calamity  upon  the  heads  of 
his  antagonists.  In  the  frequent  combats  which  M'Fingal 
had  in  townmeeting  with  the  champions  of  colonial  resist- 
ance, this  lucky  gift  of  his  brought  him  some  capital  advan- 
tages; for,  if  ever  embarrassed  by  a  dearth  of  information 
derived  from  the  past,  he  was  able  to  turn  the  tide  in  his 
favor  by  an  unlimited  supply  of  information  respecting  the 
future.  On  such  occasions,  again  and  again,  he 

"  Made  dreadful  slaughter  in  his  course, 
O'erthrew  provincials,  foot  and  horse  ; 
Brought  armies  o'er  by  sudden  pressings 
Of  Hanoverians,  Swiss,  and  Hessians  ; 
Feasted  with  blood  his  Scottish  clan, 
And  hang'd  all  rebels,  to  a  man  ; 
Divided  their  estates  and  pelf, 
And  took  a  goodly  share  himself." 

This  typical  New  England  town,  thus  favored  by  the  pres- 
ence and  the  fame  of  so  great  a  man,  was  divided  with  re- 
spect to  the  one  great  question  of  parliamentary  authority, 
into  two  nearly  equal  factions.  Of  the  conservative  faction, 
the  chief,  of  course,  was  M'Fingal;  while  the  radicals  were 
led  by  an  eloquent  and  fearless  politician  who  bore  the  sig- 
nificant name  of  Honorius,  and  whose  portrait  seems  to  be 
that  of  Trumbull's  preceptor  in  the  law,  John  Adams. 


IV. 


And  now,  in  the  midst  of  all  the  seething  and  fury  of 
passion  into  which  the  people  of  the  several  colonies  are 
thrown  by  the  ghastly  tidings  from  Lexington  and  Concord, 
the  people  of  M'Fingal's  town  are  summoned  to  a  meeting 
for  the  purpose  of  considering  the  dangers  and  duties  that 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  433 

lie  before  them,  M'Fingal  himself  being  just  then  absent  on 
a  political  visit  to  Boston.  The  place  of  assemblage  was,  of 
course,  that  edifice  of  miscellaneous  utility,  then  called 
neither  church  nor  chapel,  but  only  meetinghouse, — 

"  That  house,  which,  loth  a  rule  to  break, 
Serv'd  Heaven  but  one  day  in  the  week  ; 
Open  the  rest  for  all  supplies 
Of  news  and  politics  and  lies." 

Within  that  edifice,  thronging  all  the  aisles  and  pews,  now 
stand 

"  voters  of  all  colors, 
Whigs,  Tories,  orators  and  bawlers, 
With  every  tongue  in  either  faction, 
Prepared,  like  minute-men,  for  action." 

High  above  the  crowd,  on  the  pulpit  stairs,  looms  the 
town  constable,  with  staff  in  hand,  himself  arid  his  staff  the 
embodiment  and  symbol  of  the  irresistible  law  of  Demos. 
Just  above  him,  in  the  pulpit  itself,  stands  the  moderator, 
— his  majestic  head 

"  In  grandeur  o'er  the  cushion  bowed, 
Like  Sol  half-seen  behind  a  cloud." 

In  the  absence  of  Squire  M'Fingal,  who  would  himself 
have  had  precedence  in  speech,  the  assembly  is  addressed 
by  the  bold  Honorius;  but  before  he  has  proceeded  far,  in 
comes  the  potent  Squire  himself,  and,  with  many  a  frown 
darkening  his  face,  sits  him  down,  while  the  orator,  unawed 
by  M'Fingal's  entrance,  storms  onward  in  his  fiery  harangue. 
For  many  ages,  says  he,  has  Britain  been  a  mighty  power 
in  the  world,  wielding  her  strength,  in  justice  and  in  kind- 
ness, invincible  to  her  foes,  a  tower  of  safety  and  a  shield  to 
her  children;  and  under  her  benign  maternal  care  have  all 
these  American  provinces  risen  and  flourished.  But,  alas, 


434  1'HE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

states,  like  persons,  have  their  periods  of  old  age  and 
dotage.  That  period  has  now  been  reached  by  our  poor  old 
mother,  Britain,  whose  dotage  is  shown  not  only  by  weak- 
ness  in  war  and  by  folly  in  statesmanship,  but  especially  by 
fantastic  pretensions  to  unlimited  authority  over  her  grown- 
up children : 

"  So  Britain,  midst  her  airs  so  flighty, 
Now  took  a  whim  to  be  almighty  ; 
Urged  on  to  desperate  heights  of  frenzy, 
Affirmed  her  own  omnipotency  ; 
Would  rather  ruin  all  her  race, 
Than  'bate  supremacy  an  ace." 

In  accordance  with  this  spirit  of  frantic  and  senile  arro- 
gance, she  made  an  idol  of  the  Authority  of  Parliament, 
and  set  it  up  for  us,  her  American  children,  to  adore : 

"  Proclaimed  its  power  and  right  divine, 
And  called  for  worship  at  its  shrine, 
And  for  poor  heretics,  to  burn  us, 
Bade  North  prepare  his  fiery  furnace." 

Against  all  this  wrong,  we  opposed  our  most  earnest  sup- 
plications ;  but  disregarding  us  and  our  prayers,  she  proceeded 
to  destroy  our  ancient  guarantees  of  political  safety : 

"  Annulled  our  charters  of  releases, 
And  tore  our  title-deeds  in  pieces  ; 
Then  signed  her  warrants  of  ejection, 
And  gallows  raised  to  stretch  our  necks  on  ; 
And  on  these  errands  sent,  in  rage, 
Her  bailiff  and  her  hangman,  Gage  ; 
And  at  his  heels,  like  dogs  to  bait  us, 
Despatched  her  '  posse  comitatus.'  " 

As  to  General  Gage — that  wind-bag  warrior  whose  profes- 
sional enterprise  found  its  most  glorious  vent  in  a  crusade  of 
thunderous  proclamations — he,  indeed, 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  435 

"  was  chose  to  represent 
The  omnipotence  of  parliament  ; 
And  as  old  heroes  gained  by  shifts, 
From  gods,  as  poets  tell,  their  gifts, 
Our  general,  as  his  actions  show, 
Gained  like  assistance  from  below, — 
By  Satan  graced  with  full  supplies 
From  all  his  magazine  of  lies." 

Nevertheless,  though  Gage  be  but  a  dunce  in  war — be 
only  a  rhetorical  general — we  must  not  forget  that  even  so 
paltry  a  creature  as  he,  is  capable  of  causing  great  mischief; 
for 

"  meanest  reptiles  are  most  venomous, 
And  simpletons  most  dangerous  enemies."  % 

Then,  turning  full  upon  M'Fingal  and  his  Tory  followers, 
he  taunts  them  with  being  the  representatives  of  a  party 
composed  of  the  servile  apologists  for  the  oppression  and 
ruin  of  their  own  country, — 

"  a  venal  band, 

A  dastard  race  who  long  have  sold 
Their  souls  and  consciences  for  gold  ; 
Who  wish  to  stab  their  country's  vitals, 
If  they  might  heir  surviving  titles  ; 

Priests  who,  if  Satan  should  sit  down 
To  make  a  Bible  of  his  own, 
Would  gladly,  for  the  sake  of  mitres, 
Turn  his  inspired  and  sacred  writers  ; 
Lawyers  who,  should  he  wish  to  prove 
His  title  t'  his  old  seat  above, 
Would,  if  his  cause  he  'd  give  'em  fees  in, 
Bring  writs  of  '  Entry  sur  disseisin,' 
Plead  for  him  boldly  at  the  session, 
And  hope  to  put  him  in  possession  ; 
Merchants  who,  for  his  kindly  aid, 


436  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION, 

Would  make  him  partners  in  their  trade  ; 
And  judges  who  would  list  his  pages 
For  proper  liveries  and  wages, 
And  who  as  humbly  cringe  and  bow 
To  all  his  mortal  servants  now." 

For  such  recreant  Americans,  says  the  orator, 

"  Contempts  ineffable  await, 
And  public  infamy  forlorn, 
Dread  hate  and  everlasting  scorn." 


V. 


At  the  very  climax  of  this  invective,  M'Fingal,  stung 
beyond  endurance,  gives  a  signal  to  his  followers,  who  in- 
stantly break  forth  into  a  tumult  of  yells,  hisses,  groans,  and 
jeers,  under  which  the  speech  of  Honorius  is  extinguished. 
Then  comes  M'Fingal's  turn.  You  Whigs,  he  says,  can 
only  rail:  you  have  no  heads  for  reason.  If  it  were  not  so, 
you  would  long  since  have  been  overpowered  by  our  argu- 
ments. For  have  not  our  high-church  clergy, — Walter, 
Auchmuty,  Peters,  Cooper,  and  Seabury, — proved  beyond 
all  doubt  that  kings  and  parliaments  have  a  divine  right  to 
oppress  and  tease  their  subjects  at  pleasure;  and  hence  that 

"  sure  perdition  must  await 
The  man  who  rises  'gainst  the  state  ?  " 

Has  not  this  same  noble  doctrine  been  supported,  also, 
by  an  innumerable  swarm  of  lay  scribblers,  of  whom  are 
Brush,  Cowper,  Wilkins,  Chandler,  Booth  ?  Has  not  Leon- 
ard,  "  our  scribbler  general,"  been  able  to  show, 

"  clear  as  sun  in  noonday  heavens, 
You  did  not  feel  a  single  grievance  ; 
Demonstrate  all  your  opposition 
Sprung  from  the  eggs  of  foul  sedition  ?  " 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  437 

Has  not 

"our  grave  Judge  Sewall  hit 
The  summit  of  newspaper  wit," 

and  for  his  great  master,  General  Gage,  drawn 

"  proclamations,  works  of  toil, 
In  true  sublime  of  scarecrow  style  ?  " 

This  cannonade  of  taunting  questions,  in  which  M'Fingal 
really  exhibits  the  preposterousness  of  his  own  cause,  is 
interrupted  by  a  volley  of  sarcasms  from  Honorius,  upon 
whom  again  M'Fingal  retorts, — 

"  Your  boasted  patriotism  is  scarce, 
And  country's  love  is  but  a  farce  ; 
And  after  all  the  proofs  you  bring, 
We  Tories  know  there  's  no  such  thing,— 

That  self  is  still,  in  either  faction, 
The  only  principle  of  action  ; 
The  loadstone,  whose  attracting  tether 
Keeps  the  politic  world  together  ; 
And  spite  of  all  your  double-dealing, 
We  Tories  know  't  is  so,  by  feeling." 

And  not  only,  continues  M'Fingal,  have  you  Whigs  no  such 
thing  as  patriotism,  but  you  have  no  such  thing  as  courage. 
Besides,  even  had  you  courage,  what  could  you  accomplish 
against  the  imperial  strength  of  Great  Britain  ? 

"  'T  would  not,  methinks,  be  labor  lost, 
If  you  sit  down  and  count  the  cost, 
And  ere  you  call  your  Yankees  out, 
First  think  what  work  you  've  set  about. 
Have  you  not  roused,  his  force  to  try  on, 
That  grim  old  beast,  the  British  lion  ? 
And  know  you  not,  that  at  a  sup 
He  's  large  enough  to  eat  you  up  ?  " 


438  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Then,  too,  have  you  forgotten  those  nimble  allies  of  Britain, 
the  savage  Indians, 

"With  each  a  hatchet  in  his  hand, 
T'  amuse  themselves  with  scalping  knives, 
And  butcher  children  and  your  wives  ? " 

And  do  you  consider,  also,  how  Britain  has  already 

"  assayed  her  notes, 
To  rouse  your  slaves  to  cut  your  throats  ? 

And  has  not  Gage,  her  missionary, 
Turned  many  an  Afric  slave  to  Tory  ? 

As  friends  to  gov'rnment,  did  not  he 
Their  slaves  at  Boston  late  set  free  ; 
Enlist  them  all  in  black  parade, 
Set  off  with  regimental  red  ? " 

When,  therefore,  you  remember  this  redoubtable  Gage,  with 
all  his  league  of  "  Indians,  British  troops,  and  negroes," 
how  can  you  look  for  any  fate  but  discomfiture  ?  To  these 
vaunting  questions  Honorius  replies,  by  a  contemptuous 
review  of  that  warrior's  achievements,  detailing 

"  The  annals  of  his  first  great  year  : 
While  wearying  out  the  Tories'  patience, 
He  spent  his  breath  in  proclamations  ; 
While  all  his  mighty  noise  and  vapor 
Was  used  in  wrangling  upon  paper  ; 

While  strokes  alternate  stunned  the  nation, 
Protest,  address,  and  proclamation  ; 
And  speech  met  speech,  fib  clashed  with  fib, 
And  Gage  still  answered  squib  for  squib." 

By  these  taunts,  M'Fingal  is  goaded  to  a  pretended  vin- 
dication of  the  General's  conduct  of  affairs, — a  vindication 
in  which  the  ridiculous  incidents  of  this  futile  year  are  set 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  439 

forth  with  a  mock  gravity  that  gives  to  the  whole  an 
extremely  absurd  effect.  Finally,  M'Fingal,  ever  conscious 
that  his  real  strength  lies  in  prophecy  rather  than  in  history, 
passes  into  one  of  his  paroxysms  of  vaticination ;  and  the 
remainder  of  his  speech  becomes  a  specific  and  confident 
description  of  the  annihilating  victory  which  the  British 
forces  are  soon  to  gain  over  the  rebels,  and  of  the  splendid 
reckoning  with  which  the  ministry  are  to  reward  the  services 
of  the  faithful  American  Tories,  when 

"  The  power  displayed  in  Gage's  banners 
Shall  cut  Amer'can  lands  to  manors, 
And  o'er  our  happy  conquered  ground 
Dispense  estates  and  titles  round  ! 
Behold  the  world  will  stare  at  new  sets 
Of  home-made  Earls  in  Massachusetts  ; 
Admire,  arrayed  in  ducal  tassels, 
Your  Ol'vers,  Hutchinsons,  and  Vassals  ; 
See  joined  in  ministerial  work 
His  Grace  of  Albany  and  York  ! 
What  lordships  from  each  carv'd  estate, 
On  our  New  York  assembly  wait  ! 
What  titled  Jauncys,  Gales,  and  Billops, 
Lord  Brush,  Lord  Wilkins,  and  Lord  Phillips ! 
In  wide-sleeved  pomp  of  goodly  guise, 
What  solemn  rows  of  bishops  rise  ! 
Aloft  a  Card'nal's  hat  is  spread 
O'er  punster  Cooper's  rev'rend  head  ! 
In  Vardell,  that  poetic  zealot, 
I  view  a  lawn-bedizened  prelate  ! 
What  mitres  fall,  as  't  is  their  duty, 
On  heads  of  Chandler  and  Auchmuty  ! 
Knights,  viscounts,  barons  shall  ye  meet 
As  thick  as  pavements  in  the  street  ! 
Even  I,  perhaps — Heaven  speed  my  claim- 
Shall  fix  a  Sir  before  my  name." 

Moreover,  in  this  paradise  of  triumphant  American  Toryism, 
where  and  what  shall  be  the  portion  of  the  audacious  men 


440  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

who  have  stirred  up  such  treasonable   commotion  ?     Ah, 
they  also  will  have  their  use ;  for 

"  Whigs  subdued,  in  slavish  awe, 
Our  wood  shall  hew,  our  water  draw, 
And  bless  that  mildness,  when  past  hope, 
Which  sav'd  their  necks  from  noose  of  rope. 
For  since  our  leaders  have  decreed 
Their  blacks  who  join  us  shall  be  freed, 
To  hang  the  conquered  Whigs,  we  all  see, 
Would  prove  but  weak  and  thriftless  policy, — 
Except  their  chiefs  — the  vulgar  knaves 
Will  do  more  good  preserved  for  slaves."  l 

This  frank  avowal  of  the  hopes  and  the  hatreds  of  the 
American  supporters  of  the  ministry,  gives  to  the  Whig 
champion  an  advantage  which  he  does  not  fail  to  use. 
Turning  away,  therefore,  from  M'Fingal  with  the  sneer, — 

"  We  can't  confute  your  second-sight  : 
We  shall  be  slaves,  and  you  a  knight. 
These  things  must  come,  but  I  divine 
They  '11  come' not  in  your  day,  or  mine  ! — " 

he  lays  aside  his  mocking  tone,  and  with  simple  and  genu- 
ine passion  appeals  to  his  political  friends,  pointing  out  that 
now  was  made  plain  what  they  had  to  expect  should  their 
enemies  triumph ;  and  with  burning  words  he  summons 
them  to  a  fearless  and  a  determined  fight  for  whatsoever  in 
this  world  can  make  life  honorable  or  home  sweet.  Soon, 
however,  the  Tories,  unable  to  restrain  their  anger,  inter- 
rupt his  speech  with  their  howls  and  their  catcalls,  with  the 
shuffling  of  feet  and  the  creaking  of  pew  doors;  and  as  the 
moderator,  to  quell  the  disorder,  thumps  frantically  on  the 
pulpit  cushion,  and  adds  to  the  noise  by  his  cries  of 
silence,"  and  as  the  constable  increases  the  difficulty  of 

1  The  last  six  lines  are  cited  from  the  edition  of  1820,  contained  in  "  The 
Poetical  Works  "  of  Trumbull,  i.  77. 


JOHN   TRUiMBULL.  441 

hearing  anybody  by  bawling  out,  "  Pray  hear  the  modera- 
tor, ' '  and  as  the  enraged  partisans  on  both  sides  are  about 
to  come  to  blows, 

"  on  a  sudden,  from  without, 
Arose  a  loud  terrific  shout," 

whereupon  the  angry  partisans,  with  whom  curiosity  appears 
to  have  been  more  potent  than  pugnacity,  tear  themselves 
away  from  the  fascinations  of  the  meeting,  and  run  out  of 
the  house;  while  Squire  M'Fingal,  bidding  the  constable 
attend  him,  sallies  forth,  with  drawn  sword  and  a  ferocious 
countenance,  to  disperse  the  mob.  In  the  meantime,  how- 
ever, the  wretched  moderator,  quite  demented  by  frightr 
has  slipped  down  from  the  pulpit,  and  crawled  under  a 
bench ;  but  when,  after  some  time,  he  had  sufficiently  ral- 
lied to  be  able  to  raise  his  head  from  under  the  bench,  and 
peeping  out  had  discovered  that  all  his  belligerent  subjects 
had  taken  themselves  off,  he  gravely  emerged  from  his  place 
of  retreat,  and 

"  left  alone,  with  solemn  face, 
Adjourned  them  without  time  or  place." 

VI. 

Such  was  this  notable  poem  in  its  original  form, — a  poem 
of  about  fifteen  hundred  lines,  and  obviously  broken  off  with 
its  story  half  told.  Nevertheless,  it  was  in  this  form  that 
"M'Fingal"  did  its  enormous  work  in  stimulating  the 
thought  and  passion  of  the  American  Revolution;  and  it 
was  in  this  form,  also,  that  it  won  its  first  fame  in  the  world. 
Not  until  after  the  surrender  of  Cornwallis,  in  October, 
1781,— when  the  physical  struggle  of  the  Revolution  had 
come  to  an  end, — did  the  author  set  about  the  task  of  fin- 
ishing the  poem  according  to  the  plan  which  he  had  at  the 
first  framed  for  it.  Dividing  the  portion  already  published 


442  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

into  two  cantos,  and  adding  a  third  canto,  and  a  fourth,  he 
published  the  whole  in  the  latter  part  of  1782.' 

The  portion  thus  added  fits  happily  into  what  precedes ; 
and  the  work,  as  thus  made  complete,  bears  every  mark  of 
its  author's  uncommon  appreciation  of  artistic  symmetry, 
and  of  the  classic  unities  of  time  and  place.  In  literary 
quality,  also,  in  acuteness,  in  wit,  in  crispness  of  phrase, 
in  vivacity  and  drollery  of  incident,  the  later  portion  is  even 
stronger  than  the  earlier;  while  the  final  development  of  its 
simple  plot  leads  to  a  series  of  climaxes  full  of  grotesqueness 
and  of  satiric  power,  and  true  also  to  the  very  life  of  that 
period,  in  which  partisan  emotion  was  inclined  to  express 
itself  in  certain  corporeal  pleasantries  the  humor  of  which 
was  more  apparent  to  the  perpetrators  than  to  the  victims. 

In  the  last  two  cantos  Honorius  does  not  appear;  and  the 
cause  of  the  Revolution,  having  been  thus  amply  vindicated 
by  him  in  the  sphere  of  reason  and  of  wit,  is  thenceforward 
left  to  the  rough  championship  of  a  mob  of  rollicking  and 
riotous  patriots,  who,  under  the  provocation  of  a  most 
irritating  harangue  from  M'Fingal,  lay  hands  upon  that 
obstreperous  Tory,  and  subject  him  to  those  personal  indig- 
nities which  they,  in  the  jubilance  of  their  animal  spirits, 
regard  as  comic.  Finally,  however,  at  close  of  day,  after 
the  mob  has  dispersed,  contemptuously  leaving  M'Fingal  to 
the  new  glory  of  his  tarry  and  feathery  costume,  and  glued, 
as  it  were,  by  the  rear,  to  that  liberty  pole  around  which 
they  had  taken  such  distressing  liberty  with  him,  he  succeeds 
after  much  effort  in  pulling  himself  loose.  In  this  plight,  he 
skulks  through  the  village  to  his  home,  whither  by  secret 
message  he  summons  his  political  allies  to  a  clandestine 
meeting  that  very  night.  The  place  of  their  meeting 
is,  perforce,  the  cellar.  There,  in  that  ignoble  auditorium, 
huddled  together  and  crouching  low  in  their  fear,  they  are 
addressed  by  M'Fingal,  who  emerges  for  the  purpose  from 

"Hartford:  Printed  by  Hudson  and  Goodwin,  near  the  Great  Bridge, 
1782."  This  editio  princeps  is  very  properly  used  by  Benson  J.  Lossing  for  his 
reprint  of  "  M'Fingal,"  with  introduction  and  notes,  New  York,  1857. 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  443 

the  safe  obscurity  of  his  turnip  bin.  It  is  his  last  great 
paroxysm  of  prophetic  utterance.  All  the  disaster,  and 
ignominy,  and  bitterness  of  the  defeat  which  awaits  them  in 
the  war  then  just  begun,  pass  before  him  in  vision,  and  the 
whole  is  reproduced  by  him  in  words  for  the  benefit  of  his 
miserable  companions ;  whereupon  the  Whigs,  who, 

"  the  news  have  found 
Of  Tories  must'ring  under  ground," 

are  heard  approaching  the  house.  Loud  shouts  fill  the  air; 
rough  blows  are  rained  upon  the  door.  Escape  seems  im- 
possible. The  terror-stricken  Tories  call  upon  the  very 
cellar  walls  to  hide  them  from  the  wrath  of  their  implacable 
pursuers.  One  creeps  into  a  box;  another  crawls  under  a 
tub ;  still  another  tries  to  obliterate  his  identity  by  placing 
himself  behind  a  row  of  cabbage  heads.  In  the  darkness, 
however,  M'Fingal,  who  has  now  had  enough  of  the  mirth- 
ful ways  of  the  Whigs,  makes  his  escape  through  a  secret 
window,  and  leaving 

"  his  constituents  in  the  lurch," 
sneaks  away  to  Boston,  to  return  no  more. 
VII. 

The  traditional  and,  indeed,  the  stereotyped  criticism 
upon  "  M'Fingal,"  that  it  is  an  imitation  of  "  Hudibras," 
is  undoubtedly  the  judgment  most  naturally  formed  at  the 
first  glance,  and  from  indications  apparent  on  the  surface 
of  the  two  poems.  Thus,  "  M'Fingal"  certainly  follows 
"  Hudibras  "  in  its  general  literary  type — that  of  the  bur- 
lesque epic;  and  yet  even  here  one  needs  to  observe  the 
distinction  that,  while  Butler  chose  the  low  burlesque,  which 
does  not  admit  of  grave  or  elevated  passages,  his  follower 
adopted  the  high  burlesque,  and  availed  himself  of  the 


444  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

privilege  it  confers,  by  transitions  that  are  serious  and  dig- 
nified. Then,  too,  the  verse  of  "  M'Fingal"  is  obviously 
the  verse  which  since  Butler's  time  has  been  called  Hudi- 
brastic,  that  is,  the  rhymed  iambic  tetrameters  of  the  earlier 
English  poets,  depraved  to  the  droll  uses  of  burlesque  by 
the  Butlerian  peculiarities,  to  wit,  the  clipping  of  words,  the 
suppression  of  syllables,  colloquial  jargon,  a  certain  rapid, 
ridiculous  jig-like  movement,  and  the  jingle  of  unexpected, 
fantastic,  and  often  imperfect  rhymes.  Furthermore,  in 
many  places  Trumbull  has  so  perfectly  caught  the  manner 
of  Butler,  that  he  easily  passes  for  him  in  quotation.  This 
is  especially  the  case  with  some  of  those  shrewd  aphorismal 
couplets  which  abound  in  "  M'Fingal  "  as  they  do  in 
"  Hudibras,"  and  which,  as  taken  from  the  former,  are 
sometimes  attributed  to  the  latter.1 

Beyond  these  aspects  of  resemblance,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  the  relation  of  "  M'Fingal  "  to  "  Hudibras  "  be 
not  rather  one  of  contrast  than  of  imitation.  The  hero  of 
the  one  poem  is  a  pedantic  Puritan  radical  of  the  time  of 
Oliver  Cromwell ;  the  hero  of  the  other  is  a  garrulous  and 
preposterous  high-church  Scottish-American  conservative  of 
the  time  of  George  the  Third.  Each  poem  is  an  attempt  to 
exhibit,  chiefly  through  the  speeches  and  the  ludicrous  and 
lugubrious  adventures  of  its  hero,  the  questions  at  issue  in  a 
period  of  revolutionary  convulsion ;  but  the  earlier  poem  is 
a  satire  on  the  ideas  and  methods  of  the  party  of  progress, 
while  the  later  one  is  a  satire  on  the  ideas  and  methods  of 
the  party  of  conservatism.  Moreover,  in  plot,  in  arrange- 
ment, in  incident,  there  is  in  "  M'Fingal"  scarcely  a  trait 
that  can  be  accounted  as  a  reproduction  of  "  Hudibras." 

1  Two  notable  illustrations  of  this  remark  may  be  cited.  One  is  taken  from 
the  first  canto  of  "  M'Fingal  "  : 

' '  But  optics  sharp  it  needs,  I  ween, 
To  see  what  is  not  to  be  seen. " 

The  other  is  from  the  third  canto  : 

"  No  man  e'er  felt  the  halter  draw, 
With  good  opinion  of  the  law." 


JOHN   TR  UMB  ULL.  445 

Finally,  in  the  essential  qualities  of  Hudibrastic  wit, — in 
oddity  of  comparison,  in  extravagance  of  fancy,  and  in  the 
amusing  effects  produced  by  a  sudden  and  grotesque  assem- 
blage of  remote  historical  and  literary  allusions, — there  is  in 
"  M'Fingal  "  little  apparent  effort  to  follow  its  prototype. 

The  truth  is,  that  a  much  closer  intellectual  kinship 
existed  between  Trumbull  and  Charles  Churchill,  than 
between  Trumbull  and  Samuel  Butler;  and  so  far  as  Trum- 
bull's  originality  in  satire  was  moulded  and  tinged  by  the 
manner  of  any  other  satirist,  it  was  not  so  much  by  the 
author  of  "  Hudibras,"  as  it  was  by  his  own  powerful  con- 
temporary, the  author  of  the  "  Prophecy  of  Famine,"  and 
of  "  The  Ghost."  Churchill  was  Trumbull's  true  model. 
It  is  to  Churchill's  influence  that  we  are  to  attribute  pecu- 
liarities in  "  M'Fingal  "  far  more  fundamental  and  decisive 
than  any  which  can  be  traced  to  the  influence  of  any  other 
writer.  Indeed,  what  should  perhaps  be  regarded  as  the 
most  serious  fault  in  "  M'Fingal," — the  alien  and  unreal 
note  imparted  to  this  New  England  mock-epic  by  the  promi- 
nence of  the  Scottish  element  in  the  satire, — can  be 
accounted  for  in  this  way,  and  in  this  way  only.  Of  such  a 
poem  the  hero  at  least  should  have  been  not  only  a  native 
but  a  typical  New  Englander,  and  thus  the  main  force  of 
the  satire  should  have  been  made  to  fall,  as  the  author 
undoubtedly  meant  that  it  should  .fall,  upon  that  powerful 
class  of  New  England  conservatives  who  then  stood  forth 
against  the  politics  of  the  Revolution.  By  taking  for  this 
Yankee  epic  a  title  which,  owing  to  peculiar  literary  associa- 
tions, was  then  intensely  Scottish,  and  by  concentrating  the 
reader's  derision  upon  its  Scottish  hero,  and  upon  Malcolm, 
his  Scottish  confederate,  a  certain  local  genuineness  is  lost  to 
the  poem;  the  true  direction  of  the  satire  is  turned  aside; 
and  a  pair  of  Scottish  Loyalists  are  dragged  in  and  thrust 
forward  as  the  real  objects  of  all  this  satiric  venom  which 
really  belonged  to  Loyalists  of  the  pure  American  type,  like 
Hutchinson,  and  Leonard,  and  Oliver.  By  a  glance  at  the 
nearly  contemporary  satires  of  Churchill,  particularly  at  the 


446  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

two  that  are  mentioned  above, — in  which  the  leading  note 
is  an  angry  and  contemptuous  vituperation  of  the  Scottish 
element  then  so  prominent  in-English  politics  and  in  English 
society, — it  will  be  made  clear  that  it  was  from  Churchill 
that  Trumbull  derived  a  trait  which,  though  entirely  perti- 
nent and  very  effective  in  an  English  satire  of  that  time, 
had  much  less  fitness  in  an  American  satire,  and  therefore 
gave  to  it  a  rather  pointless  and  weakening  feature. 

It  would  be  a  mistake,  however,  to  infer  that  the  influ- 
ence of  Churchill  upon  Trumbull  is  to  be  discovered  only  in 
Trumbull's  faults.  This  is  very  far  from  being  the  case.  For 
example,  the  verse  of  "  M'Fingal  "  seems  to  have  a  flow 
and  a  freedom  characteristic  of  Churchill :  this  verse  is 
indeed  Hudibrastic,  but  in  the  main  it  is  the  Hudibrastic 
verse,  not  of  "  Hudibras,"  but  of  "  The  Ghost."  More- 
over, in  the  sprightliness  and  energy  of  "  M'Fingal,"  in  the 
robustness  of  its  thought,  in  its  glow  of  expression,  and  in 
the  special  quality  of  its  wit,  which,  for  the  most  part,  is 
direct  and  spontaneous  rather  than  artificial  and  subtle,  one 
is  apt  to  recognize  the  sturdy  and  invigorating  tone  of  the 
later  English  satirist. 

VIII. 

We  should  be  doing  injustice,  also,  to  the  variety  and  the 
breadth  of  Trumbull's  literary  training,  if,  in  dealing  with 
the  composition  of  "  M'Fingal  "  as  revealing  the  influence 
of  its  author's  literary  masters,  we  should  discover  only  the 
influence  of  Churchill  and  of  Butler.  Trumbull  was,  accord- 
ing to  the  best  opportunity  of  his  place  and  time,  a  catholic 
student  of  letters;  and  in  all  his  work  as  a  satirist,  particu- 
larly in  this  work,  one  finds  in  many  quiet  and  indirect 
ways,  the  evidence  of  his  manifold  contact  with  all  the  mas- 
ters of  his  art. 

As  regards  the  literary  relationships  of  this  poem,  one 
notable  peculiarity  is  its  delicate  and  effective  use  of  parody 
as  a  means  of  humorous  effect:  itself  a  burlesque  epic,  it 
carries  the  privilege  of  burlesque  into  every  detail  of  style. 
Through  Trumbull's  memory,  which  was  of  the  miraculous 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  447 

sort,  there  seemed  to  be  ever  floating  strains  and  melodies 
borne  to  him  from  the  myriad-voiced  choir  of  English  song; 
and  continually,  as  he  told  of  his  droll  hero,  and  of  his 
hero's  adventures,  snatches  of  English  classic  verse  became 
entangled  in  his  lines,  and  were  detained  by  him  there,  and 
were  comically  transformed  into  travesty.  Thus,  through 
I  the  opening  lines  of  "  M'Fingal  "  one  hears  amusing  echoes 
of  the  opening  lines  of  "  Hudibras";  and  as  from  this 
beginning  of  the  first  canto,  one  reads  on  and  on  to  the  end 
of  the  last  canto,  the  ear  is  continually  caught,  and  the 
fancy  is  titillated,  by  playful  reverberations  from  the  ballad 
of ' '  Chevy  Chase, ' '  from ' '  Paradise  Lost, ' '  from  the  poetry  of 
Dryden,  of  Swift,  of  Pope,  of  Prior,  of  Macpherson,  of  Gray. 
After  all  that  may  be  said  of  the  uses  which  Trumbull 
made  of  his  literary  masters,  it  remains  true  that  his  poem 
of  "  M'Fingal  is  a  work  of  essential  originality.1  The 
form  is 'an  old  one;  but  into  that  old  form  Trumbull  put  the 
new  life  of  his  own  soul,  and  of  his  own  time.  He  did  not 
invent  the  burlesque  epic ;  but  he  did  invent  his  own  treat- 
ment, under  the  form  of  a  burlesque  epic,  of  the  social  and 
political  dispute  involved  in  the  American  Revolution.  In 
the  construction  of  his  poem,  he  has  shown  not  only  orig- 
inality, but  high  artistic  skill.  The  plot  has  a  unity,  a  sym- 
metry, a  consistency  which  one  looks  for  in  vain  in  such 
masterpieces  as  "  Hudibras"  and  "  The  Dunciad  "  ;  the 
story,  though  a  slight  one,  is  sufficient  for  the  comically 
didactic  purpose  for  which  it  is  framed ;  in  the  management 
of  this  story  the  author  avoids  those  bewildering  digressions 
and  those  excesses  of  loquacity  in  which  Butler  so  often 
loses  himself  and  the  company  of  his  readers;  finally,  the 
story  advances,  by  a  natural  and  life-like  progress,  through 
a  variety  of  ridiculous  circumstances,  to  a  conclusion  where- 
in the  ludicrous  quality  of  the  satire  reaches  a  fitting  and 
powerful  culmination. 

1  This  conclusion  is  expressed  by  Stedman  with  his  usual  insight  and  justice. 
Of  "  M'Fingal  "  he  says  that  "  it  shows  genuine  originality,  although  written 
after  a  model."  "  Poets  of  America,"  35. 


448  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

No  literary  production  was  ever  a  more  genuine  embodi- 
ment of  the  spirit  and  life  of  a  people,  in  the  midst  of  a 
stirring  and  world-famous  conflict,  than  is  "  M'Fingal  "  an 
embodiment  of  the  spirit  and  life  of  the  American  people, 
in  the  midst  of  that  stupendous  conflict  which  formed  our 
great  epoch  of  national  deliverance.  Here  we  find  presented 
to  us,  with  the  vividness  of  a  contemporary  experience,  the 
very  issues  which  then  divided  friends  and  families  and 
neighborhoods,  as  they  did  entire  colonies,  and  at  last  the 
empire  itself ;  the  very  persons  and  passions  of  the  opposing 
parties;  the  very  spirit  and  accent  and  method  of  political 
controversy  at  that  time;  and  at  last,  those  riotous  frolics 
and  that  hilarious  lawlessness  with  which  the  Revolutionary 
patriots  were  fond  of  demonstrating  their  disapproval  of  the 
politics  of  their  antagonists.  No  one  can  now  fully  under- 
stand and  enjoy  "  M'Fingal  "  who  is  not,  in  a  rather  special 
sense,  a  student  of  the  American  Revolution ;  but  he  who  is 
so,  will  find  in  it  an  authentic,  a  marvelously  accurate,  a 
most  diverting  rehearsal  of  the  logic,  the  anger,  and  the 
humor  of  an  epoch  in  our  national  experience  which  can 
never  cease  to  have  for  us  either  a  profound  importance  or 
an  absorbing  charm. 

Satire  is,  of  course,  one  of  the  less  noble  forms  of  literary 
expression ;  and  in  satire  uttering  itself  through  burlesque, 
there  is  special  danger  of  the  presence  of  qualities  which  are 
positively  ignoble.  Yet  never  was  satire  employed  in  a  bet- 
ter cause,  or  for  loftier  objects,  or  in  a  more  disinterested 
spirit.  Often  has  satire  been  but  the  ally  of  partisan  selfish- 
ness and  malice,  or  of  the  meanness  of  personal  spite.  To 
add  derision  to  defeat,  to  overwhelm  with  scoffs  and  with 
pitiless  ridicule  a  great  party  which  was  already  over- 
whelmed with  disaster,  to  fling  mocks  and  jibes  at  men  who, 
never  lacking  ability  or  courage,  were  then  crushed  and 
powerless,  and  able  to  move  neither  tongue  nor  hand  in 
reply— that  was  the  object  of  the  author  of  "  Hudibras." 
To  appease  the  stings  of  literary  vanity,  to  avenge  himself 


JOHN   TRUMBULL.  449 

on  hrs  rivals,  to  make  the  world  ring  with  his  wrath  at  a 
group  of  paltry  and  obscure  personal  enemies — that  was  the 
object  of  the  author  of  "  The  Dunciad."  Now  the  author 
of  "  M'Fingal  "  wrote  his  satire  under  no  personal  or  petty 
'motive.  His  poem  was  a  terrific  assault  on  men  who,  in 
his  opinion,  were  the  public  enemies  of  his  country;  and  he 
did  not  delay  that  assault  until  they  were  unable  to  strike 
back.  "  M'Fingal  "  belongs,  indeed,  to  a  type  of  literature 
never  truly  lovely  or  truly  beautiful, — a  type  of  literature 
hard,  bitter,  vengeful,  often  undignified ;  but  the  hardness 
of  ""  M'Fingal,"  its  bitterness,  its  vengeful  force  are  di-\ 
rected  against  persons  believed  by  its  author  to  be  the  foes 
— the  fashionable  and  the  powerful  foes — of  human  liberty ; 
if  at  times  it  surrenders  its  own  dignity,  it  does  so  on  behalf 
of  the  greater  dignity  of  human  nature. 

That  "  M'Fingal  "  is,  in  its  own  sphere,  a  masterpiece, 
that  it  has  within  itself  a  sort  of  power  never  attaching  to  a 
mere  imitation,  is  shown  by  the  vast  and  prolonged  impres- 
sion it  lias  made  upon  the  American  people.  Immediately 
upon  its  first  publication  it  perfectly  seized  and  held  the 
attention  of  the  public.  It  was  everywhere  read.  "  Its 
popularity  was  unexampled."  '  It  became  "  the  property 
of  newsmongers,  hawkers,  peddlers,  and  petty  chapmen." 
Probably  as  many  as  forty  editions  of  it  have  been  issued  in 
this  country  and  in  England.  It  was  one  of  the  forces 
which  drove  forward  that  enormous  movement  of  human 
thought  and  passion  which  we  describe  as  the  American 
Revolution;  and  in  each  of  the  great  agitations  of  American 
thought  and  passion  which  have  occurred  since  that  time, 
occasioned  by  the  French  Revolution,  by  the  war  of  1812, 
and  by  the  war  which  extinguished  American  slavery,  this 
scorching  satire  against  social  reaction,  this  jeering  burlesque 
on  political  obstructiveness,  has  been  recdited,  has  been 
republished,  has  been  sent  forth  again  and  again  into  the 

1  J.  Hammond  Trumbull,  "  The  Origin  of  M'Fingal,"  11-12. 
*  "  The  Poetical  Works"  of  Trumbull,  ed.  1820,  Mem.,  i.  19. 


H< 

it 


45O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

world,   to  renew  its  mirthful  and  scornful  activity  in  the 
ever-renewing  battle  for  human  progress.1 

1  I  have  had  in  my  hands  the  following  editions  of  "  M'Fingal "  :  Philadel- 
phia, 1775;  London,  1776;  Hartford,  1782;  Boston,  1785;  Philadelphia, 
1787;  Philadelphia,  1792;  London,  1792;  New  York,  1795;  Boston,  1799; 
Baltimore,  1812  ;  Hallowell,  1813  ;  Hudson,  1816  ;  Hartford,  1820  ;  Boston, 
1826 ;  Philadelphia,  1839 ;  Hartford,  1856  ;  New  York,  1864  ;  New  York, 
1881. 


CHAPTER   XXI. 

THOMAS  PAINE  AND   THE   OUTBREAK    OF    THE    DOCTRINE 
OF   INDEPENDENCE:    JANUARY-JUNE,   1776. 

I. — Paine's  arrival  in  America  late  in  the  year  1774,  introduced  by  a  letter  from 
Franklin — His  previous  history  in  England. 

II. — His  first  employment  in  Philadelphia — His  eagerness  for  information  as 
to  American  politics — His  gifts  and  limitations  for  political  discussion. 

III. — His  early  opinion  strongly  in  favor  of  reconciliation — The  events  of  the 
year  1775  changed  his  opinion,  and  prompted  him  to  write  the  first  open 
and  unqualified  argument  for  American  Independence. 

IV. — History  of  American  opinion  as  to  Independence  prior  to  1776 — The  con- 
troversy had  been  conducted  on  a  perpetual  disavowal  of  the  purpose  or 
desire  for  Independence. 

V. — The  title  of  Paine's  pamphlet  happily  indicates  its  character — An  appeal 
from  technical  law  to  common  sense — Its  argument  introduced  by  crude 
and  pungent  affirmations  as  to  government  in  general  and  the  British 
government  in  particular — A  new  era  in  American  politics  created  by  the 
transfer  of  the  dispute  from  argument  to  arms — All  considerations  in  force 
prior  to  April  19,  1775,  are  like  last  year's  almanac — Disposal  of  the  argu- 
ments based  on  filial  sentiment,  and  on  our  former  prosperity  and  happiness 
as  colonies. 

VI. — The  positive  disadvantages  of  the  American  connection  with  England 
— Interferes  with  the  freedom  of  American  commerce — Involves  us  in 
European  wars  and  quarrels — The  absurdity  of  a  great  continent  remain- 
ing dependent  on  any  external  power — Our  business  too  weighty  and  intri- 
cate to  be  managed  any  longer  by  a  power  distant  from  us  and  ignorant  of 
us — Reconciliation,  even  if  now  possible,  would  be  ruinous — The  American 
people  are  competent  to  save  American  society  from  anarchy — Solemn  warn- 
ing to  the  American  opponents  of  Independence — Freedom,  a  fugitive 
hunted  round  the  globe,  begs  for  an  asylum  in  America. 

VII.— The  pamphlet,  even  in  its  crudities,  exactly  fitted  for  its  purpose- 
Effectiveness  of  its  method  of  thought  and  statement — It  uttered  at  the 
right  moment  what  multitudes  were  waiting  for— Numerous  editions  of  it 
in  America  and  Europe— Its  authorship  at  first  unknown,  but  ascribed  to 
several  eminent  Americans,  especially  to  Franklin. 

VIII.— Evidence  in  contemporary  writings  of  its  enormous  effects  on  public 
opinion  between  January  and  June,  1776. 
451 


452  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

I. 

ON  the  last  day  of  November,  1774,  there  arrived  at 
Philadelphia  a  solitary  English  pilgrim,  named  Thomas 
Paine,  nearly  thirty-eight  years  of  age,  having  with  him 
neither  scrip,  nor  bread,  nor  money  in  his  purse,  but  hav- 
ing nevertheless  an  abundant  willingness  to  make  his  way 
in  the  new  world  by  his  wits,  particularly  "  as  a  clerk,  or 
assistant  tutor  in  a  school,  or  assistant  surveyor."1  For 
this  rather  forlorn  adventurer,  whose  most  imminent  busi- 
ness in  Philadelphia  at  that  time  was  to  "  procure  subsist- 
ence at  least,"  the  worst  disadvantages  of  his  condition  were 
perhaps  nearly  balanced  by  a  single  item  of  good  luck:  he 
had  brought  with  him  from  London  a  letter  of  introduction 
from  Benjamin  Franklin,  testifying  that  the  bearer  was  "  an 
ingenious,  worthy  young  man,"  and  invoking  on  his  behalf 
the  primary  and  inexpensive  charities  of  "  advice  and  coun- 
tenance." 

Up  to  that  time  in  his  career,  life  had  been  upon  the 
whole  a  somewhat  baffling  and  unsatisfactory  affair  for  this 

ingenious,  worthy  young  man  "  ;  and  in  spite  of  all  ener- 
getic attempts  on  his  part  at  climbing  the  steep  hill,  he  had 
found  himself,  when  well  on  toward  middle  life,  still  floun- 
dering and  discomfited  at  the  bottom  of  it. 

The  son  of  a  staymaker  at  Thetford  in  Norfolk,  where  he 
was  born  in  1737,  he  had  been  taken  from  school  at  the  age 
of  thirteen  and  had  been  put  to  his  father's  trade.  At  one 
time,  soon  after  the  beginning  of  the  Seven  Years'  War, 
wearied  perhaps  by  the  monotony  of  his  too  unhazardous 
occupation  as  a  maker  of  stays,  he  had  enlisted  on  board  an 
English  privateer.  Very  soon  exhausting  the  charm  to  be 
found  in  wielding  the  deadly  cutlass,  he  had  returned, 
though  with  evident  reluctance,  to  the  service  of  the 
innocuous  needle,  which  he  then  for  several  years  continued 
to  ply  for  a  livelihood  at  London,  Dover,  Sandwich,  Mar- 
gate, and  perhaps  elsewhere.  When  only  twenty-two  years 

1  Franklin,  "  Works,"  Sparks  ed.,  viii.  137. 


THOMAS  PAINE. 


453 


old  he  had  married ;  and  when  only  twenty-three,  he  had 
become  a  widower.  In  1762,  after  due  solicitation,  he  had 
received  an  appointment  in  the  excise,  being  set  in  the  first 
instance  "  to  guage  brewers'  casks  at  Grantham,"  and  after- 
ward "  to  watch  smugglers  at  Alford."  '  In  1765,  he  had 
been  dismissed  from  the  excise  for  neglect  of  duty;  his 
offense  being  that  of  writing  out  his  official  entries  at  home, 
without  the  trouble  of  an  actual  tour  of  his  district,  and  of 
course  without  an  actual  inspection  of  the  excisable  articles 
on  which  he  had  occasion  to  pass,8 — a  most  comfortable 
way  of  making  specific  assertions,  making  them,  it  will  be 
observed,  on  purely  speculative  or  unverified  data,  —  a 
method  which  might  very  likely  stand  this  gentleman  in 
good  stead  in  later  life  when  he  should  set  up  for  a  philoso- 
pher, but  which  could  hardly  be  permitted  to  him  so  long 
as  he  was  a  mere  exciseman.  After  the  loss  of  his  pittance 
from  the  government,  he  had  returned  once  more  to  his 
trade,  working  for  one  Gudgeon,  a  staymaker  at  Diss ;  he 
had  also  for  some  time  gained  his  daily  bread  as  usher  in  an 
academy,  first  in  Goodman's  Fields,  and  then  at  Kensing- 
ton; he  had  even  earned  an  honest  penny,  at  times,  by 
ascending  the  pulpit  in  some  chapel  at  Moorfields  or  else- 
where, and  preaching  the  gospel  to  such  saints  and  sinners 
as  should  have  the  grace  to  come  and  partake  of  his  godly 
ministrations.3  In  1768,  after  humble  petition  on  his  part, 
he  had  been  restored  to  the  excise  and  given  an  appointment 
at  Lewes,  in  Sussex.  In  1771,  being  still  an  exciseman,  l\e 
had  taken  unto  himself,  as  his  second  wife,  a  young  lady 
with  whom  he  was  already  in  partnership  as  grocer  and 
tobacconist.  In  1774,  he  had  been  once  more  and  forever 

1  M.  D.  Conway,  "  Life  of  Thomas  Paine,"  i.  16.  This  chapter  was  written, 
after  independent  researches  of  my  own,  several  years  before  the  publication  of 
Mr.  Conway's  book,— a  book  not  exactly  belonging  to  disinterested  biography, 
and  yet  by  far  the  most  valuable  contribution  thus  far  made  to  our  materials  for 
a  true  understanding  of  Paine's  career.  In  revising  what  I  had  written,  I  have 
been  greatly  assisted  by  these  labors  of  an  old  friend. 

3  The  minute  of  the  board  dismissing  Paine  is  given  in  Conway,  "  Life," 
i  I7  n  3 Ibid.  18-20. 


454  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

dismissed  from  the  excise, — this  time  for  the  offense  of 
"  having  quitted  his  business  without  obtaining  the  board's 
leave  for  so  doing,  and  being  gone  off  on  account  of  the 
debts  which  he  hath  contracted."  '  Six  days  after  this  final 
dismissal  from  official  service  under  the  good  king  George 
the  Third,  Paine's  household  furniture,  his  stock  in  trade, 
and  his  other  effects  had  been  sold  at  auction  at  Lewes  for 
the  benefit  of  his  creditors.  Finally,  two  months  later,  he 
and  his  wife  had  subscribed  their  names  to  an  amicable  agree- 
ment for  a  separation, — an  incident  which  seems  to  have  been 
viewed  by  them  both  not  as  an  additional  misfortune  to 
either,  but  rather  as  a  mitigation  of  such  misfortune  as 
either  or  both  may  have  already  had  in  this  troublous  world. 
It  was  in  this  doleful  plight  that  Thomas  Paine  went  up 
to  London,  and  laid  before  Franklin  such  credentials  as  in- 
duced the  latter,  on  the  thirtieth  of  September,  1774,  to 
give  him  an  honorable  passport  to  recognition  and  friendly 
help  in  America. 

II. 

Reaching  Philadelphia  late  in  the  year  1774,  Paine  soon 
made  his  way  to  pleasant  relations  with  some  of  the  best 
people  in  that  town.  By  the  fourth  of  March,  1775,  he  was 
able  to  report  to  his  illustrious  benefactor  in  London,  that 
he  had  already  gained  "many  friends";  had  received 
from  "  several  gentlemen  "  offers  of  profitable  employment 
as  a  tutor  to  their  sons;  and  had  begun  to  assist  the  book- 
seller, Robert  Aitken,  in  the  conduct  of  a  new  magazine.* 

Not   by   tutorship,    however,    nor   by  surveyorship,   nor 

1  These  words  are  from  the  order  for  his  discharge,  given  entire  in  Conway, 
"  Life,"  i.  29. 

'2  Franklin,  "  Works,"  Sparks  ed.,  viii.  138  n.  The  new  magazine  was  "  The 
Pennsylvania  Magazine,  or  American  Monthly  Museum,"  begun  in  January, 
*775-  Paine  probably  had  nothing  in  the  first  number  ;  and  whatever  he  wrote 
for  subsequent  numbers  has  to  be  ascertained  chiefly  on  internal  evidence, 
as  his  name  is  nowhere  attached  to  any  article,  and  in  fact  is  nowhere  men- 
tioned, so  far  as  I  can  discover,  in  the  magazine  at  all.  The  reader  should 
receive  with  some  caution  the  positive  statements  of  later  writers  as  to  Paine's 
authorship  of  this,  that,  or  the  other  article,  in  "  The  Pa.  Magazine." 


THOMAS  PAINE. 


455 


even  by  editorship,  but  by  authorship,  was  this  man  to 
achieve  such  success  in  America  as  then  lay  undreamed  of 
before  him ;  and  very  likely  the  peculiar  and  the  marvelous 
aptitude  he  had  in  him  for  that  particular  function  of 
authorship,  was  still  hidden  even  from  his  own  eyes, — 
which,  however,  were  never  greatly  lacking  in  vision  of  his 
own  talents  and  virtues.  Though  in  his  thirty-eighth  year, 
he  had  up  to  that  time  written  nothing  notable  in  all  his 
life,  and  had  never  "  published  a  syllable."  '  We  may  pic- 
ture him  to  ourselves,  during  his  first  year  in  Philadelphia 
— the  year  1775 — as  an  alert  and  eager  stranger,  gaining 
his  livelihood  chiefly  by  writing  for  Aitken's  magazine, 
haunting  the  bookshops,  pushing  his  way  to  the  acquaint- 
ance of  leading  citizens  of  the  town,  and  after  the  assem- 
bling of  Congress,  on  the  tenth  of  May,  pushing  his  way, 
likewise,  to  the  acquaintance  of  leading  citizens  from  all 
parts  of  the  continent.  Benjamin  Rush  describes  him  as  at 
that  time  visiting  familiarly  "  in  the  families  of  Dr.  Frank- 
lin, Mr.  Rittenhouse,  and  Mr.  George  Clymer,  where  he 
made  himself  acceptable  by  a  turn  he  discovered  for  philo- 
sophical, as  well  as  political,  subjects."*  John  Adams, 
who  was  then  in  Philadelphia  as  a  member  of  Congress,  and 
who  at  that  period  was  accustomed  to  speak  of  Paine  in  a 

1  This  is  Paine's  own  assertion.  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  97.  Did  he  forget 
his  memorial  on  the  "  Case  of  the  Officers  of  Excise,"  in  1772,  of  which  he  pre- 
sented a  copy  to  Goldsmith,  with  the  explanation  that  four  thousand  copies  had 
been  printed?  Goldsmith,  "  Works,"  i.  320-321.  Did  he  also  forget  his  ode 
on  "  The  Death  of  General  Wolfe,"  written  in  1759,  which  was  published  in 
the  "  Gentleman's  Magazine,"  and  was  also  set  to  music  and  issued  as  a  popular 
song  ?  As  this  chapter  was  written  several  years  before  the  publication  of  Con- 
way's  admirable  edition  of  "The  Complete  Works  of  Thomas  Paine,"  all  my 
citations  from  Paine's  Revolutionary  writings  are  either  from  the  original  tracts 
or  from  a  modern  reprint  of  them  in  Paine's  "  Political  Writings,"  2  volumes, 
Boston,  1870.  In  the  final  revision  of  this  chapter,  I  have  of  course  made  care- 
ful use  of  Con  way's  edition,  with  the  view  of  obtaining  the  latest  light  that  has 
been  shed  on  the  subject. 

*  Cheetham,  ' '  Life  of  Thomas  Paine,"  39.  This  book  is  quite  worthless,  so  far 
as  its  contents  are  the  work  of  Cheetham  himself,  whose  name,  in  fact,  if  slightly 
altered  in  the  spelling,  would  very  accurately  describe  the  man.  I  have  never 
cited  the  book,  except  for  some  statement  resting  on  other  testimony  than  his. 


456  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

respectful  and  even  in  a  complimentary  way,  long  afterward 
said  sneeringly,  that  Paine  "  got  into  such  company  as 
would  converse  with  him,  and  ran  about  picking  up  what 
information  he  could  concerning  our  affairs."  l 

If,  indeed,  Paine  so  employed  himself,  it  must  be  con- 
fessed that  he  was  very  well  employed.  He  could  hardly 
have  done  anything  more  to  the  point.  Arriving  in  Amer- 
ica in  the  midst  of  a  great  political  revolution,  and  casting 
in  his  lot  with  a  kindred  people  over  whose  political  wrongs 
he  was  indignant,  and  with  whose  political  aspirations  he 
was  in  passionate  sympathy,  it  is  hard  to  see  what  worthier 
course  he  could  have  taken  than  to  try  to  qualify  himself 
for  the  best  service  he  might  render  to  the  great  cause  by 
studying  it  in  its  origin,  its  history,  its  methods,  its  aims. 
And  how  could  he  better  do  this  than  by  applying  himself 
diligently  to  the  very  men  who  were  the  leaders  in  the  great 
enterprise  ?  On  every  hand,  then,  he  gathered  facts,  opin- 
ions, impressions.  He  threw  himself  instantaneously  into  the 
American  spirit ;  he  became  a  naturalized  American  in  body 
and  soul;  he  caught  at  once  the  ideas  that  were  in  the  air; 
with  all  his  heart  he  responded  to  the  immense,  inarticulate 
impulse  that  was  then  moving  a  great  people  toward  a  great 
future.  To  the  study,  the  acceptance,  the  advocacy  of  the 
American  Revolution,  Thomas  Paine  brought  neither  a 
wise,  nor  a  profound,  nor  a  cultivated  mind, — not  even  an 
accurate  or  a  temperate  one;  but  he  did  bring  a  mind  agile, 
alert,  vivid,  impressible,  humane,  quick  to  see  into  things 
and  to  grasp  the  gist  of  them,  and  marvelous  in  its  power 
of  stating  them — stating  them  with  lucidity,  with  sparkling 
liveliness,  with  rough,  incisive,  and  captivating  force. 

III. 

The  moment  of  his  arrival  in  America  was  one  of  supreme 
political  excitement.  The  Congress  of  1774  had  but  recently 
adjourned ;  and  its  measures  for  peaceful  resistance  to  Eng- 
land through  commercial  non-intercourse  had  aroused  the 

1  "  Works,"  ii.  507. 


THOMAS  PAINE. 


457 


most  violent  discussions  throughout  the  colonies.  Like  the 
majority  of  Americans  down  to  the  nineteenth  of  April, 
1775,  Paine  had  at  first  believed  in  the  possibility  of  a 
peaceful  solution  of  the  trouble,  and  had  earnestly  desired 
reconciliation  between  England  and  her  colonies.  What  his 
political  opinions  were  at  the  beginning  of  his  American 
career,  he  himself  explained  with  perfect  candor  some  years 
later:  "  I  happened  to  come  to  America  a  few  months  before 
the  breaking  out  of  hostilities.  I  found  the  disposition  of 
the  people  such  that  they  might  have  been  led  by  a  thread, 
and  governed  by  a  reed.  Their  suspicion  was  quick  and 
penetrating,  but  their  attachment  to  Britain  was  obstinate ; 
and  it  was  at  that  time  a  kind  of  treason  to  speak  against  it. 
They  disliked  the  ministry,  but  they  esteemed  the  nation. 
Their  idea  of  grievance  operated  without  resentment ;  and 
their  single  object  was  reconciliation.  Bad  as  I  believed  the 
ministry  to  be,  I  never  conceived  them  capable  of  a  measure 
so  rash  and  wicked  as  the  commencing  of  hostilities ;  much 
less  did  I  imagine  the  nation  would  encourage  it.  I  viewed 
the  dispute  as  a  kind  of  law  suit,  in  which,  I  supposed,  the 
parties  would  find  a  way  either  to  decide  or  settle  it.  I  had 
no  thoughts  of  Independence  or  of  arms.  The  world  could 
not  then  have  persuaded  me  that  I  should  be  either  a 
soldier  or  an  author.  If  I  had  any  talents  for  either,  they 
were  buried  in  me,  and  might  ever  have  continued  so,  had 
not  the  necessity  of  the  times  dragged  and  driven  them  into 
action.  I  had  formed  my  plan  of  life,  and  conceiving 
myself  happy,  wished  everybody  else  so.  But  when  the 
country  into  which  I  had  just  set  my  foot,  was  set  on  fire 
about  my  ears,  it  was  time  to  stir.  It  was  time  for  every 
man  to  stir.  Those  who  had  been  long  settled  had  some- 
thing to  defend;  those  who  had  just  come  had  something 
to  pursue;  and  the  call  and  the  concern  was  equal  and 
universal.  For  in  a  country  wherein  all  men  were  once 
adventurers,  the  difference  of  a  few  years  in  their  arrival 
could  make  none  in  their  right." 

1  Paine,  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  169-170. 


458  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Such,  no  doubt,  is  a  true  statement  of  Paine's  opinions 
upon  American  Independence  early  in  1775.  But,  as  the 
bitter  events  of  that  year  rapidly  unfolded  themselves,  not 
a  few  Americans  became  convinced  that  there  was  no  true 
solution  of  the  trouble  except  in  that  very  Independence 
which  they  had  but  a  short  time  before  dreaded  and  de- 
nounced. Of  such  Americans,  Thomas  Paine  was  one ;  and 
towards  the  end  of  the  year,  through  incessant  study  of 
passing  events,  and  through  incessant  communication  with 
the  foremost  minds  in  America,  he  had  filled  his  own  mind 
with  the  great  decisive  elements  of  the  case,  and  was  pre- 
pared to  utter  his  thought  thereon.  Early  in  January, 
1776,  he  did  utter  it,  in  the  form  of  a  pamphlet,  published 
at  Philadelphia,  and  entitled  "  Common  Sense."  * 

IV. 

Before  entering  upon  a  study  of  this  epoch-making  pam- 
phlet,— the  first  open  and  unqualified  argument  in  cham- 
pionship of  the  doctrine  of  American  Independence, — it  is 
important  for  us  at  least  to  glance  at  the  previous  history  of 
American  opinion  on  the  subject.  No  one  who  searches 
the  writings  which  have  come  down  to  us  from  that  time, 
can  have  any  doubt  as  to  the  truth  of  this  broad  state- 
ment that,  for  the  first  ten  or  twelve  years  of  the  Revo- 
lution, the  entire  Whig  agitation  was  conducted  on  a 
perpetual  disavowal  of  the  purpose  or  the  desire  for  Inde- 

1  In  the  title  of  his  pamphlet,  Paine  seems  not  to  have  been  original.  Dr. 
Rush  states  that  Paine  intended  to  call  it  "  Plain  Truth,"  and  that  he  adopted 
the  title  "  Common  Sense  "  at  the  suggestion  of  Hush  himself.  Cheetham,  37- 
38.  Even  Rush's  title,  however,  had  been  anticipated ;  for,  according  to 
Thomas,  "  History  of  Printing,"  ii.  151  n.,  a  political  paper  under  the  same 
title  appeared  in  London  in  1739.  Furthermore,  I  have  met  with  a  pamphlet 
of  117  pages,  published  in  London  in  the  year  just  previous  to  the  publication 
of  Paine's  "Common  Sense,"  and  also  entitled  "Common  Sense:  In  Nine 
Conferences  between  a  British  Merchant  and  a  Candid  Merchant  of  America, 
in  their  Private  Capacity  as  Friends."  Oddly  enough,  "Common  Sense"  in 
1775  viewed  the  questions  in  dispute  from  a  side  exactly  opposite  to  that  of 
"  Common  Sense  "  in  1776. 


THOMAS  PAINE. 


459 


pendence.  In  every  form  in  which  a  solemn  affirmation 
could  be  made  and  reiterated,  it  was  affirmed  by  the  Whigs 
during  all  those  years  that  the  only  object  of  their  agitation 
was  to  obstruct  and  to  defeat  a  bad  ministerial  policy, 
thereby  to  secure  a  redress  of  grievances;  that,  as  for  Inde- 
pendence, it  was  the  thing  they  abhorred,  and  it  was  mere 
calumny  to  accuse  them  of  designing  or  of  desiring  it. 
Nearly  all  the  greatest  Whig  pamphleteers  prior  to  1776— 
James  Otis,  Daniel  Dulany,  John  Dickinson,  and  Alex- 
ander Hamilton — abjured  Independence  as  a  measure  full  of 
calamity  and  crime.  The  Stamp  Act  Congress,  speaking  in 
the  name  of  the  several  colonies,  declared  that  their  connec- 
tion with  Great  Britain*  was  their  "  great  happiness  and 
security,"  and  that  they  "  most  ardently  "  desired  its  "  per- 
petual continuance."  In  January,  1768,  the  Massachusetts 
house  of  representatives  sent  to  their  agent  a  letter  of 
instructions,  written  by  James  Otis,  and  thus  defining  their 
opposition  to  the  renewal  by  parliament  of  its  policy  of  tax- 
ing the  colonies:  "  We  cannot  justly  be  suspected  of  the 
most  distant  thought  of  an  Independency  of  Great  Britain. 
Some,  we  know,  have  imagined  this;  .  .  .  but  it  is  so 
far  from  the  truth  that  we  apprehend  the  colonies  would 
refuse  it  if  offered  to  them,  and  would  even  deem  it  the 
greatest  misfortune  to  be  obliged  to  accept  it."  In  June, 
1774,  the  same  legislative  body  elected  delegates  to  the 
first  Continental  Congress;  and  in  their  letter  of  instruc- 
tions, signed  by  Samuel  Adams,  they  declared  that  "  the 
restoration  of  union  and  harmony  between  Great  Britain 
and  the  colonists  "  was  "  most  ardently  desired  by  all  good 
men."  3  The  first  Continental  Congress,  in  its  solemn 
petition  to  the  king,  adopted  October  26,  1774*  professed 
the  most  devoted  loyalty:  "  We  wish  not  a  diminution  of 
the  prerogative.  .  .  .  Your  royal  authority  over  us 
and  our  connection  with  Great  Britain  we  shall  always  care- 

1  "  Prior  Documents,"  29,  31. 

9  Ibid.  167. 

3  "  Journals  of  the  Am.  Cong.,"  i.  2. 


460  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

fully  and  zealously  endeavor  to  support  and  maintain."1 
In  March,  1775,  Benjamin  Franklin,  then  in  London, 
repeated  the  statement  which  he  had  made  in  the  previous 
year  to  Lord  Chatham,  that  he  had  never  heard  in  America 
one  word  in  favor  of  Independence  "  from  any  person, 
drunk  or  sober."8  In  May,  1775,  shortly  after  American 
blood  had  been  shed  at  Lexington  and  Concord,  George 
Washington,  crossing  the  Potomac  on  his  way  to  the  sec- 
ond Continental  Congress,  was  met  midway  in  the  river  by 
a  boat  containing  his  friend,  Jonathan. Boucher;  and  while 
their  boats  touched,  Boucher  kindly  warned  Washington 
that  the  errand  on  which  he  was  going  would  lead  to  civil 
war  and  to  an  effort  for  Independence.  Such  apprehensions 
were  vigorously  scouted  by  Washington,  who  then  added,  as 
Boucher  says,  "that  if  ever  I  heard  of  his  joining  in  any  such 
measures,  I  had  his  leave  to  set  him  down  for  everything 
wicked."  '  Soon  after  Washington's  arrival  at  Philadelphia, 
the  Continental  Congress  resolved  upon  a  dutiful  petition  to 
the  king,  assuring  him  that,  although  his  ministry  had  forced 
hostilities  upon  them,  yet  they  most  ardently  wished  "  for 
a  restoration  of  the  harmony  formerly  subsisting  between  " 
the  mother  country  and  the  colonies.4  The  Americans  who 
had  just  fought  at  Lexington  and  Concord,  and  the  Ameri- 
cans who,  a  few  weeks  later,  were  to  fight  at  Bunker  Hill, 
would  have  spurned  as  a  calumny  the  accusation  that  their 
object  in  fighting  was  Independence.  Washington's  ap- 
pointment as  commander-in-chief,  which  was  made  two 
days  before  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  contained  no  intima- 
tion that  he  was  to  lead  the  armies  in  a  struggle  for  Inde- 
pendence. As  soon  as  the  news  of  his  appointment  reached 
Virginia,  his  old  military  company  there  sent  him  their  con- 
gratulations on  the  honor  he  had  received,  closing  their 
letter  with  the  wish  that  all  his  "  counsels  and  operations  " 

1  "Journals  of  the  Am.  Cong.,"  i.  49. 

"  The  Complete  Works  of  Benjamin  Franklin,"  Bigelow  ed.,  v.  446. 

"  Notes  and  Queries,"  5th  ser.,  vi.  82-83. 
4  "  Journals  of  the  Am.  Cong.,"  i.  73. 


THOMAS  PAINE.  461 

might  be  directed  by  Providence  "  to  a  happy  and  lasting 
union  between  us  and  Great  Britain."  '  On  the  6th  of  July, 
1775,  the  Congress  which  had  thus  appointed  Washington 
to  lead  their  armies  against  the  troops  of  the  king,  adopted 
their  celebrated  declaration,  "  setting  forth  the  causes  and 
necessity  of  their  taking  up  arms,"  wherein  they  say: 
"  Lest  this  declaration  should  disquiet  the  minds  of  our 
friends  and  fellow-subjects  in  any  part  of  the  empire,  we 
assure  them  that  we  mean  not  to  dissolve  that  union  which 
has  so  long  and  so  happily  subsisted  between  us,  and  which 
we  sincerely  wish  to  see  restored.  .  .  .  We  have  not 
raised  armies  with  ambitious  designs  of  separating  from 
Great  Britain,  and  establishing  Independent  States."* 
When,  a  few  days  later,  that  declaration  was  read  to  Gen- 
eral Putnam's  troops,  parading  on  Prospect  Hill,  near  Bos- 
ton, they  greeted,  with  three  loud  cries  of  "  Amen,"  the 
passage  in  which  the  Almighty  was  implored  to  dispose 
their  adversaries  "  to  reconciliation  on  reasonable  terms." 
More  than  two  months  after  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill, 
Jefferson  wrote  to  a  kinsman  of  his  that  he  was  "  looking 
with  fondness  towards  a  reconciliation  with  Great  Britain." 
More  than  three  months  after  that  battle,  the  committee  of 
Chester  county,  Pennsylvania,  with  Anthony  Wayne  as 
their  chairman,  issued  a  statement  denying  that,  in  taking 
up  arms,  the  people  of  that  county  intended  "  to  overturn 
the  constitution  by  declaring  an  Independency,"  and  ex- 
pressing their  "  abhorrence  even  of  an  idea  so  pernicious  in 
its  nature."6  As  late  as  the  22d  of  October,  1775,  when 
Jeremy  Belknap  went  to  the  American  camp  to  officiate  as 
chaplain,  he  publicly  prayed  for  the  king."  As  late  as 
December  25,  1775,  the  Revolutionary  Congress  of  New 
Hampshire  officially  proclaimed  their  disavowal  of  any  pur- 

"  Writings  of  Washington,"  Sparks  ed.,  iii.  5  n. 

"Journals  of  the  Am.  Cong.,"  i.  103. 

D.  Humphreys,  "  Miscellaneous  Works,"  271. 

"  The  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,"  Ford  ed.,  i.  482. 

"  Am.  Archives,"  4th  ser. ,  iii.  794,  795. 

"  Life  of  Belknap,"  by  his  granddaughter,  96,  97. 


462  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION.      . 

pose  "  aiming  at  Independence," — a  disavowal  which  they 
incorporated  into  the  new  constitution  for  New  Hampshire 
adopted  on  the  5th  of  January,  1776.' 

Such,  then,  upon  the  subject  of  Independence,  was  the 
attitude  of  all  classes  and  parties  in  America  during  the  first 
ten  or  twelve  years  of  the  Revolution.  In  just  one  senti- 
ment all  persons,  Tories  and  Whigs,  seemed  perfectly  to 
agree:  namely,  in  abhorrence  of  the  project  of  separation 
from  the  empire.  Suddenly,  however,  and  within  a  period 
of  less  than  six  months,  the  majority  of  the  Whigs  turned 
completely  around,  and  openly  declared  for  Independence, 
which,  before  that  time,  they  had  so  vehemently  repudiated. 
Among  the  facts  necessary  to  enable  us  to  account  for  this 
almost  unrivaled  political  somersault,  is  that  of  the  appear- 
ance in  January,  1776,  of  the  pamphlet  entitled  "  Common 
Sense." 

V. 

This  pamphlet  was  happily  named :  it  undertook  to  apply 
common  sense  to  a  technical,  complex,  but  most  urgent  and 
feverish,  problem  of  constitutional  law.  In  fact,  on  any 
other  ground  than  that  of  common  sense,  the  author  of 
that  pamphlet  was  incompetent  to  deal  with  the  problem  at 
all ;  since  of  law,  of  political  science,  and  even  of  English 
and  American  history,  he  was  ludicrously  ignorant.  But 
for  the  effective  treatment  of  any  question  whatsoever  that 
was  capable  of  being  dealt  with  under  the  light  of  the  broad 
and  rugged  intellectual  instincts  of  mankind, — man's  natural 
sense  of  truth,  of  congruity,  of  fair-play, — perhaps  no  other 
man  in  America,  excepting  Franklin,  was  a  match  for  this 
ill-taught,  heady,  and  slashing  English  stranger. 

From  the  tribunal  of  technical  law,  therefore,  he  carried 
the  case  to  the  tribunal  of  common  sense;  and  in  his  plea 
before  that  tribunal,  he  never  for  a  moment  missed  his 
point,  or  forgot  his  method.  The  one  thing  just  then  to 

"  The  Federal  and  State  Constitutions,"  Pooreed.,  ii.  1279. 


THOMAS  PAINE.  463 

be  done  was  to  convince  the  average  American  colonist  of 
the  period  that  it  would  be  ridiculous  for  him  any  longer  to 
remain  an  American  colonist;  that  the  time  had  come  for 
him  to  be  an  American  citizen;  that  nothing  stood  in  the 
way  of  his  being  so,  but  the  trash  of  a  few  pedants  respect- 
ing the  authority  of  certain  bedizened  animals  called  kings ; 
and  that  whether  he  would  or  no,  the  alternative  was  at  last 
thrust  into  his  face  upon  the  point  of  a  bayonet, — either 
to  declare  for  national  Independence,  and  a  wide-spaced 
and  resplendent  national  destiny,  or  to  accept,  along  with 
subservience  to  England,  the  bitterness  and  the  infamy  of 
national  annihilation. 

The  pamphlet  begins  with  a  rattling  overture  of  pungent 
but  crude  affirmations  concerning  government  in  general, 
and  concerning  the  English  government  in  particular,  all 
intended  to  rid  the  minds  of  its  readers  of  any  undue  rev- 
erence for  organized  authority,  especially  for  monarchical 
authority,  and  to  convince  a  people  with  whom  obedience 
to  law  had  long  been  a  second  nature,  that  the  hour  had 
struck  for  them  to  legalize  disobedience  to  law.  Govern- 
ment has  been  often  described  as  if  it  were  identical  with 
society;  whereas  government  and  society  "  are  not  only 
different,  but  have  different  origins.  Society  is  produced 
by  our  wants,  and  government  by  our  wickedness. 
Society  in  every  state  is  a  blessing;  but  government,  even 
in  its  best  estate,  is  but  a  necessary  evil ;  in  its  worst  estate, 
an  intolerable  one.  .  .  .  Government,  like  dress,  is  the 
badge  of  lost  innocence;  the  palaces  of  kings  are  built  upon 
the  ruins  of  the  bowers  of  paradise."  Government,  in 
fact,  is  "  a  mode  rendered  necessary  by  the  inability  of 
moral  virtue  to  govern  the  world."  Such,  according  to 
Thomas  Paine,  is  the  origin  of  government ;  and  as  to  its 
object,  he  declares  it  to  be  twofold—"  freedom  and  secu- 
rity." *  And  what  is  the  true  form  of  government  ?  What- 
ever else  it  may  be,  surely  it  is  not  monarchy.  That  form 
of  government  which  rests  on  "  the  distinction  of  men  into 
1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  19.  *  Ibid.  21. 


464  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

kings  and  subjects,"  is  one  for  which  no  "  natural  or  relig- 
ious reason  can  be  assigned."  "  Male  and  female  are  the 
distinctions  of  nature;  good  and  bad,  the  distinctions  of 
heaven ;  but  how  a  race  of  men  came  into  the  world  so 
exalted  above  the  rest,  and  distinguished  like  some  new 
species,  is  worth  enquiring  into,  and  whether  they  are  the 
means  of  happiness  or  of  misery  to  mankind."  "  The 
nearer  any  government  approaches  to  a  republic,  the  less 
business  there  is  for  a  king.  .  .  .In  England  a  king 
hath  little  more  to  do  than  to  make  war,  and  give  away 
places;  which,  in  plain  terms,  is  to  impoverish  the  nation, 
and  set  it  together  by  the  ears.  A  pretty  business,  indeed, 
for  a  man  to  be  allowed  eight  hundred  thousand  sterling 
for,  and  worshiped  into  the  bargain!  Of  more  worth  is 
one  honest  man  to  society,  and  in  the  sight  of  God,  than 
all  the  crowned  ruf.ians  that  ever  lived."  * 

Having  thus  dispatched,  in  a  series  of  incisive  and  con- 
temptuous propositions,  the  doctrine  of  king-craft  as  an 
intolerable  method  of  governing  mankind, — supporting  his 
opinions  by  elaborate  and  reverent  quotations  from  the 
Bible, — he  soon  reaches  the  specific  business  he  has  in  hand, 
namely,,  the  state  of  affairs  in  America.  Here,  at  last,  he 
is  on  the  ground  of  tangible  facts  and  of  their  natural  inter- 
pretation; and  here  the  vigor  of  his  mind,  his  shrewdness  of 
insight,  his  unhesitating  confidence,  the  filmless  lucidity  of 
his  style,  his  humor,  his  asperity,  his  epigrammatic  gift, 
have  victorious  play,  and  give  to  his  pages  the  most  stimu- 
lating flavor.  "  The  period  of  debate  is  closed.  Arms,  as 
the  last  resource,  must  decide  the  contest.  ...  By 
referring  the  matter  from  argument  to  arms,  a  new  era  for 
politics  is  struck;  a  new  method  of  thinking  hath  arisen. 
All  plans,  proposals,  and  so  forth,  prior  to  the  nineteenth  of 
April  .  .  .  are  like  the  almanacs  of. last  year."  3 

Since  the  nineteenth  of  April,  then,  all  talk  of  filial  affec- 
tion for  England  has  become  archaic,  pointless,  farcical; 
and  for  the  American  who,  unaware  of  the  change  that  has 
1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  24-25.  *  Ibid.  32.  3  Ibid.  33-34. 


THOMAS  PAINE.  465 

come  upon  the  earth,  still  pleads  that  England  is  our 
mother,  there  is  but  one  reply:  "  Then  the  more  shame 
upon  her  conduct!  Even  brutes  do  not  devour  their 
y 9 ung,  nor  savages  make  war  upon  their  families."  ' 

To  the  objection  that  "  as  America  has  flourished  under 
er  former  connection  with  Great  Britain,  the  same  connec- 
tion is  necessary  towards  her  future  happiness,  and  will 
always  have  the  same  effect,"  Paine  is  ready  with  a  telling 
retort:  "  Nothing  can  be  more  fallacious  than  this  kind  of 
argument.  We  may  as  well  assert  that  because  a  child  has 
thrived  upon  milk,  it  is  never  to  have  meat ;  or  that  the  first 
twenty  years  of  our  lives  is  to  become  a  precedent  for  the 
next  twenty.  But  even  this  is  admitting  more  than  is  true; 
for  I  answer  roundly  that  America  would  have  flourished  as 
much,  and  probably  much  more,  had  no  European  power 
had  anything  to  do  with  her.  The  articles  of  commerce  by 
which  she  has  enriched  herself,  are  the  necessaries  of  life; 
,and  will  always  have  a  market  while  eating  is  the  custom  of 
Europe."  3 

VI. 

Moreover,  the  connection  of  America  with  England 
brings,  according  to  Paine,  not  a  solitary  advantage  to 
America;  nay,  it  brings  to  her  disadvantages  and  injuries 
without  number.  The  greatest  of  all  is  this:  our  connec- 
tion with  England  "  tends  directly  to  involve  this  continent 
in  European  wars  and  quarrels,  and  sets  us  at  variance  with 
nations  who  would  otherwise  seek  our  friendship,  and 
against  whom  we  have  neither  anger  nor  complaint.  As 
Europe  is  our  market  for  trade,  we  ought  to  form  no  partial 
connection  with  any  part  of  it.  It  is  the  true  interest  of 
America  to  steer  clear  of  European  contentions,  which  she 
never  can  do  while,  by  her  dependence  on  Britain,  she  is 
made  the  make-weight  in  the  scale  of  British  politics." 

Then,  again,  "  it  is  repugnant  to  reason  and  the  universal 

1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  35.  *  Ibid.  34.  *  Ibid.  37. 

3° 


466  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

order  of  things,  to  all  examples  from  former  ages,  to  sup- 
pose that  this  continent  can  longer  remain  subject  to  any 
external  power."  '  There  is  something  preposterous  in  the 
mere  idea  of  a  great  nation  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic 
remaining  in  a  state  of  permanent  pupilage  to  a  great  nation 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic :  "  A  greater  absurdity  can- 
not be  conceived  of,  than  three  millions  of  people  running 
to  their  seacoast  every  time  a  ship  arrives  from  London,  to 
know  what  portion  of  liberty  they  should  enjoy."  * 

Furthermore,  there  is  an  obvious  cosmographical  argu- 
ment for  American  Independence.  A  glance  at  the  map 
will  show  that  the  subordination  of  America  to  England 
inverts  the  order  of  nature:  "  Small  islands,  not  capable  of 
protecting  themselves,  are  the  proper  objects  for  kingdoms 
to  take  under  their  care ;  but  there  is  something  absurd  in 
supposing  a  continent  to  be  perpetually  governed  by  an 
island.  In  no  instance  hath  nature  made  the  satellite  larger 
than  its  primary  planet ;  and  as  England  and  America,  with 
respect  to  each  other,  reverse  *  the  common  order  of  nature, 
it  is  evident  that  they  belong  to  different  systems :  England 
to  Europe,  America  to — itself!  " 

Aside  from  mere  analogies,  however,  and  looking  directly 
at  the  welfare  of  America  in  the  transaction  of  its  own 
affairs,  it  is  plain  that  Independence  is  a  necessity:  "  As  to 
government  matters,  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  Britain  to  do 
this  continent  justice.  The  business  of  it  will  soon  be  too 
weighty  and  intricate  to  be  managed  with  any  tolerable 
degree  of  convenience,  by  a  power  so  distant  from  us,  and 
so  very  ignorant  of  us.  ...  To  be  always  running 
three  or  four  thousand  miles  with  a  tale  or  a  petition,  wait- 
ing four  or  five  months  for  an  answer,  which,  when  obtained, 
requires  five  or  six  more  to  explain  it  in,  will  in  a  few  years 

1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  39. 

2  According  to  Rush,  this  brilliant  sentence,  which  does  not  appear  in  the 
pamphlet  as  printed,  was  in  the  original  copy,  but  was  stricken  out  apparently 
at  the  suggestion  of  Franklin.     Cheetham,  37. 

3  The  text  has  "  reverses."     "  Political  Writings,"  i.  40. 


THOMAS  PAtNE.  467 

be  looked  upon  as  folly  and  childishness.  There  was  a  time 
when  it  was  proper,  and  there  is  a  proper  time  for  it  to 
cease." 

But  if  it  be  supposed  for  a  moment  that  reconciliation 
were  actually  brought  about  between  England  and  America, 
what  would  be  the  result  ?  The  ruin  of  America.  Why  ? 
First,  because  England  would  still  be  the  governing  power. 
And  "  is  the  power  who  is  jealous  of  our  prosperity,  a 
proper  power  to  govern  us  ?  .  .  .  America  is  only  a 
secondary  object  in  the  system  of  British  politics.  England 
consults  the  good  of  this  country  no  further  than  it  answers 
her  own  purpose.  Wherefore,  her  own  interest  leads  her  to 
suppress  the  growth  of  ours,  in  every  case  which  doth  not 
promote  her  advantage,  or  in  the  least  interferes  with  it." 
Secondly,  because  "  even  the  best  terms  which  we  can 
expect  to  obtain  can  amount  to  no  more  than  a  temporary 
expedient,  or  a  kind  of  government  by  guardianship,  which 
can  last  no  longer  than  till  the  colonies  come  of  age." 
Thirdly,  because  "  nothing  but  Independence  .  .  .  can 
keep  the  peace  of  the  continent,  and  preserve  it  inviolate 
from  civil  wars."  " 

But  there  are  Americans  who  fear  that  if  we  separate  our- 
selves from  the  control  of  the  king  of  England,  we  shall 
lapse  into  anarchy.  "  Where,  say  some,  is  the  king  of 
America  ?  I  '11  tell  you,  friend.  He  reigns  above,  and 
doth  not  make  havoc  of  mankind,  like  the  royal  brute  of 
Britain.  ...  A  government  of  our  own  is  our  natural 
right ;  and  when  a  man  seriously  reflects  on  the  precarious- 
ness  of  human  affairs,  he  will  become  convinced  that  it  is 
infinitely  wiser  and  safer  to  form  a  constitution  of  our  own, 
in  a  cool,  deliberate  manner,  while  we  have  it  in  our  .power, 
than  to  trust  such  an  interesting  event  to  time  and  chance." 
"  Ye  who  oppose  Independence  now,  ye  know  not  what  ye 
do :  ye  are  opening  a  door  to  eternal  tyranny,  by  keeping 
vacant  the  seat  of  government.  ...  To  talk  of  friend- 

1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  40. 

2  Ibid.  i.  41,  42,  43. 


468  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

ship  with  those  in  whom  our  reason  forbids  us  to  have  faith, 
and  our  affections,  wounded  through  a  thousand  pores, 
instruct  us  to  detest,  is  madness  and  folly.  Every  day 
wears  out  the  little  remains  of  kindred  between  us  and 
them ;  and  can  there  be  any  reason  to  hope  that  as  the  rela- 
tionship expires,  the  affection  will  increase,  or  that  we  shall 
agree  better,  when  we  have  ten  times  more  and  greater 
concerns  to  quarrel  over  than  ever  ?  Ye  that  tell  us  of  har- 
mony and  reconciliation,  can  ye  restore  to  us  the  time  that 
is  past  ?  .  The  last  cord  now  is  broken. 

There  are  injuries  which  nature  cannot  forgive;  she  would 
cease  to  be  nature  if  she  did.  .  .  .  O  ye  that  love  man- 
kind !  Ye  that  dare  oppose,  not  only  tyranny  but  the 
tyrant,  stand  forth!  Every  spot  of  the  old  world  is  overrun 
with  oppression.  Freedom  hath  been  hunted  round  the 
globe.  Asia  and  Africa  have  long  expelled  her.  Europe 
regards  her  like  a  stranger;  and  England  hath  given  her 
warning  to  depart.  O !  receive  the  fugitive ;  and  prepare 
in  time  an  asylum  for  mankind."  ' 

VII. 

With  all  its  crudities  of  thought,  its  superficiality,  and  its 
rashness  of  assertion,  "  Common  Sense  "  is  a  masterly  pam- 
phlet ;  for  in  the  elements  of  its  strength  it  was  precisely 
fitted  to  the  hour,  to  the  spot,  and  to  the  passions  of  men. 
Even  its  smattering  of  historical  lore,  and  its  cheap  display 
of  statistics,  and  its  clumsy  attempts  at  some  sort  of  polit- 
ical philosophy,  did  not  diminish  the  homage  with  which  it 
was  read  by  the  mass  of  the  community,  who  were  even  less 
learned  and  less  philosophical  than  Paine,  and  who,  at  any 
rate,  cared  much  more  just  then  for  their  imperiled  rights, 
Jthan  they  did  either  for  philosophy  or  for  learning. 

The  power  of  the  pamphlet  lay  in  the  fitness  of  its 
method,  its  tone,  its  scope.  It  brushes  away  the  tangles 
and  cobwebs  of  technical  debate,  and  flashes  common  sense 

1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  46,  47. 


THOMAS  PAINE.  469 

upon  the  situation.  It  was  meant  for  plain  men,  in  des- 
perate danger,  and  desperately  in  earnest.  Its  thought  is 
homely,  always  blunt,  occasionally  humorous,  rugged,  pal- 
pable, overpowering;  with  just  enough  of  generous  and 
contemptuous  passion, — love  of  freedom,  hate  of  tyranny, 
and  a  consciousness  of  the  latent,  illimitable  strength  of  its 
own  cause.  Its  style  never  errs  on  the  side  of  restraint ;  is 
never  debilitated  by  any  delicacy  of  feeling.  Thomas  Paine 
did  not  take  up  his  pen  in  the  service  of  the  amenities. 
Here  is  no  urbane  concession  to  the  foe.  Here  are  the 
germs  of  that  untempered  invective  which  sometimes  grew, 
at  a  later  period  of  his  life,  into  literary  truculence  and 
barbarism. 

The  immediate  practical  effects  of  this  pamphlet  in  Amer- 
ica, and  the  celebrity  which  it  soon  acquired  in  Europe  as 
well  as  in  America,  are  a  significant  part  of  its  history  as  a 
potential  literary  document  of  the  period.  In  every  impas- 
sioned popular  discussion  there  is  likely  to  spring  up  a 
leader,  who  with  pen  or  voice  strikes  in,  at  just  the  right 
moment,  with  just  the  right  word,  so  skillfully,  so  power- 
fully, that  thenceforward  the  intellectual  battle  seems  to  be 
raging  and  surging  around  him  and  around  the  fiery  word 
which  he  has  sent  shrilling  through  the  air.  So  far  as  the 
popular  discussion  of  American  Independence  is  concerned, 
precisely  this  was  the  case,  between  January  and  July,  1776, 
with  Thomas  Paine  and  his  pamphlet  "  Common  Sense." 

It  was  originally  published  at  Philadelphia  on  the  ninth  ' 
of  January,  1776,  without  the  author's  name.  On  the 
twentieth  of  that  month,  a  second  edition,  with  "  large 
additions,"  was  published  by  the  same  booksellers.  On  the 
twenty-fifth,  another  edition  was  announced  by  a  firm  of 
rival  booksellers  in  Philadelphia,  who  state  that  "  several 
hundred  are  already  bespoke,  one  thousand  for  Virginia," 

1  The  date  of  publication  often  given  is  10  January,  1776,  on  the  authority  of 
an  advertisement  in  "  The  Pennsylvania  Journal."  Thus,  Conway,  "  Life," 
i.  61.  But  in  "  The  Pennsylvania  Evening  Post,"  for  9  January,  1776,  there  is 
an  advertisement  to  the  effect  that  the  pamphlet  was  already  out  that  day. 


470  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

and  that  the  work  was  also  about  to  be  published  in  Ger- 
man. The  edition  thus  announced  made  its  appearance  on 
the  twentieth  of  February,  being  a  pamphlet  of  fifty  pages, 
and  containing  "  large  and  interesting  additions  by  the 
author."  In  the  enormous  tide  of  popular  interest  which 
soon  bore  the  pamphlet  into  every  port  and  inlet  of  Ameri- 
can society,  were  speedily  drowned  the  competitions  of  the 
two  local  booksellers  who  had  begun  by  trying  to  monop- 
olize the  profits  to  be  got  from  this  brain-freighted  and 
strong-winged  commodity.  In  New  York,  Norwich,  Provi- 
dence, Newport,  Salem,  Newburyport,  Charlestown,  Bos- 
ton, and  elsewhere  in  America,  it  was  soon  reprinted,  as 
well  as  in  London,  Newcastle-upon-Tyne,  Edinburgh,  Rot- 
terdam, and  Paris.  Within  three  months  from  the  date  of 
its  first  issue,  at  least  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand 
copies  of  it  were  sold  in  America  alone.  By  that  time,  the 
pamphlet  seemed  to  be  in  every  one's  hand  and  the  theme 
of  every  one's  talk. 

In  a  very  early  edition,  it  was  described  on  its  title-page 
as  "  Written  by  an  Englishman."  In  later  issues  this 
description  was  soon  omitted ;  and  in  the  enlarged  edition 
of  the  twentieth  of  February,  some  reference  was  made  to 
the  public  curiosity  to  know  the  authorship  of  the  treatise : 

Who  the  author  of  this  production  is,  is  wholly  unneces- 
sary to  the  public,  as  the  object  of  attention  is  the  doctrine, 
not  the  man.  .  .  .  He  is  unconnected  with  any  party, 
and  under  no  sort  of  influence,  public  or  private,  but  the 
influence  of  reason  and  principle." 

Of  all  writers  then  known  to  the  American  people,  prob- 
ably only  three  were  much  thought  of  at  the  time  as  likely 
to  have  produced  this  pamphlet.  "  '  Common  Sense,' 
when  it  first  appeared,"  wrote  John  Adams  long  after- 
ward, with  characteristic  aplomb,  "  was  generally  by  the 
public  ascribed  to  me  or  to  Mr.  Samuel  Adams."  '  In- 
deed, in  some  parts  of  Europe,  particularly  in  France, 
the  first  rumor  that  it  was  written  by  a  great  American 
1  "Works,"  ii.  507. 


THOMAS  PAINE. 


471 


congressman  vaguely  named  "  Adams,"  seems  to  have  re- 
mained in  force  for  several  years  afterward;  and  in  1779, 
when  John  Adams  himself  arrived  in  France  as  a  com- 
missioner of  Congress,  he  found  himself  welcomed  as  "  le 
fameux  Adams,"  the  reputed  author  of  "  Common  Sense," 
— a  pamphlet  which,  as  he  then  wrote,  "  was  received  in 
France  and  in  all  Europe  with  rapture."1  In  America, 
probably,  the  prevailing  tendency  was  to  ascribe  it  to  Ben- 
jamin Franklin,  who,  indeed,  on  one  occasion  is  said  to  have 
been  expostulated  with  by  a  Loyalist  lady  of  his  acquaint- 
ance, for  having  in  that  pamphlet  been  so  discourteous  as 
to  speak  of  their  good  king  as  "  the  royal  brute  of  Britain." 
"Madam,"  replied  Franklin,  "  let  me  assure  you  that  I  did 
not  write  '  Common  Sense. '  Moreover,  if  I  had  written  it, 
I  would  not  so  have  dishonored — the  brute  creation."  In 
England,  where  Franklin  was  then  better  known  than  any 
other  American,  and  where  he  had  received  personal  affronts 
which  would  account,  it  was  supposed,  for  any  asperities  of 
style,  the  pamphlet  was  for  some  time  commonly  spoken  of 
as  his, — as  in  the  case,  for  example,  of  an  amusing  story 
told  in  London  in  the  summer  of  1776,  to  the  effect  that 
the  Prince  of  Wales  had  been  discovered  one  day  by  his 
mother  in  the  very  act  of  reading,  within  the  awful  pre- 
cincts of  the  palace,  "  Dr.  Franklin's  pamphlet  '  Common 
Sense,'  "  and  in  response  to  the  queen's  searching  ques- 
tions, had  refused  to  confess  how  he  had  come  by  the 
atrocious  document." 

VIII. 

Of  all  the  contemporary  testimonies  to  the  immediate 
power  of  "  Common  Sense,"  one  of  the  earliest  is  that  of 
General  Charles  Lee,  who,  on  the  twenty-fourth  of  January, 
1776, — fifteen  days  after  the  first  issue  of  the  pamphlet, — 
thus  wrote  to  Washington:  "  Have  you  seen  the  pamphlet 

1  "Works,"  iii.  189. 

*  "  The  Pa.  Evening  Post,"  for  I  January,  1777,  where  the  story  is  given  as 
from  London,  30  August,  1776. 


472  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

'  Common  Sense '  ?  I  never  saw  such  a  masterly,  irresist- 
ible performance.  It  will,  if  I  mistake  not,  in  concurrence 
with  the  transcendent  folly  and  wickedness  of  the  ministry, 
give  the  '  coup-de-grace  '  to  Great  Britain.  In  short,  I  own 
myself  convinced  by  the  arguments,  of  the  necessity  of  sep- 
aration." '  On  the  thirty-first  of  January,  one  day  after 
Washington  had  received  Lee's  letter,  he  thus  wrote  to 
Joseph  Reed:  "  A  few  more  of  such  flaming  arguments  as 
were  exhibited  at  Falmouth  and  Norfolk,  added  to  the 
sound  doctrine  and  unanswerable  reasoning  contained  in  the 
pamphlet  '  Common  Sense,'  will  not  leave  numbers  at  a  loss 
to  decide  upon  the  propriety  of  separation."  a  A  few  days 
later,  on  the  sixth  of  February,  in  an  article  which  was 
published  in  "  The  Pennsylvania  Evening  Post,"  a  person 
in  Maryland  writes:  "  If  you  know  the  author  of '  Common 
Sense,'  tell  him  he  has  done  wonders  and  worked  miracles, 
— made  Tories  Whigs,  and  washed  blackamores  white."3 
From  South  Carolina,  on  the  fourteenth  of  February,  rises 
this  cry  of  delight:  "Who  is  the  author  of  'Common 
Sense '  ?  I  can  scarce  refrain  from  adoring  him.  He 
deserves  a  statue  of  gold."  *  On  the  twenty-fourth  of  Feb- 
ruary, a  newspaper  published  in  New  York  thus  joins  in  the 
rising  chorus  of  enthusiastic  praise:  "  The  pamphlet  enti- 
tled '  Common  Sense '  is  indeed  a  wonderful  production.  It 
is  completely  calculated  for  the  meridian  of  North  America. 
This  animated  piece  dispels,  with  irresistible 
energy,  the  prejudices  of  the  mind  against  the  doctrine  of 
Independence,  and  pours  in  upon  it  such  an  inundation  of 
light  and  truth,  as  will  produce  an  instantaneous  and  mar- 
velous change  in  the  temper,  in  the  views  and  feelings,  of 
an  American.  The  ineffable  delight  with  which  it  is  perused, 
and  its  doctrines  imbibed,  is  a  demonstration  that  the  seeds 
of  Independence,  though  imported  with  the  troops  from 
Britain,  will  grow  surprisingly  with  proper  cultivation  in 

1  Sparks,  "  Corr.  of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  i.  136. 

2  Washington,  "Writings,"  Sparks  ed.,  iii    276. 

3  Reprinted  in  Frothingham,  "Rise  of  the  Republic,"  480  n.  4  Ibid. 


THOMAS  PAINE.  473 

the  fields  of  America."  '  On  the  second  of  March,  Mistress 
John  Adams  writes  from  Quincy  to  her  husband  in  Phila- 
delphia: "  I  am  charmed  with  the  sentiments  of  '  Common 
Sense,' and  wonder  how  an  honest  heart  .  .  .  can  hesi- 
tate one  moment  at  adopting  them."  *  On  the  twelfth  of 
March,  a  letter  from  Philadelphia  says:  "  '  Common  Sense ' 
is  read  to  all  ranks ;  and  as  many  as  read,  so  many 
become  converted,  though  perhaps  the  hour  before  [they] 
were  most  violent  against  the  least  idea  of  Independence."  * 
A  letter  from  Georgetown,  South  Carolina,  on  the  seven- 
teenth of  March,  says :  '  '  Common  Sense '  hath  made 
Independents  of  the  majority  of  the  country."4  On  the 
first  of  April,  Washington,  writing  from  Cambridge,  thus 
speaks  of  the  development  of  political  thought  among  the 
people  of  Virginia:  "  My  countrymen,  I  know,  from  their 
form  of  government  and  steady  attachment  heretofore  to 
royalty,  will  come  reluctantly  into  the  idea  of  Indepen- 
dence, but  time  and  persecution  bring  many  wonderful 
things  to  pass ;  and  by  private  letters  which  I  have  lately 
received  from  Virginia,  I  find  '  Common  Sense  '  is  working 
a  powerful  change  there  in  the  minds  of  men."  s  On  the 
eighth  of  April,  "  The  New  York  Gazette"  says:  "  The 
subject  of  conversation  throughout  America  for  these  few 
weeks  past,  hath  been  excited  by  a  pamphlet  called  '  Com- 
mon Sense.'  "  '  On  the  twelfth  of  April,  a  news-writer  in 
New  York  says:  "  A  pamphlet  entitled  '  Common  Sense' 
has  converted  thousands  to  Independence,  that  could  not 
endure  the  idea  before."7  On  the  twenty-ninth  of  April, 
"  The  Boston  Gazette  "  says:  "  Had  the  spirit  of  prophecy 
directed  the  birth  of  a  publication,  it  could  not  have  fallen 

1  From  the   "  Constitutional  Gazette,"  reprinted  in   Moore,   "  Diary  of  the 
Am.  Rev.,"  i.  208-209. 

2  "  Letters  of  Mrs.  Adams,"  i.  89. 

3  Almon,  "  Remembrancer"  for  1776,  part  ii.  31. 

4  "Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Proc.,"  1869-1870,  254. 

5  Washington,  "  Writings,"  Sparks  eel  ,  iii.  347. 

6  Quoted  in  Frothingham,  "  Rise  of  the  Republic,"  480  n. 
1  Almon,  "  Remembrancer"  for  1776,  part  iii.  87. 


474  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

upon  a  more  fortunate  period  than  the  time  in  which  '  Com- 
mon Sense  '  made  its  appearance.  The  minds  of  men  are 
now  swallowed  up  in  attention  to  an  object  the  most  mo- 
mentous and  important  that  ever  yet  employed  the  delib- 
erations of  a  people."  '  Finally,  on  the  seventh  of  June, — 
the  very  day  on  which  Richard  Henry  Lee  introduced  into 
Congress  his  resolutions  for  Independence, — William  Gor- 
don, the  historian  of  the  Revolution,  sets  down  these  words 
respecting  the  influences  that  had  prepared  the  public  mind 
for  the  introduction  of  such  resolutions:  "  The  constant 
publications  which  have  appeared  and  been  read  with  atten- 
tion, have  greatly  promoted  the  spirit  of  Independency;  but 
no  one  so  much  as  the  pamphlet  under  the  signature  of 
'Common  Sense,'  written  by  Mr.  Thomas  Paine,  an  Eng- 
lishman. .  .  .  Nothing  could  have  been  better  timed 
than  this  performance.  In  unison  with  the  sentiments  and 
feelings  of  the  people,  it  has  produced  most  astonishing  ef- 
fects, and  been  received  with  vast  applause,  read  by  almost 
every  American,  and  recommended  as  a  work  replete  with 
truth,  and  against  which  none  but  the  partial  and  prejudiced 
can  form  any  objections.  It  has  satisfied  multitudes  that 
it  is  their  true  interest  immediately  to  cut  the  Gordian 
knot  by  which  the  American  colonies  have  been  bound  to 
Great  Britain,  and  to  open  their  commerce,  as  an  indepen- 
dent people,  to  all  the  nations  of  the  world.  It  has  been 
greatly  instrumental  in  producing  a  similarity  of  sentiment 
through  the  continent,  upon  the  subject  under  the  consid- 
eration of  Congress."  8 

1  Quoted  in  Frothingham,  "  Rise  of  the  Republic,"  480  n. 
8  "Am.  Rev,,"  ii.  92. 


CHAPTER   XXII. 

THE  POPULAR  DEBATE  OVER  THE  PROPOSAL  OF  INDE- 
PENDENCE: JANUARY  -  JUNE,  1/76. 

I. — The  proposal  of  Independence  was  the  proposal  of  a  political  heresy  and  a 
crime — American  Independence  was  American  secession — Impossible  for 
the  Whigs  to  forget  their  repeated  denials  of  any  purpose  or  desire  for 
Independence. 

II. — Two  classes  of  Americans  opposed  to  Independence,  the  Loyalists  and 
many  Whigs  who  had  approved  even  of  armed  opposition  but  drew  back 
from  national  disruption — The  side  of  the  Loyalists  less  ably  presented  in 
this  discussion  than  in  previous  controversies — "Plain  Truth" — "The 
True  Interest  of  America  Impartially  Stated." 

III. — The  ablest  opposition  to  Independence  came  from  American  Whigs — 
Substance  of  their  appeal  to  their  old  associates  against  a  measure  so  incon- 
sistent. 

IV. — John  Joachim  Zubly,  of  Georgia,  a  champion  of  armed  resistance  who 
spurned  the  proposal  of  secession  from  the  empire — His  career  and  writ- 
ings— The  exact  nature  of  the  offense  for  which  he  was  loaded  with 
reproach. 

V. — Philadelphia  as  the  focus  of  the  popular  debate  over  Independence— The 
doctrine  denounced  in  the  "  Letters  of  Cato  "  by  Provost  William  Smith — 
The  temper  of  the  discussion  playfully  exhibited  in  "  A  Prophecy"  by 
Francis  Hopkinson. 

VI. — Extraordinary  influence  of  the  advocacy  of  Independence  by  William 
Henry  Drayton,  of  South  Carolina— His  character  as  a  political  thinker 
and  essayist — His  writings — As  chief  justice  of  South  Carolina,  in  April, 
1776,  he  declares  the  government  of  that  colony  abdicated  by  the  king,  and 
all  obedience  to  him  there  no  longer  due. 

I. 

IN  tracing  the  history  of  public  opinion  in  America  as  to 
the  doctrine  of  American  Independence,  it  has  been  con- 
venient for  us  in  the  first  place  to  follow  by  itself  the  story 
of  the  astonishing  effects  wrought  by  the  pamphlet  "  Com- 
mon Sense,"  which,  having  been  sent  forth  at  the  very 

475 


476  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

moment  when  the  minds  of  the  people  were  fully  ripe  for  it, 
precipitated  the  popular  debate  upon  that  question.  We 
should,  however,  be  in  danger  of  missing  the  true  per- 
spective of  events,  if  we  failed  to  observe  some  other  prom- 
inent participants  in  this  debate,  particularly  those  who 
were  frankly  and  strenuously  opposed  to  the  new  doctrine. 

American  Independence  is  a  fact  now  so  long  established 
among  us,  so  glorious  to  our  imaginations,  so  hallowed  in 
our  faith  and  love,  that  it  cannot  be  easy  for  us  to  realize 
the  intellectual  and  spiritual  conditions  of  a  time  when 
the  doctrine  of  American  Independence  was  among  our 
own  ancestors  a  startling  novelty,  a  dangerous  political 
heresy,  the  suggestion  of  an  appalling  crime — the  very  crime 
of  treason.  Nevertheless,  we  must  realize  all  this,  if  we 
would  now  appreciate,  on  the  one  hand,  the  sincerity  of  dis- 
approval and  the  horror  with  which  vast  numbers  of  patri- 
otic Americans  then  contended  against  a  proposal  so 
audacious,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  the  faith  in  ideas,  the 
courage,  the  capacity  for  self-sacrifice,  required  by  those 
Americans  who  then  at  last  rallied  to  the  support  of  a  pro- 
posal so  perilous. 

Especially  do  we  need,  by  a  strong  effort,  to  view  the 
proposal  as  standing  in  the  very  light,  and  against  the  very 
background,  which  the  men  and  women  of  1776  were  con- 
scious of,  when  they  first  took  it  into  their  consideration. 
They  were  then  members  of  a  great  empire  of  which  they 
had  always  been  proud,  to  the  constitutional  authority  of  . 
which  they  had  always  been  loyal.  Upon  the  integrity  of 
that  empire,  the  new  proposal  was  a  direct  and  a  terrific 
assault :  upon  their  own  loyalty  to  the  constitutional  obli- 
gations incurred  by  membership  of  that  empire,  the  new 
proposal  offered  a  violent  shock.  Of  course,  no  one  then 
pretended  that  separation  could  be  resorted  to,  except  as 
a  revolutionary  measure  required  by  some  vast  and  com- 
manding need  in  the  existing  circumstances  of  the  American 
colonies.  If,  accordingly,  we  would  now  see  the  subject  as 
it  was  seen  by  them,  and  would  understand  how  easy  it  was 


INDEPENDENCE  AND   SECESSION.  477 

for  one  portion  of  the  American  people  to  oppose  the  plan 
for  separation  from  the  empire,  and  how  hard  it  was  for  the 
rest  of  them  to  favor  it,  we  must  translate  their  word  Inde- 
pendence into  its  modern  American  equivalent.  For,  just 
as  the  earlier  Whig  doctrine  for  the  rejection  of  the  taxing- 
power  of  the  general  government  meant  what  in  the 
nineteenth  century  we  have  known  under  the  name  of  Nul- 
lification, so  the  later  Whig  doctrine  of  separation  from  the 
empire  meant  precisely  what  we  now  mean  by  the  word 
Secession.  Under  this  aspect,  the  American  Revolution 
had  just  two  stages:  from  about  1764  to  1776,  its  champions 
were  Nullifiers,  without  being  Secessionists;  from  1776  to 
1783  they  were  also  Secessionists,  and,  as  the  event  proved, 
successful  Secessionists.  The  word  Independence  was 
merely  a  euphemism  for  national  disunion,  for  a  disrup- 
tion of  the  British  empire.  What  the  Whig  leaders  resolved 
to  do,  under  the  name  of  Independence,  about  the  middle 
of  the  year  1776,  seemed  to  many  Americans  of  that  time 
precisely  the  same  political  crime  as,  to  the  people  of  the 
Northern  States,  seemed  the  measure  undertaken  by  certain 
Southern  leaders,  in  the  latter  part  of  1860,  under  the  name 
of  Secession.  In  short,  the  Loyalists  of  the  American 
Revolution  took,  between  1776  and  1783,  constitutional 
ground  similar  to  that  taken  by  the  people  of  these  North- 
ern States  and  by  the  so-called  Loyalists  of  the  Southern 
States  between  1861  and  1865;  that  is,  they  were  cham- 
pions of  national  unity,  as  resting  on  the  paramount 
authority  of  the  general  government. 

The  proposal  of  American  Independence  had,  therefore,  \ 
for  all  Americans  in  1776,  the  background  of  this  fact:  it    \ 
was  in   reality,  a  revolutionary  and  treasonable  proposal, 
which  might  or  might  not  be  justifiable;  which,  if  practi-      I 
cally  asserted,  would  involve  us  in  almost  incalculable  risks     / 
and  sufferings;  which,  even  if  successfully  asserted,  might    / 
prove  anything  but  a  blessing  to  us,  and  if  unsuccessfully  / 
asserted,  would  certainly  prove  a  curse.  » 

Finally,  when  early  in  1776,  the  American  Whigs  began 


478  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

openly  to  discuss  the  doctrine  of  Independence,  they  did 
not  and  they  could  not  dismiss  from  their  minds  the  fact 
that,  ever  since  they  had  begun  to  agitate  for  the  exclusive 
right  of  laying  taxes  in  America,  they  had  been  accused, 
both  in  America  and  in  England,  of  masking  under  that 
demand  the  secret  purpose  of  Independence, — an  accusa- 
tion which  they  had  always  repelled  as  both  a  falsehood  and 
a  calumny. 

II. 

Of  course,  for  several  months  before  the  appearance  of 
the  pamphlet  "  Common  Sense,"  and  particularly  in  conse- 
quence of  the  shedding  of  American  blood  by  royalist 
troops  at  Lexington  and  Concord,  many  Americans  had 
come  to  the  conclusion  that,  sooner  or  later,  separation  from 
Great  Britain  was  inevitable;  but,  excepting  in  satire  or  in 
an  occasional  irresponsible  paragraph  in  some  newspaper,  no 
downright  avowal  of  the  doctrine  had  been  made  until  it 
was  made  in  that  pamphlet.  Of  the  persons  who  then  rose 
up  against  the  new  doctrine,  may  now  be  recognized  two 
classes :  first,  the  old  American  Loyalists^  who  had  always 
objected  to  extreme  measures  even  in  opposition  to  a  bad 
ministerial  policy;  and,  secondly,  many  of  the  old  Ameri- 
can Whigs,  who,  while  they  had  always  approved  of  such 
opposition  even  when  carried  to  the  point  of  armed  resist- 
ance, yet  drew  back  from  it  when  carried  to  the  point  of 
treason  and  of  national  disruption. 

In  the  heated  popular  debate  which  arose  over  the  new 
proposal,  the  reader  cannot  fail  to  see  that  the  side  of  the 
Loyalists  was  now  sustained  with  far  less  force  of  argument, 
with  far  less  wit  or  literary  cleverness  than  had  been  the  case 
in  the  controversies  of  the  two  previous  years.  This  diminu- 
tion in  the  debating  ability  of  the  Loyalists  maybe  explained 
partly  by  the  fact  that  their  greatest  writers  had  then  been 
driven  out  of  the  country  or  driven  into  silence;  partly,  by 
the  fact  that  most  of  those  who  were  left  in  position  to 


PLAIN   TRUTH. 


479 


write,  realized  the  uselessness  of  further  discussion, — the 
Revolutionary  movement  having  at  last  acquired  an  im- 
petus not  to  be  checked  by  mere  words,  however  logical,  or 
eloquent,  or  witty. 

Two  pamphlets,  evidently  the  work  of  steady  Loyalists, 
may  be  selected  by  us  as  examples  of  the  work  capable  of 
being  done  by  their  available  writers  in  that  final  crisis  of 
the  controversy.  Of  these  pamphlets,  the  one  which  has 
acquired  the  greater  distinction  but  which  deserves  it  the 
less,  is  "  Plain  Truth,  Addressed  to  the  Inhabitants  of 
America,  containing  Remarks  on  a  late  Pamphlet  entitled 
Common  Sense:  Wherein  are  shewn,  that  the  scheme  of 
Independence  is  ruinous,  delusive,  and  impracticable,  that 
were  the  author's  asseverations  respecting  the  power  of 
America  as  real  as  nugatory,  Reconciliation  on  liberal  princi- 
ples with  Great  Britain  would  be  exalted  Policy ;  and  that, 
circumstanced  as  we  are,  permanent  Liberty  and  true  Hap- 
piness can  only  be  obtained  by  Reconciliation  with  that 
Kingdom.  Written  by  Candidus."  The  purpose  of  this 
pamphlet  is  well  enough  set  forth  in  the  copious  announce- 
ment which  thus  confronts  us  upon  the  title-page;  but  a 
still  more  copious  announcement  would  be  necessary  in 
order  to  set  forth  the  intellectual  poverty  of  its  actual  con- 
tents,— its  lack  of  order,  its  feebleness  in  argument,  its  gar- 
rulity, its  dismal  attempts  at  humor,  its  bad  grammar,  its 
pitiful  failure  to  perform  what  it  announces  as  its  purpose 
to  perform.1 

1  "  Plain  Truth"  was  very  caustically  and  justly  disposed  of,  soon  after  its 
publication,  in  an  essay  signed  "  Aristides,"  which  is  one  of  the  pseudonyms  of 
President  Witherspoon.  "Works,"  ix.  89-92.  A  new  and  an  undeserved 
prominence  has  been  given  to  the  pamphlet  by  attempts  made  within  the  past 
twenty  years  to  ascertain  who  was  its  author.  Thus,  the  distressing  compliment 
has  been  handed  round  by  various  scholars  to  Joseph  Galloway,  to  Charles 
Inglis,  to  George  Chalmers,  to  Provost  William  Smith  ;  even  as,  in  the  last  cen- 
tury, it  was  offered  to  William  Wells,  and,  with  immeasurable  absurdity,  even 
to  Alexander  Hamilton.  The  subject  is  really  not  worth  the  room  it  would  take 
for  a  discussion  of  these  various  suggestions,  the  most  of  which,  indeed,  have 
fallen  dead  without  anybody's  help.  From  evidence  both  of  substance  and  of 
form,  I  am  confident  that  not  one  of  these  guesses  as  to  the  authorship  of 


480  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  incompetence  of  the  first  of 
these  Loyalist  pamphlets  against  American  separation  from 
the  empire,  is  more  than  offset  by  the  ability  of  the  second 
of  them:  "  The  True  Interest  of  America  Impartially 
Stated,  in  Certain  Strictures  on  a  pamphlet  intitled  Com- 
mon Sense.  By  an  American."  J  The  writer,  whose  signa- 
ture as  "  an  American  "  is  thus  placed  in  contrast  to  that  of 
"  an  Englishman  "  on  some  of  the  earlier  copies  of  "  Com- 
mon Sense,"  was  undoubtedly  Charles  Inglis,  then  assistant 
rector  of  Trinity  Church,  New  York,  and  from  1787  to  his 
death  in  1816  the  bishop  of  Nova  Scotia." 

As  to  "  Common  Sense,"  he  regards  it  as  "  one  of  the 
most  artful,  insidious,  and  pernicious  pamphlets  "  he  had 
ever  met  with.  In  fact,  he  finds  "  no  common  sense  "  in 
it,  "  but  much  uncommon  phrensy.  It  is  an  outrageous 
insult  on  the  common  sense  of  Americans.  .  .  .  The 
principles  of  government  laid  down  in  it,  are  not  only  false, 
but  too  absurd  to  have  ever  entered  the  head  of  a  crazy  poli- 
tician before.  Even  Hobbes  would  blush  to  own  the  author 
for  a  disciple."  '  Dividing  his  little  book  into  sections  cor- 
responding to  the  leading  topics  of  Paine's  pamphlet,  he 
endeavors,  tersely  and  sharply,  to  expose  the  falsity  and 
shallowness  of  Paine's  statements,  whether  of  fact  or  of 
principle ;  he  expresses  perfect  sympathy  with  his  country- 
men in  their  anxiety  for  a  clearer  definition  and  a  stronger 
protection  of  their  political  rights  within  the  empire;  and  in 

"  Plain  Truth  "  is  the  true  one  ;  and  in  short,  that  the  man  who  wrote  it,  and 
who,  doubtless,  had  misfortune  enough  in  being  the  member  of  a  party  so  routed 
and  discredited,  has  had  at  least  this  felicity— he  has  thus  far  escaped  detec- 
tion as  the  author  of  so  much  stupidity  and  broken  syntax  as  are  to  be  found  in 
that  pamphlet. 

1  The  first  edition  of  this  pamphlet,  published  in  New  York  early  in  the 
spring  of  1776,  is  said  to  have  been  seized  and  burned  by  the  Sons  of  Liberty 
there  ;  but  soon  afterward  a  second  and  a  third  edition  of  it  were  printed 
in  Philadelphia.  I  am  using  a  copy  of  this  second  edition. 

a  A  good  sketch  of  Inglis  is  given  in  Sprague,  "  Annals,"  v.  186-191.  Many 
references  to  him  occur  in  "  The  History  of  the  -American  Episcopal  Church," 
edited  by  W.  S.  Perry. 

3  "  The  True  Interest,"  etc.,  Preface,  v.-vi. 


THE    TRUE   INTEREST  OF  AMERICA.  481 

a  thoroughly  manly  tone,  with  great  aptness  and  with  great 
force,  he  tries  to  prove  to  them  that  all  their  interests  are  to 
be  best  served  by  rejecting  this  wicked  and  pestilent  doctrine 
of  Independence. 

Perhaps  in  no  other  part  of  his  argument  does  he  show 
greater  cleverness  than  in  that  where  he  deals  with  Paine's 
contention  that  the  necessary  effect  of  the  iQth  of  April, 
1775,  was  to  exclude  all  further  thought  of  reconciliation. 
*'  That  the  expedition  to  Lexington,"  says  Inglis,  "  was 
rash  and  ill-judged — that  it  was  risking  the  peace  of  the 
continent,  and  wantonly  involving  fellow-subjects  in  blood, 
for  a  most  inconsiderable  object — I  shall  most  readily  allow; 
and  our  author  has  my  leave  to  load  that  expedition  with  all 
the  reproaches  he  can  invent.  I  disapprove  the  design  of  it 
as  much  as  he — I  lament  its  effects  much  more."  '  But, 
"  on  the  very  best  authority,"  the  writer  adds,  he  is  able  to 
prove  that  it  was  opposed  both  to  the  letter  and  to  the 
spirit  of  the  king's  orders  to  General  Gage.  If,  then,  the 
author  of  "  Common  Sense  "  can  say  that  "  no  man  was  a 
warmer  wisher  for  reconciliation  than  himself  before  the 
fatal  iQth  of  April  1775,"  how  is  the  case  justly  changed  by 
that  event  ?  "If  peace  and  reconciliation  on  constitutional 
grounds,  and  proper  security  for  our  several  rights,  were 
desirable  and  advantageous  before  the  igth  of  April,  I775» 
must  they  not  have  been  equally  so  after  the  event  of  that 
unfortunate  day  ?  Let  reason  and  common  sense  answer."* 

III. 

Incomparably  the  strongest  words  then  uttered  against 
the  new  proposal  of  Independence,  were  uttered,  not  by 
American  Tories  but  by  some  of  the  American  Whigs,  who, 
while  they  had  been  in  full  accord  with  the  rough  methods 
of  opposition  thus  far  pursued  by  their  party,  were  shocked 
by  this  project  for  committing  them  to  a  doctrine  which  from 

1  "  The  True  Interest,"  etc.,  37. 
»  Ibid.  37-38. 
3* 


482  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

the  first  they  had  all  rejected  and  condemned.  These  were 
the  Whigs,  till  that  time,  held  in  highest  honor  in  their  party, 
who  now  made  solemn  appeal  to  their  old  associates  against 
a  measure  so  repugnant  to  all  their  professions  as  public 
men  and  as  loyal  subjects.  "  It  cannot  be,"  said  they,  in 
substance,  to  their  former  political  comrades,  "  that  you  are 
thus  entering  upon  this  long  repudiated  measure  for  Inde- 
pendence, because  you  really  think  that  the  objects  for 
which  we  began  the  agitation  and  have  thus  far  conducted 
it,  cannot  be  obtained  within  the  empire.  All  our  demands 
are  on  the  point  of  being  granted.  Our  great  friends  in 
parliament — Chatham,  Camden,  Burke,  Conway,  Barre,  and 
the  rest— continually  send  us  word  that  complete  success  is 
in  sight ;  that  if  we  will  but  hold  on  to  our  plan  of  agitation 
for  larger  rights  inside  the  empire,  retaining  our  allegiance, 
they  can  help  us;  that  if  we  run  up  the  flag  of  separation, 
of  Independence,  we  shall  at  once  discredit  them,  and 
destroy  all  their  power  to  be  of  any  further  use  to  us ;  that 
these  political  demands  of  ours  have  thus  far  been  made  by 
us  after  the  method  of  our  English  ancestors,  who,  in  cases 
of  need,  have  roughly  acquired  an  increase  of  political  privi- 
lege, doing  this  as  loyal  subjects  with  weapons  in  their 
hands,  and  even  enrolled  as  troops,  never  in  the  spirit  of 
treason,  never  for  the  rejection  of  allegiance,  never  for  the 
dissolution  of  national  unity;  that,  even  now,  Lord  North  is 
quite  ready  to  grant  all  our  terms;  that  though  the  king  still 
holds  out  against  any  concession,  even  he  will  have  to  yield  to 
the  people  and  to  parliament ;  that  commissioners  will  soon 
be  on  their  way  hither  to  negotiate  with  us,  and  to  concede 
to  us  that  measure  of  local  self-government  which  we  have 
hitherto  proclaimed  as  our  sole  object  in  the  controversy; 
that  by  persisting  a  little  longer  in  the  line  of  action  upon 
which  we  have  hitherto  conducted  the  whole  movement,  we 
shall  certainly  win  for  ourselves  every  political  advantage  we 
have  ever  professed  to  desire,  and  shall  become  a  group  of 
great,  free,  self-governing  colonies  within  the  British  empire. 
But  as  separation  from  the  empire  is  not  called  for  by  any 


JOHN  JO  A  CHIM  ZUBL  Y.  483 

requirement  of  political  safety,  so  our  present  resort  to  it 
would  show  either  that  we  are  fickle  in  opinion,  or  that  we 
are  political  hypocrites — as  our  enemies  have  always  charged 
us  with  being — and  that,  under  all  our  disavowals  of  the 
purpose  or  the  wish  for  Independence,  we  have  been  treach- 
erously working  with  that  very  object  all  the  time  in  view." 
Of  the  American  Whigs  who  took  this  stand  against 
the  project  for  Independence,  were  also  two  groups, — the 
one  consisting  of  those  who,  like  Zubly,  a  member  of  the 
Continental  Congress  from  Georgia,  never  afterward  yielded 
up  their  opinion  on  the  subject;  the  other  consisting  of 
those  who,  like  John  Dickinson,  Robert  Morris,  James  Wil- 
son, and  William  Smith,  finally  and  reluctantly  succumbed 
to  the  measure,  and,  in  some  cases,  put  forth  great  efforts 
and  made  great  sacrifices  in  its  support. 

IV. 

The  case  of  John  Joachim  Zubly  may  help  us  to  under- 
stand the  attitude  of  the  first  group  of  Whig  opponents  of 
American  Independence.  Born  in  Switzerland  in  1725,  and 
at  an  early  age  settled  as  a  clergyman  in  South  Carolina  and 
Georgia,  he  put  at  the  service  of  the  Revolution  in  its  pri- 
mary stage,  his  practical  wisdom,  his  great  local  influence, 
and  his  uncommon  ability  as  a  writer.  In  1769,  under  the 
name  of  "  A  Freeholder  of  South  Carolina,"  he  published  a 
strong  and  temperate  pamphlet  entitled  "  An  Humble 
Enquiry  into  the  Nature  of  the  Dependency  of  the  Ameri- 
can Colonies  upon  the  Parliament  of  Great  Britain  and  the 
Right  of  Parliament  to  lay  Taxes  on  the  Said  Colonies." 
A  still  more  striking  statement  of  the  virile  claim  of  the 
American  colonies  was  made  by  him  in  1775,  in  an  address 
to  the  Earl  of  Dartmouth,  prefixed  to  a  sermon  on  "  The 
Law  of  Liberty," — a  sermon  which  he  had  preached  at  the 
opening  of  the  provincial  congress  of  Georgia.  In  this 
address,  he  rings  the  changes  on  that  fatal  phrase  which  had 
been  used  by  parliament  when  it  asserted  its  right  to  "  bind 


484  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

the  colonies  in  all  cases  whatsoever."  "  My  lord,  the 
Americans  look  upon  this  as  the  language  of  despotism  in 
its  utmost  perfection.  What  can  ...  an  emperor  of 
Morocco  pretend  more  of  his  slaves,  than  to  bind  them  in 
all  cases  whatsoever."  l  "  My  lord,  the  Americans  are  no 
idiots,  and  they  appear  determined  not  to  be  slaves.  Op- 
pression will  make  wise  men  mad ;  but  oppressors,  in  the 
end,  frequently  find  that  they  were  not  wise  men.  There 
may  be  resources  even  in  despair,  sufficient  to  render  any 
set  of  men  strong  enough  not  to  be  bound  '  in  all  cases 
whatsoever.'"8  "  The  bulk  of  the  inhabitants  of  a  con- 
tinent extending  eighteen  hundred  miles  in  front  of  the 
Atlantic,  and  permitting  an  extension  in  breadth  as  far  as 
the  South  Sea,  look  upon  the  claim  '  to  bind  them  in  all 
cases  whatsoever,'  as  unjust,  illegal,  and  detestable.  Let 
us  suppose  for  a  moment,  that  they  are  grossly  mistaken ; 
yet  an  error  imbibed  by  millions,  and  in  which  they  believe 
the  all  of  the  present  and  future  generations  lies  at  stake, 
may  prove  a  very  dangerous  error.  Destroying  the  Ameri- 
cans, will  not  cure  them ;  nor  will  any  acts  that  condemn 
them  to  starve  or  be  miserable,  have  any  tendency  to  per- 
suade them  that  these  acts  were  made  by  their  friends."  ' 
My  lord,  the  violence  of  the  present  measures  has  almost 
instantaneously  created  a  continental  union,  a  continental 
currency,  a  continental  army ;  and  before  this  can  reach 
your  lordship,  they  will  be  as  equal  in  discipline,  as  they 
are  superior  in  cause  and  spirit,  to  any  regulars.  The  most 
zealous  Americans  could  not  have  effected  in  an  age,  what 
the  cruelty  and  violence  of  administration  has  effectually 
brought  to  pass  in  a  day. "  *  "In  this  respect,  as  well  as 
in  the  strong  sense  of  liberty,  and  in  the  use  of  firearms 
almost  from  the  cradle,  the  Americans  have  vastly  the 
advantage  over  men  of  their  rank  almost  everywhere  else. 
From  the  constant  topic  of  present  conversation,  every 
child  unborn  will  be  impressed  with  the  notion — it  is  slavery 

1  "  The  Law  of  Liberty,"  etc.,  vi.  8  Ibid,  vi.-vii. 

3  Ibid,  ix.-x.  «  Ibid,  xiii.-xiv. 


JOHN  JO  A  CHIM  ZUBL  Y.  485 

to  be  bound  at  the  will  of  another  '  in  all  cases  whatso- 
ever.' Every  mother's  milk  will  convey  a  detestation  of 
this  maxim.  Were  your  lordship  in  America,  you  might 
see  little  ones  acquainted  with  the  word  of  command  before 
they  can  distinctly  speak,  and  shouldering  the  resemblance 
of  a  gun  before  they  are  well  able  to  walk."  ' 

Such  was  the  essence  of  Zubly's  doctrine  touching  Revo- 
lutionary politics.  Such,  also,  was  its  limitation.  In  his 
opinion,  the  colonial  policy  of  the  British  parliament  consti- 
tuted a  set  of  grievances  not  to  be  borne  by  free  men — 
grievances  to  be  thrown  off  by  all  means,  even  by  a  resort 
to  war — grievances  to  be  thrown  off  by  all  means  this  side 
of  separation  from  the  empire.  That  those  grievances 
could  thus  be  thrown  off,  he  doubted  not.  That  separation 
from  the  empire  had  become  necessary  for  that  purpose, 
or  was  likely  ever  to  become  so,  he  did  not  believe.  And 
this  opinion,  which  he  held  from  the  beginning,  he  held  to 
the  end.  In  June,  1766,  on  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act, 
he  had  said  in  a  sermon  at  Savannah,  with  reference  to  any 
man  who  would  divide  British  America  from  Britain — "  let 
him  be  accursed  by  both."  *  And  in  1775,  after  men's  sin- 
cerity in  political  speculation  had  come  to  the  test  of  blood, 
in  his  sermon  before  the  provincial  congress  of  Georgia,  he 
reaffirmed  this  opposition  to  Independence:  "  The  idea  of 
a  separation  between  America  and  Great  Britain  is  big  with 
so  many  and  such  horrid  evils,  that  every  friend  to  both 
must  shudder  at  the  thought.  Every  man  that  gives  the 
most  distant  hint  of  such  a  wish,  ought  instantly  to  be  sus- 
pected as  a  common  enemy.  Nothing  would  more  effectu- 
ally serve  the  cause  of  our  enemies,  than  any  proposal  of 
this  kind.  All  wise  men,  and  all  good  men,  would  instantly 
speak,  write,  and  act  against  it.  Such  a  proposal,  whenever 
it  should  be  made,  would  be  an  inlet  to  greater  evils  than 
any  we*have  yet  suffered." 

1  "  The  Law  of  Liberty,"  etc.,  xv. 
»  "The  Stamp  Act  Repealed,"  19. 
8  "  The  Law  of  Liberty,"  etc.,  25. 


486  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

When,  however,  a  few  months  later,  many  of  Zubly's  col- 
leagues in  political  action  began  to  go  over  to  this  long 
repudiated  doctrine  of  separation,  he  was  ferociously  de- 
nounced, and  his  character  blackened,  for  the  reason  that 
he  was  unwilling  to  go  with  them.  That  such  should  have 
been  his  fate,  especially  at  such  a  time,  was  natural.  Never- 
theless, the  judgment  of  history  must  be,  that  while  he  and 
they  had  alike  for  years  disclaimed  and  denounced  every 
idea  of  Independence,  they  at  last  came  to  take  a  different 
view  of  the  matter,  and  he  did  not.  Having  shared  in  the 
earlier  stages  of  a  great  political  agitation,  Zubly  could  not 
admit  that  anything  had  in  the  meantime  occurred  to  jus- 
tify an  abandonment  of  the  limits  that  had  been  originally 
fixed  for  it.  His  crime  was  that  of  every  man  who  begins 
as  a  political  reformer  and  refuses  to  end  as  a  revolutionist. 

V. 

For  palpable  reasons,  both  political  and  military,  it  hap- 
pened that  between  January  .and  July,  1776,  the  focal  point 
of  the  debate  over  the  proposal  of  Independence  was  Phila- 
delphia. Shall  the  American  Congress,  which  had  hitherto 
mentioned  that  word  only  to  ban  it,  now  bestow  upon  it  an 
official  blessing  ?  Upon  that  question,  even  so  early  as  in 
April,  1776,  the  minds  of  all  Americans  were  violently 
stirred.  At  Philadelphia,  among  the  most  conspicuous  of 
those  who  were  ready  to  have  Congress  give  its  sanction  to 
the  word  Independence,  was  Benjamin  Franklin,  then  but 
a  twelvemonth  returned  from  his  long  sojourn  in  England, 
crowned  with  years  and  .with  honors,  the  most  illustrious 
American  at  that  time  in  the  world.  Among  those  who 
would  refuse  to  have  Congress  give  its  sanction  to  Indepen- 
dence, was  the  Reverend  William  Smith,  provost  of  the 
College  of  Philadelphia,  orator,  writer,  a  plausible,  brilliant, 
captivating  man,  an  active  supporter  of  all  the  measures  of 
American  opposition  down  to  that  time,  suspected,  how- 
ever, of  having  his  eye  steadfastly  fixed  on  a  mitre,  sus- 


A   PROPHECY.  487 

pected,  also,  of  acting  just  then  under  the  special  advice 
and  favor  of  the  king. 

On  the  thirteenth  of  March,  there  appeared  in  the"  Penn- 
sylvania Gazette  "  the  first  of  a  series  of  powerful  essays, 
devoted,  in  part,  to  a  hostile  discussion  of  the  pamphlet 
"  Common  Sense,"  and  of  the  terrible  political  heresy  to 
which  that  pamphlet  had  already  won  so  many  converts. 
These  essays,  eight  in  number,  bore  the  title  of  "  Letters  of 
Cato,  to  the  People  of  Pennsylvania."  They  were  in. pro- 
cess of  publication  from  week  to  week,  until  the  twenty- 
fourth  of  April.  Partly  because  they  were  very  able,  and 
partly  because  they  were  at  once  suspected  to  be  by  so  emi- 
nent a  citizen  and  so  eminent  a  Whig  as  Provost  William 
Smith,  they  created  a  most  violent  fluttering  in  the  highest 
social  circles  of  Philadelphia,  as  well  as  among  all  ranks  of 
politicians  then  gathered  there.  For  a  modern  reader  there 
can  be  no  better  reproduction  of  the  very  stir  and  tumult  then 
agitating  the  capital  of  the  new  nation  in  the  weeks  imme- 
diately preceding  the  decision  for  Independence,  than  is  to 
be  derived  from  one  of  the  replies  then  given  to  these 
"  Letters  of  Cato."  '  This  reply  was  in  the  form  of  a  play- 
ful tract  by  Francis  Hopkinson,  entitled  "  A  Prophecy," 
wherein  some  seer  of  an  age  in  the  remote  past  is  repre- 
sented as  having  a  vision  of  ;the  great  and  anxious  scene 
then  enacting  in  Philadelphia,  in  that  April,  1776: 

"  Now  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  the  latter  days,  that  a 
new  people  shall  rise  up  in  a  far  country,  and  they  shall  in- 
crease exceedingly,  and  many  shall  flock  unto  them;  and 
they  shall  build  cities  in  the  wilderness,  and  cultivate  their 
lands  with  the  hand  of  industry,  and  the  fame  of  them  shall 
spread  far  and  near. 

1  There  need  be  no  doubt  that  Provost  Smith  was  "  Cato."  In  a  letter  to  his 
wife,  written  from  Philadelphia  April  28,  1776,  John  Adams  mentions  that  it 
was  then  "  so  reported."  Francis  Hopkinson,  in  a  publication  made  during 
Smith's  lifetime,  expressly  declares  that  it  was  a  fact.  Finally  the  great-grand- 
son and  biographer  of  William  .Smith  expressly  admits  the  fact.  "  Familiar 
Letters  of  John  Adams  and  His  Wife,"  167  ;  Hopkinson's  "  Works,"  i.  94; 
"Life  and  Correspondence  of  William  Smith,"  by  H.  W.  Smith,  i.  575. 


488  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  And  it  shall  be  that  the  king  of  islands  shall  send  over 
and  plant  in  the  midst  of  them  a  certain  tree.1  Its  blossoms 
shall  be  delightful  to  the  eye,  its  fruit  pleasant  to  the  taste-, 
and  its  leaves  shall  heal  them  of  all  manner  of  diseases. 
And  the  people  shall  cultivate  this  tree  with  all  possible 
care ;  and  they  shall  live  under  the  shadow  of  its  branches, 
and  shall  worship  it  as  a  god. 

"  But  in  process  of  time,  there  shall  arise  a  North"  wind, 
and  shall  blast  the  tree,  so  that  it  shall  no  longer  yield  its 
fruit,  or  afford  shelter  to  the  people,  but  it  shall  become 
rotten  at  the  heart;  and  the  North  wind  will  break  the 
branches  thereof,  and  they  shall  fall  upon  the  heads  of  the 
people,  and  wound  many. 

"  Then  a  prophet3  shall  arise  from  amongst  this  people, 
and  he  shall  exhort  them,  and  instruct  them  in  all  manner 
of  wisdom,  and  many  shall  believe  in  him;  and  he  shall 
wear  spectacles  upon  his  nose;  and  reverence  and  esteem 
shall  rest  upon  his  brow.  And  he  will  cry  aloud,  and  say: 
Seeing  that  this  tree  hath  no  strength  in  it,  and  that  it 
can  no  longer  shelter  us  from  the  winds  of  the  North,  but 
is  become  rotten  in  the  heart,  behold  now  let  us  cut  it 
down  and  remove  it  from  us.  And  in  its  place  we  will  plant 
another  tree,4  young  and  vigorous ;  and  we  will  water  it, 
and  it  shall  grow,  and  spread  its  branches  abroad.  And, 
moreover,  we  will  build  an  high  wall  to  defend  it  from  the 
winds  of  the  North,  that  it  may  be  well  with  us,  and  our 
children,  and  our  children's  children.' 

"  And  the  people  shall  hearken  to  the  voice  of  their 
prophet,  for  his  sayings  shall  be  good  in  their  eyes.  And 
they  shall  take  up  every  man  his  spade  and  his  axe,5  and 
shall  prepare  to  dig  up  and  cut  away  the  shattered  remains 

1  English  colonial  government  in  America. 

*  The  too  obvious  facilities  offered  by  the  name  of  George  the  Third's  famous 
prime  minister  were  a  constant  source  of  temptation  to  political  punsters  on 
both  sides  of  the  Atlantic. 

3  Dr.  Franklin. 

4  American  Independence. 

4  The  military  uprising  of  the  Americans,  especially  on  and  after  April  19, 1775. 


A   PROPHECY.  489 

of  the  blasted  and  rotten  tree,  according  to  the  words  of 
their  prophet. 

"  Then  a  certain  wise  man  '  shall  arise,  and  shall  call  him- 
self Cato ;  and  he  shall  strive  to  persuade  the  people  to  put 
their  trust  in  the  rotten  tree,  and  not  to  dig  it  up,  or  remove 
it  from  its  place.  And  he  shall  harangue  with  great  vehe- 
mence, and  shall  tell  them  that  a  rotten  tree  is  better  than 
a  sound  one ;  and  that  it  is  for  the  benefit  of  the  people 
that  the  North  wind  should  blow  upon  it,  and  that  the 
branches  thereof  should  be  broken  and  fall  upon  and  crush 
them. 

"  And  he  shall  receive  from  the  king  of  the  islands  fetters 
of  gold  and  chains  of  silver*;  and  he  shall  have  hopes  of 
great  reward  if  he  will  fasten  them  on  the  necks  of  the 
people,  and  chain  them  to  the  trunk  of  the  rotten  tree. 
And  this  he  shall  strive  to  do  by  every  insinuating  art  in  his 
power.  And  he  shall  tell  the  people  that  they  are  not  fetters 
and  chains,  but  shall  be  as  bracelets  of  gold  on  their  wrists, 
and  rings  of  silver  on  their  necks,  to  ornament  and  decorate 
them  and  their  children.  And  his  words  shall  be  sweet  in 
the  mouth,  but  very  bitter  in  the  belly. 

Moreover,  he  will  threaten  them  that,  if  they  will  not 
obey  his  voice,  he  will  whistle  with  his  lips,  and  raw-head 
and  bloody-bones  shall  come  out  of  France 3  to  devour  them 
and  their  little  one;  and  he  will  blow  with  his  horn,  and  the 
wild  bull  of  Spain  will  come  and  gore  them  with  his  horns, 
and  trample  upon  them  with  his  hoofs,  even  until  they  die. 
And  he  shall  stand  upon  Mount-seir,  and  shall  pun  upon 
Mount-seir  in  the  face  of  all  the  people.  And  all  the  people 
shall  laugh  him  to  scorn. 

' '  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  that  certain  other  wise  men 

1  The  Reverend  William  Smith,  D.D.,  provost  of  the  College  of  Philadelphia. 

*  Dr.  Smith  was  accused  of  promising  offices,  titles,  and  other  marks  of  royal 
favor  as  a  reward  for  opposing  American  Independence. 

3  A  frequent  and  very  formidable  argument  against  Independence  was  that, 
on  losing  the  protection  of  England,  America  would  be  overrun  and  parcelled 
out  between  France  and  Spain. 


490  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

shall  also  stand  up  and  oppose  themselves  to  Cato ;  and 
shall  warn  the  people  not  to  trust  in  the  allurements  of  his 
voice,  nor  to  be  terrified  with  his  threats,  and  to  hearken  to 
his  puns  no  more.  And  they  shall  encourage  the  people  to 
go  on  with  the  work  they  had  taken  in  hand  according 
to  the  words  of  their  prophet.  And  they  shall  earnestly 
exhort  the  people  to  despise  and  reject  the  fetters  of  gold 
and  the  chains  of  silver,  which  the  king  of  the  islands  would 
fasten  upon  them. 

"  And  one  of  these  men  shall  call  himself  Cassandra,1  and 
the  other  shall  call  himself  the  Forester3:  and  they  shall 
fall  upon  Cato,  and  shall  strip  him  of  every  disguise,  and 
show  him  naked  before  all  the  people.  And  Cassandra  shall 
tie  him  up,  and  the  Forester  shall  scourge  him  until  he  shall 
become  exceeding  sore.  Nevertheless,  Cato  shall  not  repent, 
but  shall  harden  his  heart,  and  become  very  stubborn,  and 
shall  be  vexed  till  he  die.  .  .  . 

And  in  process  of  time,  the  people  shall  root  up  the 
rotten  tree,  and  in  its  place  they  shall  plant  a  young  and 
vigorous  tree,  and  shall  effectually  defend  it  from  the  winds 
of  the  North  by  an  high  wall.  And  they  shall  dress  it,  and 
prune  it,  and  cultivate  it  to  their  own  liking.  And  the 
young  tree  shall  grow  and  flourish  and  spread  its  branches 
far  abroad ;  and  the  people  shall  dwell  under  the  shadow  of 
its  branches,  and  shall  become  an  exceeding  great,  and 
powerful,  and  happy  nation.  And  of  their  increase  there 
shall  be  no  end.  And  Cato  and  his  works  shall  be  no  more 
remembered  amongst  them.  For  Cato  shall  die,  and  his 
works  shall  follow  him."  * 

1  Said  to  be  James  Cannon,  a  tutor  in  the  College  of  Philadelphia,  who  thus 
attacked  his  own  official  chief.     "  Letters  of  John  Adams,  Addressed  to  his 
Wife,"  i.  105. 

2  Thomas  Paine  who,  during  April  and  May,  1776,  published  in  the  Phila- 
delphia newspapers  four  articles  over  that  signature,  the  fame  of  which  paled  in 
the  incomparable  success  of  his  pamphlet  entitled  "  Common  Sense." 

3  Hopkinson,  "  The  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  etc.,  i.  92-97. 


WILLIAM  HENRY  DRAY  TON.  491 

VI. 

Perhaps  no  other  living  voice  then  lifted  up  among  the 
people  in  championship  of  the  proposed  assertion  of  com- 
plete nationality,  spoke  out  with  greater  authority,  than 
the  voice  of  William  Henry  Dray  ton,  then  chief  justice  of 
South  Carolina  by  appointment  of  its  provincial  congress, 
himself  of  an  opulent  and  aristocratic  family  in  that  colony, 
educated  at  Westminster  School  and  at  Baliol  College, 
Oxford,  and  already  distinguished  for  his  activity  as  a  polit- 
ical writer, — an  activity  which  did  not  cease  until  shortly 
before  his  death  in  1779. 

In  politics,  his  master  principle  seems  to  have  been  indi- 
vidualism— personal  and  local;  and  he  was,  perhaps,  the 
first  citizen  of  South  Carolina  to  set  forth  on  behalf  of  his 
own  neighborhood  those  extreme  claims  to  political  auton- 
omy which  have  since  had  both  a  brilliant  and  a  tragic  con- 
nection with  the  history  of  that  State.  In  1769,  under  his 
favorite  signature. of  "  Freeman,"  he  wrote  against  the  new 
patriotic  "  associations  "  then  pushing  for  adoption  in  the 
several  colonies — to  which  he  objected  for  the  characteristic 
reason  that,  under  the  pretence  of  promoting  liberty,  they 
wrought  the  most  brutal  "  encroachments  on  his  private 
rights."1  Being  on  this  account  regarded  as  a  friend  of 
prerogative,  he  enjoyed  for  some  years  the  royal  favor, 
which  was  shown  by  his  appointment  as  privy  councillor  for 
South  Carolina  in  1771,  and  as  assistant  judge  in  1774- 
Gradually,  however,  the  ministerial  policy  toward  the  colo- 
nies aroused  his  jealousy  on  behalf  of  the  same  imperiled^in- 
terest— that  of  individual  rights;  and  in  August,  1774,  he 
published  in  Charleston  aT'bold  and  powerful  pamphlet,  enti- 
tled "  Letter  from  Freeman  of  South  Carolina,  to  the  Depu- 
ties of  North  America,  assembled  in  the  High  Court  of 
Congress  at  Philadelphia."  In  consequence  of  the  anti- 
ministerial  position  taken  by  Drayton  in  this  pamphlet,  he 
was  shortly  afterward  removed  from  his  offices  as  assistant 

1  J.  Drayton,  "  Memoirs  of  the  American  Revolution,"  i.  xiv. 


492  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

judge  and  privy  councilor — a  chastisement  which  had  the 
effect  of  winning  for  him  the  confidence  and  affection  of  the 
Revolutionist  party.  In  1775,  he  was  made  a  member  both 
of  the  council  of  safety  and  of  the  provincial  congress  in  South 
Carolina  ;  in  March,  1776,  he  was  made  chief  justice.  In 
October,  1776,  over  the  signature  of  "  A  Carolinian,"  Dray- 
ton  published  a  trenchant  address  to  Lord  Howe  and  to 
General  Sir  William  Howe,  exposing  the  dangerous  ten- 
dency of  their  declaration  for  restoring  peace  to  the  colo- 
nies.1 In  January,  1778,  he  delivered  before  the  general 
assembly  of  South  Carolina  a  speech  against  the  ratification 
by  that  State  of  the  articles  'of  confederation,4 — the  burden 
of  his  argument  being  one  upon  which  the  subsequent 
decade  threw  a  grotesque  light, — namely,  that,  by  those 
articles,  the  States  were  stripped  of  powers  that  they  could 
not  safely  part  with,  while  thereby  was  created  a  central 
government  of  portentous  aspect  through  its  enormous 
accumulation  of  authority!  In  September,  1778,  he  pub- 
lished "  An  Answer  to  the  Letters  and  Addresses  of  the 
Commissioners  "  of  the  king  3 — probably  Drayton's  last  con- 
tribution to  the  literary  discussion  of  Revolutionary  topics. 
It  was  while  serving  in  his  great  office  as  chief  justice  of 
South  Carolina,  and  in  accordance  with  a  custom  then  prev- 
alent, that  he  delivered  from  time  to  time  a  series  of  ora- 
torical and  politico-legal  harangues  to  the  grand  jury,  on 
the  leading  questions  then  at  issue.  In  one  of  these 
harangues,  he  virtually  issued  on  behalf  of  his  own  colony, 
a  declaration  of  independence,  more  than  two  months  in 
advance  of  the  more  renowned  Declaration  made  by  the 
Continental  Congress  on  behalf  of  all  the  colonies ;  for,  so 
early  as  the  23d  of  April,  1776,  acting  as  chief  justice,  he 
gave  from  the  bench  the.  opinion  that,  by  "  the  law  of  the 
land,"  and  in  consequence  of  violence  done  to  American 
rights  by  King  George  the  Third,  that  monarch  had  "  abdi- 

1  John  Drayton,  "  Memoirs  of  the  American  Revolution,"  i.  xvii. 
9  Niles,  "  Principles  and  Acts,"  etc.,  98-115. 
"  The  Remembrancer,"  vii.  55-64. 


WILLIAM  HENR  Y  DRA  YTON. 


493 


cated  the  government  ' '  of  South  Carolina,  and  that,  with 
respect  to  that  particular  colony,  the  throne  had  become 
vacant — the  king  having  henceforth  ' '  no  authority  ' '  there, 
and  its  people  owing  "  no  obedience  to  him."  As  this  fear- 
less and  trenchant  speech  of  the  Revolutionary  chief  justice 
of  South  Carolina  was  couched  in  the  language  of  judicial 
authority,  and  was  delivered  from  the  bench  to  the  grand 
jury  with  all  the  ceremony  of  the  judicial  function,  it  deeply 
impressed  the  popular  imagination,  and  seemed  to  give  to 
a  measure  previously  called  lawless  the  consecration  of  law.1 

1  Any  reader  who  may  care  to  go  more  deeply  into  this  curious  phase  of 
Revolutionary  agitation,  will  find  it  profitable  to  read  the  three  principal 
charges  given  by  Mr.  Chief  Justice  Drayton,  which  may  be  conveniently  found 
as  follows  :  for  April  23,  1776,  in  Niles,  "  Principles  and  Acts,"  etc.,  72-80  ; 
for  October  15,  1776,  ibid.  81-92  ;  for  October  15,  1777.  ibid-  92-98. 


CHAPTER    XXIII. 

THOMAS    JEFFERSON    AND    THE    GREAT    DECLARATION. 

I, — Jefferson's  first  entrance  into  Congress  in  June,  1775 — Public  papers  then 
written  by  him — "  Resolutions  of  the  Virginia  House  of  Burgesses" — "  A 
Summary  View  of  the  Rights  of  British  America  " — "  Address  of  the  House 
of  Burgesses." 

II. — His  special  gifts  for  service  in  Congress — His  ability  as  a  writer  of  state 
papers  promptly  recognized  there — Is  at  the  head  of  the  committee  to  pre- 
pare the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  becomes  its  draughtsman. 

III. — Two  opposite  conditions  of  mind  with  respect  to  the  intellectual  worth  of 
that  document — Its  great  authority  acquired  in  the  face  of  abundant 
criticism. 

IV. — Attacked  in  the  year  of  its  promulgation — Governor  Thomas  Hutchinson's 
"Strictures" — "An  Answer  to  the  Declaration  of  Congress"  by  John 
Lind — Criticised  by  modem  English  writers  of  liberal  politics — Earl  Russell 
— His  criticism  anticipated  by  John  Adams — Criticism  by  Goldwin  Smith. 

V. — Criticised  by  American  statesmen  and  .historians — By  Calhoun,  Richard 
Henry  Lee,  Stephen  Cullen  Carpenter,  Charles  Campbell,  Littell,  Paul 
Leicester  Ford,  and  especially  by  John  Adams. 

VI. — Its  alleged  lack  of  originality — In  what  sense  true — In  what  sense  not 
true. 

VII. — The  Declaration  of  Independence  to  be  judged  with  respect  to  its  origin 
and  purpose — Avowedly  a  party  manifesto  in  a  bitter  race  quarrel — Con- 
tains two  principal  accusations — Are  these  to  be  set  aside  as  unhistoric  ? 
— The  accusation  respecting  an  intended  tyranny  over  the  colonists — The 
accusation  that  George  III.  was  chiefly  responsible  for  this  intended  tyranny. 

VIII. — Its  immediate  success — Its  vast  subsequent  influence  over  the  American 
people — Connection  of  its  preamble  with  the  overthrow  of  slavery  in 
America — Its  influence  upon  the  political  and  ethical  ideals  of  mankind. 

IX.— Estimate  of  its  purely  literary  character. 


I. 

ON  the  twenty-first  of  June,  1775,  Thomas  Jefferson  took 
his  seat  for  the  first  time  as  a  member  of  the  Continental 
Congress,  bringing  with  him  into  that  famous  assemblage, 
494 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON.  495 

as  we  are  told  by  an  older  member  of  it,  "  a  reputation  for 
literature,  science,  and  a  happy  talent  of  composition. 
Writings  of  his  were  handed  about,  remarkable  for  the 
peculiar  felicity  of  expression."  He  had  then  but  recently 
passed  his  thirty-second  birthday,  and  was  known  to  be  the 
author  of  two  or  three  public  papers  of  considerable  note. 

Of  these,  the  first  one,  written  in  1769,  could  hardly  have 
been  among  those  compositions  of  his  which  were  handed 
about  for  the  admiration  of  Congress:  it  consisted  of  the 
"  Resolutions  of  the  Virginia  House  of  Burgesses "  in 
response  to  the  speech  of  their  new  governor,  Lord  Bote- 
tourt,  and  was  remarkable  for  nothing  so  much  as  for  its 
obsequious  tone — especially  for  its  meek  assurance  on  behalf 
of  the  burgesses  that,  in  all  their  deliberations,  it  should  be 
their  "  ruling  principle  "  to  consider  the  interests  of  Vir- 
ginia and  those  of  Great  Britain  as  "  inseparably  the 
same."  a 

His  second  public  paper,  written  in  the  early  summer  of 
1774,  indicates  how  perfectly,  within  that  interval  of  five 
years,  this  adept  at  "  felicity  of  expression"  had  passed 
from  the  stage  of  deference,  to  something  bordering  on  that 
of  truculence,  as  regards  the  official  custodians  of  authority. 
The  extraordinary  composition  now  referred  to,  was  first 
published  at  Williamsburg  in  the  year  in  which  it  was  writ- 
ten, and  bears  the  following  title:  "  A  Summary  View  of 
the  Rights  of  British  America.  Set  Forth  in  Some  Reso- 
lutions intended  for  the  Inspection  of  the  Present  Delegates 
of  the  People  of  Virginia  now  in  Convention."  Herein 
his  majesty  is  informed,  without  the  waste  of  a  single  word 
in  mere  politeness,  that  "  he  is  no  more  than  the  chief  offi- 
cer of  the  people,  appointed  by  the  laws,  and  circumscribed 
with  definite  powers,  to  assist  in  working  the  great  machine 

1  John  Adams,  in  "  The  Life  of  Timothy  Pickering,"  by  Charles  Wentworth 
Upham,  iv.  466-467  ;  also,  in  "  The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  ii.  5'3-5U  "• 

1  "Journal  of  the  House  of  Burgesses  for  1769,"  P-  4  ;  reprinted  in  "  The 
Writings  of  Jefferson,"  Ford  ed. ,  i.  369. 

8  Ibid.  421-447. 


496  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

of  government  erected  for  their  use,  and  consequently  sub- 
ject to  their  superintendence."  This,  of  course,  might  be 
a  somewhat  novel  and  startling  view  of  himself  for  the 
4 '  chief  magistrate  of  the  British  empire"  to  take;  but 
after  he  shall  have  got  accustomed  to  it,  he  would  see, 
doubtless,  how  eminently  fitting  it  was  that  he  should  at 
last  receive  from  the  people  of  America  a  "  joint  address, 
penned  in  the  language  of  truth,  and  divested  of  those 
expressions  of  servility  which  would  persuade  his  majesty 
that  we  were  asking  favors,  and  not  rights."  '  "  Let  those 
flatter  who  fear:  it  is  not  an  American  art.  To  give  praise 
which  is  not  due  might  be  well  from  the  venal,  but  would  ill 
become  those  who  are  asserting  the  rights  of  human  nature. 
They  know,  and  will  therefore  say,  that  kings  are  the 
servants,  not  the  proprietors,  of  the  people.  Open  your 
breast,  sire,  to  liberal  and  expanded  thought.  Let  not  the 
name  of  George  the  Third  be  a  blot  in  the  page  of  history. 
.  The  whole  art  of  government  consists  in  the  art  of 
being  honest.  Only  aim  to  do  your  duty,  and  mankind  will 
give  you  credit  where  you  fail.  No  longer  persevere  in  sac- 
rificing the  rights  of  one  part  of  the  empire  to  the  inordinate 
desires  of  another,  but  deal  out  to  all  equal  and  impartial 
right.  .  .  .  This,  sire,  is  the  advice  of  your  great 
American  council,  on  the  observance  of  which  may  perhaps 
depend  your  felicity  and  future  fame,  and  the  preservation 
of  that  harmony  which  alone  can  continue  both  in  Great 
Britain  and  America  the  reciprocal  advantages  of  their  con- 
nection." !l  Another  notable  state  paper  of  Jefferson's,  was 
one  on  which  he  had  been  engaged  immediately  prior  to  his 
departure  from  the  legislature  of  Virginia,  in  order  to  take 
his  seat  in  Congress, — an  "  Address  of  the  House  of  Bur- 
gesses," s  adopted  June  12,  1775,  and  having  reference  to 
Lord  North's  plan  for  conciliating  the  American  colonies. 
In  this  paper,  the  burgesses  of  Virginia  are  made  to  review 
tha  long  record  of  political  blunders  and  crimes  perpetrated 

"  The  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,"  Ford  ed.,  i.  429. 
5  Ibid.  446.  s  Ibid   455-459. 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON.  497 

by  the  British  government  in  its  relation  to  America,  and 
then  to  declare  that,  for  the  further  management  of  the 
dispute,  they  looked  to  the  General  Congress. 

II. 

Certainly,  it  is  not  strange  that  the  more  radical  members 
of  Congress  welcomed  among  them  this  young  man,  who, 
being  in  opinion  even  more  radical  than  themselves,  also 
possessed  so  striking  a  talent  for  unabashed  and  sonorous 
talk  to  governors  of  royal  provinces  and  even  to  kings. 
Moreover,  he  soon  won  the  hearts  of  the  speech  makers  in 
that  body  by  being  himself  no  speech  maker ;  and  while  he 
thus  avoided  irritating  collisions  and  rivalries  with  his  asso- 
ciates, he  commanded  their  further  admiration  by  being 
always  "  prompt,  frank,  explicit,  and  decisive  upon  commit- 
tees and  in  conversation," — not  even  Samuel  Adams  himself 
being  more  so.1  Accordingly,  only  three  days  after  he  had 
taken  his  seat,  the  great  honor  was  paid  him  of  being  joined 
with  the  foremost  political  writer  of  the  day — the  author  of 
the  "  Farmer's  Letters  " — as  a  special  committee  for  prepar- 
ing the  declaration  of  the  Americans  on  taking  up  arms.* 
Furthermore,  in  less  than  a  month  after  his  arrival,  this 
novice  in  congressional  business  was  given  the  second  place 
on  a  committee,  consisting  of  such  veterans  as  Franklin, 
John  Adams,  and  Richard  Henry  Lee,  appointed  to  draft 
the  American  reply  to  Lord  North's  conciliatory  propo- 
sitions.3 

Thus  it  came  to  pass,  that  when,  early  in  June,  1776, 
Congress  saw  before  it  the  probability  of  its  soon  adopting 

1  "  The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  ii.  514  n. 

8  For  this  declaration,  Jefferson  prepared  two  drafts,  both  of  which  are  given 
in  Ford's  edition  of  his  "  Writings,"  i.  462-476.  The  famous  and  noble  decla- 
ration actually  proclaimed  by  Congress,  was  wholly  the  work  of  Dickinson  ; 
although,  through  an  error  of  memory  to  which,  in  such  matters,  Jefferson  was 
peculiarly  liable,  he  himself,  in  his  "  Autobiography,"  laid  claim  to  the  author- 
ship of  "  the  last  four  paragraphs  and  the  half  of  the  preceding  one."  Ibid.  17. 

•'  1 1  is  rough   draft  for  this  important  paper  is  given  by  Ford,  in  Jefferson's 
"Writings"  i-  476-482. 
33 


498  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

the  tremendous  resolution, — "  that  these  United  Colonies 
are,  and  of  right  ought  to  be,  free  and  independent  States ; 
that  they  are  absolved  from  all  allegiance  to  the  British 
crown ;  and  that  all  political  connection  between  them  and 
the  state  of  Great  Britain  is,  and  ought  to  be,  totally  dis- 
solved," ' —  then  Thomas  Jefferson,  receiving  the  largest 
number  of  votes,  was  placed  at  the  head  of  the  committee 
of  illustrious  men  to  whom  was  assigned  the  task  of  prepar- 
ing a  suitable  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  thereby  he 
became  the  draftsman  of  the  one  American  state  paper  that 
has  reached  to  supreme  distinction  in  the  world,  and  that 
seems  likely  to  last  as  long  as  American  civilization  lasts. 

III. 

It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  some  hindrance  to  a  right 
estimate  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  is  occasioned 
by  either  of  two  opposite  conditions  of  mind,  both  of  which 
are  often  to  be  met  with  among  us:  on  the  one  hand,  a 
condition  of  hereditary,  uncritical  awe  and  worship  of  the 
American  Revolution  and  of  this  state  paper  as  its  abso- 
lutely perfect  and  glorious  expression ;  on  the  other  hand,  a 
later  condition  of  cultivated  distrust  of  the  Declaration,  as  a 
piece  of  writing  lifted  up  into  inordinate  renown  by  the 
passionate  and  heroic  circumstances  of  its  origin,  and  ever 
since  then  extolled  beyond  reason  by  the  blind  energy  of 
patriotic  enthusiasm.  Turning  from  the  former  state  of 
mind, — which  obviously  calls  for  no  further  comment, — 
we  may  note,  as  a  partial  illustration  of  the  latter,  that 
American  confidence  in  the  supreme  intellectual  merit  of 
this  all-famous  document  received  a  serious  wound,  some 
forty  years  ago,  from  the  hand  of  Rufus  Choate,  when,  with 
a  courage  greater  than  would  now  be  required  for  such  an 
act,  he  characterized  it  as  made  up  of  "  glittering  and 
sounding  generalities  of  natural  right."2  What  the  great 
advocate  then  so  unhesitantly  suggested,  many  a  thought- 

1  "  Journals  of  the  American  Congress,"  i.  368-369. 

*  "  letter  of  Rufus  Choate  to  the  Whigs  of  Maine,"  1856. 


THE  DECLARA  TION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  499 

ful  American  since  then  has  at  least  suspected, — that  this 
famous  proclamation,  as  a  piece  of  political  literature,  can- 
not stand  the  test  of  modern  analysis;  that  it  belongs  to 
the  immense  class  of  over-praised  productions;  that  it  is,  in 
fact,  a  stately  patchwork  of  sweeping  propositions  of  some- 
what doubtful  validity;  that  it  has  long  imposed  upon  man- 
kind by  the  well-known  effectiveness  of  verbal  glitter  and 
sound;  that,  at  the  best,  it  is  an  example  of  florid  political 
declamation  belonging  to  the  sophomoric  period  of  our 
national  life — a  period  which,  as  we  flatter  ourselves,  we 
have  now  outgrown. 

'Nevertheless,  it  is  to  be  noted  that,  whatever  authority 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  has  acquired  in  the  world, 
has  been  due  to  no  lack  of  criticism,  either  at  the  time 
of  its  first  appearance  or  since  then, — a  fact  which  seems 
to  tell  in  favor  of  its  essential  worth  and  strength.  From 
the  date  of  its  orginal  publication  down  to  the  present 
moment,  it  has  been  attacked  again  and  again,  either  in 
anger  or  in  contempt,  by  friends  as  well  as  by  enemies  of 
the  American  Revolution,  by  liberals  in  politics  as  well  as 
by  conservatives.  It  has  been  censured  for  its  substance,  it 
has  been  censured  for  its  form:  for  its  misstatements  of 
fact,  for  its  fallacies  in  reasoning;  for  its  audacious  novelties 
and  paradoxes,  for  its  total  lack  of  all  novelty,  for  its  repe- 
tition of  old  and  threadbare  statements,  even  for  its  down- 
right plagiarisms;  finally,  for  its  grandiose  and  vaporing 
style. 

IV. 

One  of  the  earliest  and  ablest  of  its  assailants  was  Thomas 
Hutchinson,  the  last  civil  governor  of  the  colony  of  Massa- 
chusetts, who,  being  stranded  in  London  by  the  political 
storm  which  had  blown  him  thither,  published  there,  in  the 
autumn  of  1776,  his  "  Strictures  upon  the  Declaration  of 
the  Congress  at  Philadelphia"1;  wherein,  with  an  unsur- 

1  His  pamphlet  is  dated  October  15,  1776.  The  copy  of  it  now  before  me, 
the  property  of  Cornell  University,  is  the  very  copy  presented  "  To  Sir  Francis 
Bernard,  Bart.,  From  the  Author." 


5OO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

passed  knowledge  of  the  origin  of  the  controversy,  and  with 
an  unsurpassed  acumen  in  the  discussion  of  it,  he  traverses 
the  entire  document,  paragraph  by  paragraph,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  showing  that  its  allegations  in  support  of  American 
Independence  are  "  false  and  frivolous." 

A  better  written,  and,  upon  the  whole,  a  more  effective 
arraignment  of  the  great  Declaration,  was  the  celebrated 
pamphlet  by  an  English  barrister,  John  Lind,  "  An  Answer 
to  the  Declaration  of  the  American  Congress," — a  pamphlet 
evidently  written  at  the  instigation  of  the  ministry,  and  sent 
abroad  under  its  approval.  Here,  again,  the  manifesto  of 
Congress  is  subjected  to  a  searching  criticism,  in  order  to 
show  that  the  theory  of  government  put  forward  in  its  pre- 
amble is  "  absurd  and  visionary  "  a;  that  its  political  max- 
ims are  not  only  "  repugnant  to  the  British  constitution  " 
but  "  subversive  of  every  actual  or  imaginable  kind  of  gov- 
ernment"'; and  that  its  specific  charges  against  the  king 
and  parliament  are  "  calumnies,"  4 — since  they  allege  as 
usurpations  and  as  encroachments  certain  acts  of  govern- 
ment under  George  the  Third  identical  in  character  with 
those  which  had  been  "  constantly  exercised  by  his  prede- 
cessors and  their  parliaments,"  and  which  had  been  on 
many  occasions  recognized  as  constitutional  by  the  Ameri- 
can colonial  assemblies.6  It  is  doubtful  if  any  disinter- 
ested student  of  history,  any  competent  judge  of  reasoning, 
will  now  deny  to  this  pamphlet  the  praise  of  making  out 
a  strong  case  against  the  historical  accuracy  and  the  logical 
soundness  of  many  parts  of  the  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence. 

Undoubtedly,  the  force  of  such  censures  is  for  us  much 
broken  by  the  fact,  that  those  censures  proceeded  from  men 
who  were  themselves  partisans  in  the  Revolutionary  contro- 
versy and  bitterly  hostile  to  the  whole  movement  which  the 
Declaration  was  intended  to  justify.  Such  is  not  the  case, 
however,  with  the  leading  modern  English  critics  of  the 

1  "  Strictures,"  etc.,  3.  2  "  An  Answer,"  etc.,  119. 

3  Ibid.  <  Ibid.  5.  5  Ibid.  123-130. 


THE  DECLARA  TION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  50! 

same  document,  who,  while  blaming  in  severe  terms  the 
policy  of  the  British  government  toward  the  Thirteen  Colo- 
nies, have  also  found  much  to  abate  from  the  confidence 
due  to  this  official  announcement  of  the  reasons  for  our 
secession  from  the  empire.  For  example,  Earl  Russell, 
after  frankly  saying  that  the  great  disruption  proclaimed  by 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  was  a  result  which  Great 
Britain  had  "  used  every  means  most  fitted  to  bring  about," 
such  as  "  vacillation  in  council,  harshness  in  language,  fee- 
bleness in  execution,  disregard  of  American  sympathies 
and  affections,"  also  pointed  out  that  "  the  truth  of  this 
memorable  Declaration  "  was  "  warped  "  by  "  one  singu- 
lar defect,"  namely,  its  exclusive  and  excessive  arraign- 
ment of  George  the  Third  "  as  a  single  and  despotic 
tyrant,"  much  like  Philip  the  Second  to  the  people  of  the 
Netherlands.1 

This  temperate  criticism  from  an  able  and  a  liberal  Eng- 
lish statesman  of  the  present  century,  may  be  said  to  touch 
the  very  core  of  the  problem  as  to  the  historic  justice  of  our 
great  indictment  of  the  last  king  of  America ;  and  there  is 
deep  significance  in  the  fact,  that  this  is  the  very  criticism 
upon  the  document,  which,  as  John  Adams  tells  us,  he  him- 
self had  in  mind  when  it  was  first  submitted  to  him  in 
committee,  and  even  when,  shortly  afterwards,  he  advocated 
its  adoption  by  Congress.  After  mentioning  certain  things 
in  it  with  which  he  was  delighted,  he  adds:  "  There  were 
other  expressions  which  I  would  not  have  inserted  if  I 
had  drawn  it  up, — particularly  that  which  called  the  king 
tyrant.  I  thought  this  too  personal;  for  I  never  believed 
George  to  be  a  tyrant  in  disposition  and  in  nature.  I  always 
believed  him  to  be  deceived  by  his  courtiers  on  both  sides 
of  the  Atlantic,  and,  in  his  official  capacity  only,  cruel.  I 
thought  the  expression  too  passionate,  and  too  much  like 
scolding,  for  so  grave  and  solemn  a  document ;  but,  as 
Franklin  and  Sherman  were  to  inspect  it  afterwards,  I 

1  Russell,   Lord  John,  "  Memorials  and  Correspondence  of   Charles  J 
Fox,"  i.  151-152. 


502  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

thought  it  would  not  become  me  to  strike  it  out.     I  con- 
sented to  report  it."  « 

A  more  minute  and  a  more  poignant  criticism  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  has  been  made  in  recent  years 
by  still  another  English  writer  of  liberal  tendencies,  who, 
however,  in  his  capacity  as  critic,  seems  here  to  labor  under 
the  disadvantage  of  having  transferred  to  the  document 
which  he  undertakes  to  judge,  much  of  the  extreme  dislike 
which  he  has  for  the  man  who  wrote  it, — whom,  indeed,  he 
regards  as  a  sophist,  as  a  demagogue,  as  quite  capable  of 
inveracity  in  speech,  and  as  bearing  some  resemblance  to 
Robespierre  "  in  his  feline  nature,  his  malignant  egotism, 
and  his  intense  suspiciousness,  as  well  as  in  his  bloody- 
minded,  yet  possibly  sincere,  philanthropy."8  In  the 
opinion  of  Professor  Goldwin  Smith,  our  great  national 
manifesto  is  written  "  in  a  highly  rhetorical  strain  "  3;  "  it 
opens  with  sweeping  aphorisms  about  the  natural  rights  of 
man,  at  which  political  science  now  smiles,  and  which 
might  seem  strange  when  framed  for  slave-holding 
communities  by  a  publicist  who  himself  held  slaves  "  4; 
while,  in  its  specifications  of  facts,  it  "  is  not  more  scrupu- 
lously truthful  than  are  the  general  utterances  "  6  of  the 
statesman  who  was  its  scribe.  Its  charges  that  the  several 
offensive  acts  of  the  king,  besides  "  evincing  a  design  to 

"The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  ii.  514  n.  The  distinction  here  made  by 
John  Adams  between  the  personal  and  the  official  character  of  George  III., 
is  quite  pointless  in  its  application  to  the  Declaration  of  Independence  ;  since  it 
is  of  the  King's  official  character  only  that  the  Declaration  speaks.  Moreover, 
John  Adams's  testimony  in  1822  that  he  "  never  believed  George  to  be  a  tyrant 
in  disposition  and  in  nature,"  is  completely  destroyed  by  John  Adams's  own 
testimony  on  that  subject  as  recorded  at  an  earlier  period  of  his  life.  For  ex- 
ample, in  1780,  in  a  letter  to  M.  Dumas,  he  thus  speaks  of  George  III. — 
"  Europe,  in  general,  is  much  mistaken  in  that  character  ;  it  is  a  pity  that  he 
should  be  believed  to  be  so  amiable  ;  the  truth  is  far  otherwise.  Nerone  nero- 
nior  is  nearer  the  truth."  Ibid.  vii.  327. 

8  Goldwin  Smith,  in  "  The  Nineteenth  Century,"  No.  131,  January,  1888,  p. 
109. 

8  "  The  United  States.     An  Outline  of  Political  History,"  88. 

4  Ibid.  87-88. 
"  The  Nineteenth  Century,"  No.  131,  p.  in. 


THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  503 

reduce  the  colonists  under  absolute  despotism,"  "  all  had  as 
their  direct  object  the  establishment  of  an  absolute  tyran- 
ny," are  simply  "  propositions  which  history  cannot  ac- 
cept." '  Moreover,  the  Declaration  "  blinks  the  fact  that 
many  of  the  acts,  styled  steps  of  usurpation,  were  measures 
of  repression  which,  however  unwise  or  excessive,  had  been 
provoked  by  popular  outrage."2  "  No  government  could 
allow  its  officers  to  be  assaulted  and  their  houses  sacked,  its 
loyal  lieges  to  be  tarred  and  feathered,  or  the  property  of 
merchants  sailing  under  its  flag  to  be  thrown  by  lawless 
hands  into  the  sea."  Even  "  the  preposterous  violence 
and  the  manifest  insincerity  of  the  suppressed  clause " 
against  slavery  and  the  slave-trade,  "  are  enough  to  create 
suspicion  as  to  the  spirit  in  which  the  whole  document  was 
framed. ' '  * 

V. 

Finally,  as  has  been  already  intimated,  not  even  among 
Americans  themselves  has  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
been  permitted  to  pass  on  into  the  enjoyment  of  its  superb 
renown,  without  much  critical  disparagement  at  the  hands 
of  statesmen  and  historians.  No  doubt  Calhoun-  had  its 
preamble  in  mind,  when  he  delcared  that  "  nothing  can  be 
more  unfounded  and  false  "  than  "  the  prevalent  opinion 
that  all  men  are  born  free  and  equal  "  ;  for  "  it  rests  upon 
the  assumption  of  a  fact  which  is  contrary  to  universal 
observation."  5  Of  course,  all  Americans  who  have  shared 
to  any  extent  in  Calhoun's  doctrines  respecting  human  soci- 
ety, could  hardly  fail  to  agree  with  him  in-  regarding  as 
fallacious  and  worthless  those  general  propositions  in  the 
Declaration  which  seem  to  constitute  its  logical  starting 
point,  as  well  as  its  ultimate  defense. 

1  "  The  United  States,"  etc.,  88.  *  Ibid- 

3  "  The  Nineteenth  Century,"  No.  131,  p.  m.  4  Ibid- 

6  "  A  Disquisition  on  Government,"  in  "The  Works  of  John  C.  Calhoun," 
i-  57- 


504  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Perhaps,  however,  the  most  frequent  form  of  disparage- 
ment to  which  Jefferson's  great  state  paper  has  been  sub- 
jected among  us,  is  that  which  would  minimize  his  merit  in 
composing  it,  by  denying  to  it  the  merit  of  originality. 
For  example,  Richard  Henry  Lee  sneered  at  it  as  a  thing 
"copied  from  Locke's  treatise  on  government."1  The 
author  of  a  life  of  Jefferson,  published  in  the  year  of  Jef- 
ferson's retirement  from  the  presidency,  suggests  that  the 
credit  of  having  composed  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
"  has  been  perhaps  more  generally,  than  truly,  given  by  the 
public"  to  that  great  man.*  Charles  Campbell,  the  his- 
torian of  Virginia,  intimates  that  some  expressions  in  the 
document  were  taken  without  acknowledgment  from  Aphra 
Behn's  tragi-comedy,  "  The  Widow  Ranter,  or,  The  His- 
tory of  Bacon  in  Virginia."  John  Stockton  Littell  de- 
scribes the  Declaration  of  Independence  as  "  that  enduring 
monument  at  once  of  patriotism,  and  of  genius  and  skill  in 
the  art  of  appropriation," — asserting  that  "  for  the  senti- 
ments and  much  of  the  language  "  of  it,  Jefferson  was 
indebted  to  Chief  Justice  Drayton's  charge  to  the  grand 
jury  of  Charleston  delivered  in  April,  1776,  as  well  as  to  the 
declaration  of  independence  said  to  have  been  adopted  by 
some  citizens  of  Mecklenburg  County,  North  Carolina,  in 
May,  1775.'  Even  the  latest  and  most  critical  editor  of  the 
writings  of  Jefferson  calls  attention  to  the  fact,  that  a  glance 
at  the  declaration  of  rights,  as  adopted  by  Virginia  on  the 
I2th  of  June,  1776,  "  would  seem  to  indicate  the  source 
from  which  Jefferson  derived  a  most  important  and  popular 
part  "  of  his  famous  production.6  By  no  one,  however,  has 
the  charge  of  a  lack  of  originality  been  pressed  with  so  much 
decisiveness  as  by  John  Adams,  who  took  evident  pleasure 
in  speaking  of  it  as  a  document  in  which  were  merely  "  reca- 

"The  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,"  H.  A.  Washington  ed.,  vii.  305. 
8  Stephen  Cullen  Carpenter,  "  Memoirs  of  Thomas  Jefferson,"  i.  n. 

"  History  of  Virginia,"  317. 

1  "  Graydon's  Men  and  Times  of  the  American  Revolution,"  323  n. 
6  Paul  Leicester  Ford,  "  The  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,"  i.  Introd.  xxvi. 


THE  DE CLARA  TION  OF  INDEPENDENCE. 


505 


pitulated  "  previous  and  well-known  statements  of  American 
rights  and  wrongs,1  and  who,  as  late  as  in  the  year  1822, 
deliberately  wrote  that  "  there  is  not  an  idea  in  it  but  what 
had  been  hackneyed  in  Congress  for  two  years  before.  The 
substance  of  it  is  contained  in  the  declaration  of  rights  and 
the  violation  of  those  rights,  in  the  journals  of  Congress,  in 
1774.  Indeed,  the  essence  of  it  is  contained  in  a  pamphlet,, 
voted  and  printed  by  the  town  of  Boston,  before  the  first 
Congress  met,  composed  by  James  Otis,  as  I  suppose,  in 
one  of  his  lucid  intervals,  and  pruned  and  polished  by 
Samuel  Adams."  a 

VI. 

Perhaps  nowhere  in  our  literature  would  it  be  possible  to- 
find  a  criticism  brought  forward  by  a  really  able  man  against 
any  piece  of  writing,  less  applicable  to  the  case,  and  of  less 
force  or  value,  than  is  this  particular  criticism  by  John 
Adams  and  others,  as  to  the  lack  of  originality  in  the  Decla- 
ration of  Independence.  Indeed,  for  such  a  paper  as  Jeffer- 
son was  commissioned  to  write,  the  one  quality  which  it 
could  not  properly  have  had — the  one  quality  which  would 
have  been  fatal  to  its  acceptance  either  by  the  American  Con- 
gress or  by  the  American  people — is  originality.  They  were 
then  at  the  culmination  of  a  tremendous  controversy  over 
alleged  grievances  of  the  most  serious  kind — a  controversy 
that  had  been  fiercely  raging  for  at  least  twelve  years.  In 
the  course  of  that  long  dispute,  every  phase  of  it,  whether 
as  to  abstract  right  or  constitutional  privilege  or  personal 
procedure,  had  been  presented  in  almost  every  conceivable 
form  of  speech.  At  last,  they  had  resolved,  in  view  of  all 
this  experience,  no  longer  to  prosecute  the  controversy  as 

1  "  The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  ii.  377. 

,  *  Ibid.  514  n.  Thus,  the  ingenuous  reader  has  the  happiness  of  seeing 
the  eternal  fitness  of  things  complied  with,  and  the  chief  intellectual  merit  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  brought  back  to  the  place  where  it  belongs, 
and  there  divided  between  the  town  of  Boston,  James  Otis,  and  the  Adams- 
family. 


506  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

members  of  the  empire:  they  had  resolved  to  revolt,  and 
casting  off  forever  their  ancient  fealty  to  the  British  crown, 
to  separate  from  the  empire,  and  to  establish  themselves  as 
a  new  nation  among  the  nations  of  the  earth.  In  this  emer- 
gency, as  it  happened,  Jefferson  was  called  upon  to  put  into 
form  a  suitable  statement  of  the  chief  considerations  which 
prompted  them  to  this  great  act  of  revolution,  and  which, 
as  they  believed,  justified  it.  What,  then,  was  Jefferson  to 
do  ?  Was  he  to  regard  himself  as  a  mere  literary  essayist, 
set  to  produce  before  the  world  a  sort  of  prize  dissertation, 
— a  calm,  analytic,  judicial  treatise  on  history  and  politics 
with  a  particular  application  to  Anglo-American  affairs, — 
one  essential  merit  of  which  would  be  its  originality  as  a 
contribution  to  historical  and  political  literature  ?  Was  he 
not,  rather,  to  regard  himself  as,  for  the  time  being,  the 
very  mouthpiece  and  prophet  of  the  people  whom  he  repre- 
sented, and  as  such  required  to  bring  together  and  to  set  in 
order,  in  their  name,  not  what  was  new,  but  what  was  old; 
to  gather  up  into  his  own  soul,  as  much  as  possible,  what- 
ever was  then  also  in  their  souls — their  very  thoughts  and 
passions,  their  ideas  of  constitutional  law,  their  interpreta- 
tions of  fact,  their  opinions  as  to  men  and  as  to  events  in  all 
that  ugly  quarrel;  their  notions  of  justice,  of  civic  dignity, 
of  human  rights;  finally,  their  memories  of  wrongs  which 
seemed  to  them  intolerable,  especially  of  wrongs  inflicted 
upon  them  during  those  twelve  years  by  the  hands  of  inso- 
lent and  brutal  men,  in  the  name  of  the  king,  and  by  his 
apparent  command  ? 

Moreover,  as  the  nature  of  the  task  laid  upon  him  made 
it  necessary  that  he  should  thus  state,  as  the  reasons  for 
their  intended  act,  those  very  considerations  both  as  to  fact 
and  as  to  opinion  which  had  actually  operated  upon  their 
minds,  so  did  it  require  him  to  do  so,  to  some  extent,  in 
the  very  language  which  the  people  themselves,  in  their 
more  formal  and  deliberate  utterances,  had  all  along  been 
using.  In  the  development  of  political  life  in  England  and 
America,  there  had  already  been  created  a  vast  literature  of 


THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE,  507 

constitutional  progress, — a  literature  common  to  both  por- 
tions of  the  English  race,  pervaded  by  its  own  stately  tradi- 
tions, and  reverberating  certain  great  phrases  which  formed, 
as  one  may  say,  almost  the  vernacular  of  English  justice, 
and  of  English  aspiration  for  a  free,  manly,  and  orderly 
political  life.  In  this  vernacular  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence was  written.  The  phraseology  thus  characteristic 
of  it,  is  the  very  phraseology  of  the  champions  of  constitu- 
tional expansion,  of  civic  dignity  and  of  progress,  within  the 
English  race  ever  since  Magna  Charta;  of  the  great  state 
papers  of  English  freedom  in  the  seventeenth  century,  par- 
ticularly the  Petition  of  Right  in  1629,  and  the  Bill  of 
Rights  in  1689;  of  the  great  English  charters  for  coloniza- 
tion in  America ;  of  the  great  English  exponents  of  legal 
and  political  progress, — Sir  Edward  Coke,  John  Milton^ 
Algernon  Sidney,  John  Locke;  finally,  of  the  great  American 
exponents  of  political  liberty  and  of  the  chief  representative 
bodies,  whether  local  or  general,  which  had  convened  in 
America  from  the  time  of  the  Stamp  Act  Congress  until 
that  of  the  Congress  which  resolved  upon  our  Independence. 
To  say,  therefore,  that  the  official  Declaration  of  that  resolve 
is  a  paper  made  up  of  the  very  opinions,  beliefs,  unbeliefs, 
the  very  sentiments,  prejudices,  passions,  even  the  errors  in 
judgment  and  the  personal  misconstructions — if  they  were 
such — which  then  actually  impelled  the  American  people  to 
that  mighty  act,  and  that  all  these  are  expressed  in  the  very 
phrases  which  they  had  been  accustomed  to  use,  is  to  pay 
to  that  state  paper  the  highest  tribute  as  to  its  fitness  for 
the  purpose  for  which  it  was  framed. 

Of  much  of  this,  also,  Jefferson  himself  seems  to  have  been 
conscious ;  and  perhaps  never  does  he  rise  before  us  with  more 
dignity,  with  more  truth,  than  when,  late  in  his  lifetime, 
hurt  by  the  captious  and  jangling  words  of  disparagement 
then  recently  put  into  writing  by  his  old  comrade,  to  the 
effect  that  the  Declaration  of  Independence  "  contained  no 
new  ideas,  that  it  is  a  commonplace  compilation,  its  senti- 
ments hackneyed  in  Congress  for  two  years  before,  and  its 


508  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

essence  contained  in  Otis's  pamphlet,"  Jefferson  quietly 
replied  that  perhaps  these  statements  might  "  all  be  true: 
of  that  I  am  not  to  be  the  judge.  .  .  .  Whether  I  had 
gathered  my  ideas  from  reading  or  reflection,  I  do  not 
know.  I  know  only  that  I  turned  to  neither  book  nor  pam- 
phlet while  writing  it.  I  did  not  consider  it  as  any  part  of 
my  charge  to  invent  new  ideas  altogether,  and  to  offer  no 
sentiment  which  had  ever  been  expressed  before."  ' 

Before  passing  from  this  phase  of  the  subject,  however,  it 
should  be  added  that,  while  the  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence lacks  originality  in  the  sense  just  indicated,  in  another 
and  perhaps  in  a  higher  sense,  it  possesses  originality — it  is 
individualized  by  the  character  and  the  genius  of  its  author. 
Jefferson  gathered  up  the  thoughts  and  emotions  and  even 
the  characteristic  phrases  of  the  people  for  whom  he  wrote, 
and  these  he  perfectly  incorporated  with  what  was  already 
in  his  own  mind,  and  then  to  the  music  of  his  own  keen,  rich, 
passionate,  and  enkindling  style,  he  mustered  them  into  that 
stately  and  triumphant  procession  wherein,  as  some  of  us 
still  think,  they  will  go  marching  on  to  the  world's  end. 

There  were  then  in  Congress  several  other  men  who  could 
have  written  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  written 
it  welr^-notably,  Franklin,  either  of  the  two  Adamses, 
Richard  Henry  Lee,  William  Livingston,  and,  best  of  all — 
but  for  his  own  opposition  to  the  measure — John  Dickin- 
son ;  but  had  any  one  of  these  other  men  written  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  while  it  would  have  contained, 
doubtless,  nearly  the  same  topics  and  nearly  the  same  great 
formulas  of  political  statement,  it  would  yet  have  been  a 
wholly  different  composition  from  this  of  Jefferson's.  No 
one  at  all  familiar  with  his  other  writings  as  well  as  with  the 
writings  of  his  chief  contemporaries,  could  ever  have  a  mo- 
ment's doubt,  even  if  the  fact  were  not  already  notorious, 

"The  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,"  H.  A.  Washington  ed.,  vii.  305. 
This  was  written  to  Madison,  30  August,  1823,  and  should  he  compared  with 
Madison's  letter  in  reply,  6  September,  1823  :  "  Letters  and  Other  Writings  of 
James  Madison,"  iii.  336-337. 


THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE,  509 

that  this  document  was  by  Jefferson.  He  put  into  it  some- 
thing that  was  his  own,  and  that  no  one  else  could  have  put 
there.  He  put  himself  into  it, — his  own  genius,  his  own 
moral  force,  his  faith  in  God,  his  faith  in  ideas,  his  love  of 
innovation,  his  passion  for  progress,  his  invincible  enthusi- 
asm, his  intolerance  of  prescription,  of  injustice,  of  cruelty, 
his  sympathy,  his  clarity  of  vision,  his  affluence  of  diction, 
his  power  to  fling  out  great  phrases  which  will  long  fire  and 
cheer  the  souls  of  men  struggling  against  political  unright- 
eousness. And  herein  lies  its  essential  originality,  perhaps 
the  most  precious,  and  indeed  almost  the  only,  originality 
ever  attaching  to  any  great  literary  product  that  is  represen- 
tative of  its  time.  He  made  for  himself  no  improper  claim, 
therefore,  when  he  directed  that  upon  the  granite  obelisk  at 
his  grave  should  be  carved  the  words, — "  Here  was  buried 
Thomas  Jefferson,  author  of  the  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence." 

VII. 

If  the  Declaration  of  Independence  is  now  to  be  fairly 
judged  by  us,  it  must  be  judged  with  reference  to  what  it 
was  intended  to  be — namely,  an  impassioned  manifesto  of 
one  party,  and  that  the  weaker  party,  in  a  violent  race 
quarrel ;  of  a  party  resolved,  at  last,  upon  the  extremity  of 
revolution,  and  already  menaced  by  the  inconceivable  disas- 
ter of  being  defeated  in  the  very  act  of  armed  rebellion 
against  the  mightiest  military  power  on  earth.  This  mani- 
festo, then,  is  not  to  be  censured  because,  being  avowedly 
a  statement  of  its  own  side  of  the  quarrel,  it  does  not  also 
contain  a  moderate  and  judicial  statement  of  the  opposite 
side ;  or  because,  being  necessarily  partisan  in  method,  it  is 
likewise  both  partisan  and  vehement  in  tone ;  or  because  it 
bristles  with  accusations  against  the  enemy  so  fierce  and  so 
unqualified  as  now  to  seem  in  some  respects  overdrawn;  or 
because  it  resounds  with  certain  great  aphorisms  about  the 

1  Randall,  "  The  Life  of  Thomas  Jefferson,"  iii.  563. 


510  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

natural  rights  of  man,  at  which,  indeed,  political  science 
cannot  now  smile  except  to  its  own  discomfiture  and  shame 
— aphorisms  which  are  likely  to  abide  in  this  world  as  the 
chief  source  and  inspiration  of  heroic  enterprises  among 
men  for  self-deliverance  from  oppression. 

Taking  into  account,  therefore,  as  we  are  bound  to  do, 
the  circumstances  of  its  origin,  and  especially  its  purpose  as 
a  solemn  and  piercing  appeal  to  mankind,  on  behalf  of  a 
small  and  weak  nation  against  the  alleged  injustice  and 
cruelty  of  a  great  and  powerful  one,  it  still  remains  our 
duty  to  enquire  whether,  as  has  been  asserted  in  our  time, 
history  must  set  aside  either  of  the  two  central  charges 
embodied  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence. 

The  first  of  these  charges  affirms  that  the  several  acts 
complained  of  by  the  colonists,  evinced  "  a  design  to  reduce 
them  under  absolute  despotism,"  and  had  as  their  "  direct 
object  the  establishment  of  an  absolute  tyranny  "  over  the 
American  people.  Was  this,  indeed,  a  groundless  charge, 
in  the  sense  intended  by  the  words  "  despotism  "  and 
"  tyranny," — that  is,  in  the  sense  commonly  given  to  those 
words  in  the  usage  of  the  English-speaking  race  ?  Accord- 
ing to  that  usage,  it  was  not  an  oriental  despotism  that  was 
meant,  nor  a  Greek  tyranny,  nor  a  Roman,  nor  a  Spanish. 
The  sort  of  despot,  the  sort  of  tyrant,  whom  the  English 
people,  ever  since  the  time  of  King  John  and  especially 
during  the  period  of  the  Stuarts,  had  been  accustomed  to 
look  for  and  to  guard  against,  was  the  sort  of  tyrant  or  despot 
that  could  be  evolved  out  of  the  conditions  of  English  polit- 
ical life.  Furthermore,  he  was  not  by  them  expected  to 
appear  among  them  at  the  outset  in  the  fully  developed 
shape  of  a  Philip  or  an  Alva  in  the  Netherlands.  They 
were  able  to  recognize  him,  they  were  prepared  to  resist 
him,  in  the  earliest  and  most  incipient  stage  of  his  being — • 
at  the  moment,  in  fact,  when  he  should  make  .his  first 
attempt  to  gain  all  power  over  his  people  by  assuming  the 
single  power  to  take  their  property  without  their  consent. 
Hence  it  was,  as  Edmund  Burke  pointed  out  in  the  house 


THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  511 

of  commons  only  a  few  weeks  before  the  American  Revolu- 
tion entered  upon  its  military  phase,  that  in  England  "  the 
great  contests  for  freedom  .  .  .  were  from  the  earliest 
times  chiefly  upon  the  question  of  taxing.  Most  of  the 
contests  in  the  ancient  commonwealths  turned  primarily 
on  the  right  of  election  of  magistrates,  or  on  the  balance 
among  the  several  orders  of  the  state.  The  question  of 
money  was  not  with  them  so  immediate.  But  in  England 
it  was  otherwise.  On  this  point  of  taxes  the  ablest  pens  and 
most  eloquent  tongues  have  been  exercised,  the  greatest 
spirits  have  acted  and  suffered.  .  .  .  They  took  infinite 
pains  to  inculcate,  as  a  fundamental  principle,  that  in  all 
monarchies  the  people  must  in  effect  themselves,  mediately 
or  immediately,  possess  the  power  of  granting  their  own 
money,  or  no  shadow  of  liberty  could  subsist.  The  colonies 
draw  from  you,  as  with  their  life-blood,  these  ideas  and 
principles.  Their  love  of  liberty,  as  with  you,  fixed  and 
attached  on  this  specific  point  of  taxing.  Liberty  might  be 
safe  or  might  be  endangered  in  twenty  other  particulars 
without  their  being  much  pleased  or  alarmed.  Here  they 
felt  its  pulse;  and  as  they  found  that  beat,  they  thought 
themselves  sick  or  sound." 

Accordingly,  the  meaning  which  the  English  race  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic  were  accustomed  to  attach  to  the  words 
"tyranny"  and  "despotism,"  was  a  meaning  to  some 
degree  ideal :  it  was  a  meaning  drawn  from  the  extraor- 
dinary political  sagacity  with  which  that  race  is  endowed, 
from  their  extraordinary  sensitiveness  as  to  the  use  of  the 
taxing-power  in  government,  from  their  instinctive  percep- 
tion of  the  commanding  place  of  the  taxing-power  among 
all  the  other  forms  of  power  in  the  state,  from  their  perfect 
•  assurance  that  he  who  holds  the  purse  with  the  power  to  fill 
it  and  to  empty  it,  holds  the  key  of  the  situation,— can 
maintain  an  army  of  his  own,  can  rule  without  consulting 
parliament,  can  silence  criticism,  can  crush  opposition,  can 

1  Speech  on  moving  his  "  Resolutions  for  Conciliation  with  the  Colonies," 
March  22,  1775.     "  The  Works  of  Edmund  Burke,"  ii.  120-121. 


512  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

strip  his  subjects  of  every  vestige  of  political  life ;  in  other 
words,  he  can  make  slaves  of  them,  he  can  make  a  despot 
and  a  tyrant  of  himself.  Therefore,  the  system  which  in 
the  end  might  develop  into  results  so  palpably  tyrannic  and 
despotic,  they  bluntly  called  a  tyranny  and  a  despotism  in 
the  beginning.  To  say,  therefore,  that  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  did  the  same,  is  to  say  that  it  spoke  good 
English.  Of  course,  history  will  be  ready  to  set  aside  the 
charge  thus  made  in  language  not  at  all  liable  to  be  misun- 
derstood, just  so  soon  as  history  is  ready  to  set  aside  the 
common  opinion  that  the  several  acts  of  the  British  govern- 
ment, from  1763  to  1776,  for  laying  and  enforcing  taxation 
in  America,  did  evince  a  somewhat  particular  and  systematic 
design  to  take  away  some  portion  of  the  property  of  the 
American  people  without  their  consent. 

The  second  of  the  two  great  charges  contained  in  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  while  intimating  that  some 
share  in  the  blame  is  due  to  the  British  parliament  and  to 
the  British  people,  yet  fastens  upon  the  king  himself  as  the 
one  person  chiefly  responsible  for  the  scheme  of  American 
tyranny  therein  set  forth,  and  culminates  in  the  frank 
description  of  him  as  "  a  prince  whose  character  is  thus 
marked  by  every  act  which  may  define  a  tyrant."  Is  this 
accusation  of  George  the  Third  now  to  be  set  aside  as  un- 
historic  ?  Was  that  king,  or  was  he  not,  chiefly  responsible 
for  the  American  policy  of  the  British  government  between 
the  years  1763  artd  1776  ?  If  he  was  so,  then  the  historic 
soundness  of  the  most  important  portion  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  is  vindicated. 

Fortunately,  this  question  can  be  answered  without  hesi- 
tation, and  in  few  words;  and  for  these  few  words,  an 
American  writer  of  to-day,  conscious  of  his  own  bias  of 
nationality,  will  rightly  prefer  to  cite  such  as  have  been 
uttered  by  the  ablest  English  historians  of  our  time,  who 
have  dealt  with  the  subject.  Upon  their  statements  alone 
it  must  be  concluded,  that  George  the  Third  ascended  his 
throne  with  the  fixed  purpose  of  resuming  to  the  crown 


THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  513 

many  of  those  powers  which  by  the  constitution  of  England 
did  not  then  belong  to  it,  and  that  in  this  purpose,  at  least 
during  the  first  twenty-five  years  of  his  reign,  he  substan- 
tially succeeded, — himself  determining  what  should  be  the 
policy  of  each  administration,  what  opinions  his  ministers 
should  advocate  in  parliament,  and  what  measures  parlia- 
ment itself  should  adopt.  "  The  king  desired,"  says  Sir 
Erskine  May,  "  to  undertake  personally  the  chief  adminis- 
tration of  public  affairs,  to  direct  the  policy  of  his  ministers, 
and  himself  to  distribute  the  patronage  of  the  crown.  He 
was  ambitious  not  only  to  reign,  but  to  govern."  "  Strong 
as  were  the  ministers,  the  king  was  resolved  to  wrest  all 
power  from  their  hands,  and  to  exercise  it  himself. "  "  But 
what  was  this,  in  effect,  but  to  assert  that  the  king  should 
be  his  own  minister  ?  .  The  king's  tactics  were 

fraught  with  danger,  as  well  to  the  crown  itself,  as  to  the 
constitutional  liberties  of  the  people." 

Already,  prior  to  the  year  1778,  according  to  Lecky,  the 
king  had  "  laboriously  built  up  "  in  England  a  "  system  of 
personal  government  "  ;  and  it  was  because  he  was  unwill- 
ing to  have  this  system  disturbed,  that  he  then  refused,  "  in 
defiance  of  the  most  earnest  representations  of  his  own  min- 
ister and  of  the  most  eminent  politicians  of  every  party 
.  .  .  to  send  for  the  greatest  of  living  statesmen  at  the 
moment  when  the  empire  appeared  to  be  in  the  very  ago- 
nies of  dissolution.  .  .  .  Either  Chatham  or  Rocking- 
ham  would  have  insisted  that  the  policy  of  the  country 
should  be  directed  by  its  responsible  ministers,  and  not  dic- 
tated by  an  irresponsible  sovereign."  This  refusal  of  the 
king  to  adopt  the  course  which  was  called  for  by  the  consti- 
tution, and  which  would  have  taken  the  control  of  the  pol-  - 
icy  of  the  government  out  of  his  hands,  was,  according  to 
the  same  great  historian,  an  act  "  the  most  criminal  in  the 
whole  reign  of  George  the  Third,  ...  as  criminal  as 

1  These  sentences  occur  in  the  chapter  on  "  The  Influence  of  the  Crown  dur- 
ing the  Reign  of  George  III.,"  in  Sir  Erskine  May's  "  Constitutional  History 
of  England,"  i.  n,  12,  14-15. 


514  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

any  of  those  acts  which  led  Charles  the  First  to  the 
scaffold."1 

Even  so  early  as  the  year  1768,  according  to  John 
Richard  Green,  "  George  the  Third  had  at  last  reached 
his  aim."  In  the  early  days  of  the  ministry  which  began 
in  that  year,  "  his  influence  was  felt  to  be  predominant. 
In  its  later  and  more  disastrous  days  it  was  supreme; 
for  Lord  North,  w'ho  became  the  head  of  the  ministry  on 
Graf  ton's  retirement  in  1770,  was  the  mere  mouthpiece  of 
the  king.  '  Not  only  did  he  direct  the  minister,'  a  careful 
observer  tells  us,  '  in  all  important  matters  of  foreign  and 
domestic  policy,  but  he  instructed  him  as  to  the  manage- 
ment of  debates  in  parliament,  suggested  what  motions 
should  be  made  or  opposed,  and  how  measures  should  be 
carried.  He  reserved  for  himself  all  the  patronage,  he 
arranged  the  whole  cast  of  the  administration,  settled  the 
relative  place  and  pretensions  of  ministers  of  state,  law 
officers,  and  members  of  the  household,  nominated  and 
promoted  the  English  and  Scotch  judges,  appointed  and 
translated  bishops  and  deans,  and  dispensed  other  prefer- 
ments in  the  church.  He  disposed  of  military  governments, 
regiments,  and  commissions,  and  himself  ordered  the  march- 
ing of  troops.  He  gave  and  refused  titles,  honors,  and 
pensions.'  All  this  immense  patronage  was  steadily  used 
for  the  creation  and  maintenance  of  a  party  in  both  houses 
of  parliament  attached  to  the  king  himself.  .  .  .  George 
was,  in  fact,  sole  minister  during  the  fifteen  years  which  fol- 
lowed ;  and  the  shame  of  the  darkest  hour  of  English  his- 
tory lies  wholly  at  his  door."  a 

Surely,  until  these  tremendous  verdicts  of  English  history 
shall  be  set  aside,  there  need  be  no  anxiety  in  any  quarter 
as  to  the  historic  soundness  of  the  two  great  accusations 
which  together  make  up  the  principal  portion  of  the  Dec- 
laration of  Independence.  In  the  presence  of  these  ver- 
dicts, also,  even  the  passion,  the  intensity  of  language,  in 

1  "  A  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  iv.  457-458. 
9  "  A  Short  History  of  the  English  People,"  736-737. 


THE  DECLARA  TION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  5  1 5 

which  those  accusations  are  uttered,  seem  to  find  a  perfect 
justification.  Indeed,  in  the  light  of  the  most  recent  and 
most  unprejudiced  expert  testimony,  the  whole  document, 
both  in  its  substance  and  in  its  form,  seems  to  have  been 
the  logical  response  of  a  nation  of  brave  men  to  the  great 
words  of  the  greatest  of  English  statesmen,  as  spoken  in 
the  house  of  commons  precisely  ten  years  before:  "  This 
kingdom  has  no  right  to  lay  a  tax  on  the  colonies.1  .  . 
Sir,  I  rejoice  that  America  has  resisted.  Three  millions  of 
people  so  dead  to  all  the  feelings  of  liberty  as  voluntarily  to 
submit  to  be  slaves,  would  have  been  fit  instruments  to 
have  made  slaves  of  the  rest. ' '  * 

VIII. 

It  is  proper  for  us  to  remember  that  what  we  call  criti- 
cism, is  not  the  only  valid  test  of  the  genuineness  and 
worth  of  any  piece  of  writing  of  great  practical  interest  to 
mankind :  there  is,  also,  the  test  of  actual  use  and  service  in 
the  world,  in  direct  contact  with  the  common  sense  and  the 
moral  sense  of  large  masses  of  men,  under  various  condi- 
tions, and  for  a  long  period.  Probably  no  writing  which  is 
not  essentially  sound  and  true  has  ever  survived  this  test. 

Neither  from  this  test  has  the  great  Declaration  any  need 
to  shrink.  Probably  no  public  paper  ever  more  perfectly 
satisfied  the  immediate  purposes  for  which  it  was  sent  forth. 
From  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other,  and  as  fast  as  it 
could  be  spread  among  the  people,  it  was  greeted  in  public 
and  in  private  with  every  demonstration  of  approval  and 
delight.'  To  a  marvelous  degree,  it  quickened  the  friends 
of  the  Revolution  for  their  great  task.  "  This  Declaration," 
wrote  one  of  its  signers  but  a  few  days  after  it  had  been 

1  "  The  Celebrated  Speech  of  a  Celebrated  Commoner,"  London,  1766,  p.  5. 

!  Ibid.  12. 

3  Frank  Moore,  in  his  "  Diary  of  the  American  Revolution,"  i.  269-285,  has 
given  extracts  from  the  American  newspapers  for  July  and  August,  1776,  de- 
scribing the  official  and  popular  demonstrations  in  many  of  the  States  at  the 
first  reading  of  the  Declaration. 


516  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

proclaimed,  "  has  had  a  glorious  effect — has  made  these 
colonies  all  alive."  '  "  With  the  Independency  of  the  Ameri- 
can States,"  said  another  political  leader  a  few  weeks  later, 
"  a  new  era  in  politics  has  commenced.  Every  considera- 
tion respecting  the  propriety  or  impropriety  of  a  separation 
from  Britain  is  now  entirely  out  of  the  question. 
Our  future  happiness  or  misery,  therefore,  as  a  people,  will 
depend  entirely  upon  ourselves."  *  Six  years  afterward,  in 
a  review  of  the  whole  struggle,  a  great  American  scholar 
expressed  his  sense  of  the  relation  of  this  document  to  it, 
by  saying,  that  "  into  the  monumental  act  of  Indepen- 
dence," Jefferson  had  "  poured  the  soul  of  the  con- 
tinent." 3 

Moreover,  during  the  century  and  a  quarter  since  the 
close  of  the  Revolution,  the  influence  of  this  state  paper 
on  the  political  character  and  the  political  conduct  of  the 
American  people  has  been  great  beyond  all  calculation.  For 
example,  after  we  had  achieved  our  own  national  deliverance, 
'  and  had  advanced  into  that  enormous  and  somewhat  cor- 
rupting material  prosperity  which  followed  the  adoption  of 
the  constitution,  the  development  of  the  cotton  interest, 
and  the  expansion  of  the  republic  into  a  trans-continental 
power,  we  fell,  as  is  now  most  apparent,  under  an  appalling 
national  temptation, — the  temptation  to  forget,  or  to 
repudiate,  or  to  refuse  to  apply  to  the  case  of  our  human 
brethren  in  bondage,  the  very  principles  which  we  ourselves 
had  once  proclaimed  as  the  basis  of  every  rightful  govern- 
ment, and  as  the  ultimate  source  of  our  own  claim  to  an 
untrammeled  national  life.  The  prodigious  service  rendered 
to  us  in  this  awful  moral  emergency  by  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  was,  that  its  public  repetition,  at  least  once 
every  year,  in  the  hearing  of  vast  throngs  of  the  American 

1  William  Whipple,  of  New  Hampshire,  in  Force,  "American  Archives,"  5th 
series,  i.  368. 

2  Jonathan  Elmer,  of  New  Jersey,  given  in  Moore,  "  Diary  of  the  American 
Revolution,"  i;  279-280. 

3  Ezra  Stiles,  president  of  Yale  College,  in  Connecticut  election  sermon,  for 
1783,  p.  46- 


THE  DECLARA  TION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  5  I  7 

people,  in  every  portion  of  the  republic,  kept  constantly 
before  our  minds,  in  a  form  of  almost  religious  sanctity, 
those  few  great  ideas  as  to  the  dignity  of  human  nature, 
and  the  sacredness  of  personality,  and  the  indestructible 
rights  of  man  as  mere  man,  with  which  we  had  so  gloriously 
identified  the  beginnings  of  our  national  existence,  and 
upon  which  we  had  proceeded  to  erect  all  our  political 
institutions  both  for  the  nation  and  for  the  States.  It  did, 
indeed,  at  last  become  very  hard  for  us  to  listen  each  year 
to  the  preamble  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and 
still  to  remain  the  owners  and  users  and  catchers  of  slaves;  ^ 
still  harder,  to  accept  the  doctrine  that  the  righteousness 
and  prosperity  of  slavery  was  to  be  taken  as  the  domi- 
nant policy  of  the  nation.  The  logic  of  Calhoun  was  as 
flawless  as  usual,  when  he  concluded  that  the  chief  obstruc- 
tion in  the  way  of  his  system,  was  the  preamble  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  Had  it  not  been  for  the 
inviolable  sacredness  given  by  it  to  those  sweeping  apho- 
risms about  the  natural  rights  of  man,  it  may  be  doubted 
whether,  under  the  vast  practical  inducements  involved, 
Calhoun  might  not  have  succeeded  in  winning  over  an  im- 
mense majority  of  the  American  people  to  the  support  of 
his  compact  and  plausible  scheme  for  making  slavery  the 
basis  of  the  republic.  It  was  the  preamble  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  which  elected  Lincoln,  which  sent 
forth  the  Emancipation  Proclamation,  which  gave  victory 
to  Grant,  which  ratified  the  Thirteenth  Amendment. 

Moreover,  we  cannot  doubt  that  the  permanent  effects  of 
the  great  Declaration  on  the  political  and  even  the  ethical 
ideals  of  the  American  people  are  wider  and  deeper  than 
can  be  measured  by  our  experience  in  grappling  with  any 
single  political  problem;  for  they  touch  all  the  spiritual 
springs  of  American  national  character,  and  they  create,  for 
us  and  for  all  human  beings,  a  new  standard  of  political  jus- 
tice and  a  new  principle  in  the  science  of  government. 
"  Much  ridicule,  a  little  of  it  not  altogether  undeserved," 
says  a  brilliant  English  scholar  of  our  time,  who  is  also 


518  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

nobly  distinguished  in  the  sphere  of  English  statesman- 
ship, "  has  been  thrown  upon  the  opening  clause  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  which  asserts  the  inherent 
i  natural  right  of  man  to  enjoy  life  and  liberty,  with  the 
| means  of  acquiring  and  possessing  property,  and  pursuing 
and  obtaining  happiness  and  safety.  Yet  there  is  an  im- 
plied corollary  in  this  which  enjoins  the  highest  morality 
that  in  our  present  state  we  are  able  to  think  of  as  possible. 
If  happiness  is  the  right  of  our  neighbor,  then  not  to  hinder 
him  but  to  help  him  in  its  pursuit,  must  plainly  be  our 
duty.  If  all  men  have  a  claim,  then  each  man  is  under  an 
obligation.  The  corollary  thus  involved  is  the  corner-stone 
of  morality.  It  was  an  act  of  good  augury  thus  to  inscribe 
happiness  as  entering  at  once  into  the  right  of  all,  and 
into  the  duty  of  all,  in  the  very  head  and  front  of  the  new 
charter,  as  the  base  of  a  national  existence,  and  the  first 
principle  of  a  national  government.  The  omen  has  not  been 
falsified.  The  Americans  have  been  true  to  their  first  doc- 
trine. They  have  never  swerved  aside  to  set  up  caste  and 
privilege,  to  lay  down  the  doctrine  that  one  man's  happi- 
ness ought  to  be  an  object  of  greater  solicitude  to  society 
than  any  other  man's,  or  that  one  order  should  be  en- 
couraged to  seek  its  prosperity  through  the  depression  of 
any  other  order.  Their  example  proved  infectious.  The 
assertion  in  the  New  World,  that  men  have  a  right  to  hap- 
piness and  an  obligation  to  promote  the  happiness  of  one 
another,  struck  a  spark  in  the  Old  World.  Political  con- 
struction in  America  immediately  preceded  the  last  violent 
stage  of  demolition  in  Europe."  ' 

We  shall  not  here  attempt  to  delineate  the  influence  of 
this  state  paper  upon  mankind  in  general.  Of  course,  the 
emergence  of  the  American  Republic  as  an  imposing  world- 
power  is  a  phenomenon  which  has  now  for  many  years 
attracted  the  attention  of  the  human  race.  Surely,  no  slight 
effect  must  have  resulted  from  the  fact  that,  among  all  civil- 
ized peoples,  the  one  American  document  best  known,  is 

1  John  Morley,  "  Edmund  Burke  :   A  Historical  Study,"  161-162. 


THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  519 

the  Declaration  of  Independence,1  and  that  thus  the  spec- 
tacle of  so  vast  and  beneficent  a  political  success  has  been 
everywhere  associated  with  the  assertion  of  the  natural 
rights  of  man.  "  The  doctrines  it  contained,"  says  Buckle, 
"  were  not  merely  welcomed  by  a  majority  of  the  French 
nation,  but  even  the  government  itself  was  unable  to  with- 
stand the  general  feeling."8  "  Its  effect  in  hastening  the 
approach  of  the  French  Revolution  .  .  .  was  indeed 
most  remarkable. "  *  Elsewhere,  also,  in  many  lands,  among 
many  peoples,  it  has  been  appealed  to  again  and  again  as  an 
inspiration  for  political  courage,  as  a  model  for  political  con- 
duct ;  and  if,  as  the  brilliant  English  historian  just  cited  has 
affirmed,  "  that  noble  Declaration  .  .  .  ought  to  be 
hung  up  in  the  nursery  of  every  king,  and  blazoned  on  the 
porch  of  every  royal  palace,"  4  it  is  because  it  has  become 
the  classic  statement  of  political  truths  which  must  at  last 
abolish  kings  altogether,  or  else  teach  them  to  identify  their 
existence  with  the  dignity  and  happiness  of  human  nature. 

IX. 

It  would  be  unfitting,  in  a'work  like  the  present,  to  treat 
of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  without  making  more 
than  an  incidental  reference  to  its  purely  literary  character. 

Very  likely,  most  writings — even  most  writings  of  genu- 
ine and  high  quality — have  had  the  misfortune  of  being 
read  too  little.  There  is,  however,  a  misfortune — perhaps, 
a  greater  misfortune — which  has  overtaken  some  literary 
compositions,  and  these  not  necessarily  the  noblest  and 
the  best, — the  misfortune  of  being  read  too  much.  At 
any  rate,  the  writer  of  a  piece  of  literature  which  has  been 
neglected,  need  not  be  refused  the  consolation  he  may  get 
from  reflecting  that  he  is,  at  least,  not  the  writer  of  a  piece 
of  literature  which  has  become  hackneyed.  Just  this  is  the 

1  The  editor  of  the  latest  edition  of  "  The  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,"  i. 
Introd.  xxv.,  does  not  shrink  from  calling  it  "  the  paper  which  is  probably  the 
best  known  that  ever  came  from  the  pen  of  an  individual." 

8  "  History  of  Civilization  in  England,"  846.         3  Ibid.  847.         4  Ibid.  846. 


520  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

sort  of -calamity  which  seems  to  have  befallen  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence.  Is  it,  indeed,  possible  for  us  Ameri- 
cans, near  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century,  to  be  entirely 
just  to  the  literary  quality  of  this  most  monumental  docu- 
ment— this  much  belauded,  much  bespouted,  much  beflouted 
document  ? — since,  in  order  to  be  so,  we  need  to  rid  our- 
selves, if  we  can,  of  the  obstreperous  memories  of  a  life- 
time of  Independence  Days,  and  to  unlink  and  disperse  the 
associations  which  have  somehow  confounded  Jefferson's 
masterpiece  with  the  rattle  of  fire-crackers,  with  the  flash 
and  the  splutter  of  burning  tar-barrels,  and  with  that  un- 
reserved, that  gyratory  and  perspiratory,  eloquence  now  for 
more  than  a  hundred  years  consecrated  to  the  return  of  our 
fateful  Fourth  of  July. 

Had  the  Declaration  of  Independence  been,  what  many  a 
revolutionary  state  paper  is,  a  clumsy,  verbose,  and  vapor- 
ing production,  not  even  the  robust  literary  taste  and  the 
all-forgiving  patriotism  of  the  American  people  could  have 
endured  the  weariness,  the  nausea,  of  hearing  its  repetition, 
in  ten  thousand  different  places,  at  least  once  every  year, 
for  so  long  a  period.  Nothing  which  has  not  supreme  liter- 
ary merit  has  ever  triumphantly  endured  such  an  ordeal,  or 
ever  been  subjected  to  it.  No  man  can  adequately  explain 
the  persistent  fascination  which  this  state-paper  has  had, 
and  which  it  still  has,  for  the  American  people,  or  for  its 
undiminished  power  over  them,  without  taking  into  account 
its  extraordinary  literary  merits — its  possession  of  the  witch- 
ery of  true  substance  wedded  to  perfect  form : — its  massive- 
ness  and  incisiveness  of  thought,  its  art  in  the  marshaling 
of  the  topics  with  which  it  deals,  its  symmetry,  its  energy, 
the  definiteness  and  limpidity  of  its  statements,1  its  exqui- 

'  Much  has  been  said  of  the  generalities,  whether  glittering  or  otherwise,  of 
the  Declaration  ;  yet  they  who  have  most  objected  to  its  teachings  seem  to  have 
found  them  sufficiently  specific  and  distinct.  Its  famous  assertion  that  "all 
men  are  created  equal,"  has  been  complained  of  as  liable  to  be  misconstrued  ; 
"  but,"  as  a  recent  biographer  of  Jefferson  cleverly  says,  "no  intelligent  man 
has  ever  misconstrued  it,  except  intentionally."  John  T.  Morse,  Jr.,  "  Thomas 
Jefferson,"  40. 


THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  $21 

site  diction — at  once  terse,  musical,  and  electrical ;  and,  as  an 
essential  part  of  this  literary  outfit,  many  of  those  spiritual 
notes  which  can  attract  and  enthrall  our  hearts, — veneration 
for  God,  veneration  for  man,  veneration  for  principle, 
respect  for  public  opinion,  moral  earnestness,  moral  cour- 
age, optimism,  a  stately  and  noble  pathos,  finally,  self-sacri- 
ficing devotion  to  a  cause  so  great  as  to  be  herein  identified 
with  the  happiness,  not  of  one  people  only,  or  of  one  race 
only,  but  of  human  nature  itself. 

Upon  the  whole,  this  is  the  most  commanding  and  the 
most  pathetic  utterance,  in  any  age,  in  any  language,  of 
national  grievances  and  of  national  purposes;  having  a 
Demosthenic  momentum  of  thought,  and  a  fervor  of  emo- 
tional appeal  such  as  Tyrtaeus  might  have  put  into  his 
war-songs.  Indeed,  the  Declaration  of  Independence  is  a 
kind  of  war-song ;  it  is  a  stately  and  a  passionate  chant  of 
human  freedom ;  it  is  a  prose  lyric  of  civil  and  military  hero- 
ism. We  may  be  altogether  sure  that  no  genuine  develop- 
ment of  literary  taste  among  the  American  people  in  any 
period  of  our  future  history  can  result  in  serious  misfortune 
to  this  particular  specimen  of  American  literature. 


END   OF  VOLUME  I. 


THE  LITERARY  HISTORY 


OF  THE 


AMERICAN   REVOLUTION 

SECOND  PART 


1776-1783 


THE  LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  THE 
AMERICAN   REVOLUTION. 


PREFACE. 


FOR  the  two  volumes  composing  the  present  work,  the 
most  natural  point  of  separation  has  seemed  to  be  the  year 
1776, — a  fact  properly  enough  recorded  in  the  secondary 
dates  placed  on  the  title-page  of  each.  Thus,  the  chief  aim 
of  the  first  volume  is  to  trace  the  development  of  political 
discontent  in  the  Anglo-American  colonies  from  about  the 
year  1763  until  the  year  when  that  discontent  culminated  in 
the  resolve  for  American  Independence  ;  while  the  chief 
aim  of  the  second  volume  is  to  trace  the  development  of 
the  Revolutionary  struggle  under  the  altered  conditions  pro- 
duced by  this  change  in  its  object  and  in  its  character,  and 
to  go  on  with  the  tale  until  the  year  when  American  In- 
dependence was  formally  acknowledged  by  the  British 
government. 

Such,  then,  being  the  broad  distinction  between  the  two 
volumes,  I  have  carefully  adhered  to  it  in  the  presentation 
of  the  great  features  needful  to  the  consecutive  story  which 
I  had  to  tell.  Nevertheless,  though  the  most  of  my  mate- 
rials have  adjusted  themselves  readily  to  this  scheme  of  his- 
toric bisection,  the  same  is  not  the  case  with  them  all ;  and 
it  has  not  surprised  me  to  find  that  in  the  treatment  of  a 


IV  PREFACE. 

few  great  topics,  I  needed  to  give  myself  larger  room  and 
freer  movement  than  would  be  possible  under  a  rigorous 
conformity  to  the  time-limits  imposed  by  my  general  plan. 
Of  course,  the  differentiation  by  dates  between  the  first 
volume  and  the  second,  was  intended  merely  for  conven- 
ience;  and  whenever  a  subject  could  be  presented  more 
justly  by  being  presented  continuously  and  without  any 
break  in  its  connection  with  the  Revolution,  I  have  not 
hesitated  to  present  it  in  that  way.  Accordingly,  in  the 
first  volume,  which  really  ends  with  1776,  I  have  permitted 
myself  occasionally  to  move  forward  into  the  years  follow- 
ing; even  as  in  the  second  volume,  which  really  begins  with 
1776,  I  have  permitted  myself  still  more  frequently  to  move 
back  into  the  years  preceding,  in  order  to  gather  up  at  once 
and  to  have  before  us  in  a  single  view  all  the  parts  of  any 
subject  which  may  so  belong  to  the  entire  period  of  the 
Revolution  as  to  refuse  to  be  cut  in  two  by  a  mere  date 

in  the  middle  of  it. 

M.  C.  T 

CORNELL  UNIVERSITY, 
19  July,  1897. 


CONTENTS. 

THE  SECOND  VOLUME:    1776-1783. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

SAMUEL  ADAMS  AND   WILLIAM   LIVINGSTON  :   THEIR   LITERARY   SERVICES 
TO  THE   REVOLUTION. 

PACK 

I. — The  decline  of  the  reputation  of  Samuel  Adams  since  the  Revolution 
— His  literary  work  always  for  a  practical  end — Greatness  of  his  in- 
fluence as  a  writer  during  the  Revolution I 

II. — Adams's  early  career — His  early  absorption  in  the  politics  of  his 
town  and  colony — His  chief  function  that  of  opposition — The  great 
variety  of  public  business  in  which  he  was  employed — In  1765  be- 
comes the  real  director  of  the  policy  of  the  opposition  in  the  eastern 
colonies 3 

III. — The  disinterestedness  and  simplicity  of  Adams's  life — His  demo- 
cratic ways — His  great  contemporary  renown  in  England  for  political 
astuteness  and  for  control  over  events — His  priority  in  the  champion- 
ship of  the  more  important  Revolutionary  measures  .  .-..;.  6 

IV. — Adams's  use  of  the  political  essay  as  an  instrument  of  immediate  in- 
fluence — Had  the  instinct  of  a  great  journalist — His  willingness  to 
produce  results  and  to  keep  himself  out  of  sight — The  great  number 
of  his  literary  disguises — His  extraordinary  diligence  as  a  political 
writer -'."....  8 

V. — Outline  of  Adams's  literary  labors — His  method  in  work — His  traits 

as  a  writer  and  as  a  controversialist    .         .         .         .         .         .         .         9 

VI. — The  consistency  of  Adams's  public  career — His  controlling  principle 
was  individualism — His  application  of  that  principle  to  the  doctrines 
of  liberty,  loyalty,  civic  duty,  and  domestic  life  I3 

VII.— Adams  insists  upon  the  due  subordination  of  the  military  power  in 

a  free  community — His  early  predictions  of  Independence          .         .       16 

VIII. — William  Livingston,  Revolutionary  agitator  and  first  governor  of 
the  State  of  New  Jersey— His  activity  as  a  political  writer— The  great 
variety  of  his  literary  services  to  the  Revolution— The  effectiveness  of 
his  assaults  upon  the  enemy  as  shewn  by  their  extraordinary  hatred  of 
him — His  own  hearty  reciprocation  of  the  sentiment  .  .  17 

v 

\ 

. 


vj  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XXV. 

JOHN  DICKINSON  AS   PENMAN   OF  THE  AMERICAN   REVOLUTION. 

PACK 

I. — John  Dickinson's  ancestry  and  education — His  early  entrance  into 
politics  in  Delaware  and  Pennsylvania — In  the  Stamp  Act  Congress 
— In  the  Continental  Congress — Odium  incurred  in  1776  by  his  oppo- 
sition to  American  Independence — His  military  services — Is  driven 
into  retirement — His  return  to  Congress  in  1779 — Governor  of  Dela- 
ware in  1781,  and  of  Pennsylvania  in  1782  21 

II. — The  brilliant  talents  and  services  which  won  for  him  the  title  of 
"  Penman  of  the  American  Revolution" — As  a  writer  of  state  papers 
— As  a  writer  of  political  essays  for  the  newspapers  and  of  pamphlets, 
from  1762  to  1775 24 

III. — Having  in  Congress  opposed  the  resolution  for  Independence,  he 
joins  the  army  to  fight  against  the  British — Both  these  acts  entirely 
consistent  with  his  avowed  principles — By  nature  and  training  a  con- 
servative and  a  peace-maker — His  hatred  of  violence  and  war — Be- 
lieves that  all  difficulties  between  the  colonies  and  the  mother-country 
could  be  settled  in  a  peaceful  way — His  characteristic  method  in 
controversy — He  uses  English  principles  with  which  to  fight  against 
English  aggressions — His  claim  that  the  American  opponents  of  the 
ministry  are  the  true  champions  of  English  constitutional  liberty — 
His  efforts  to  avert  war  and  revolution 27 

IV. — The  blending  of  his  influence  as  a  political  writer  during  the  Revo- 
lution, with  his  influence  as  a  politician — In  1767  he  succeeds  James 
Otis  as  our  predominant  political  writer,  as  in  1776  he  is  succeeded 
by  Thomas  Paine  —The  great  decline  of  Dickinson's  influence  in 
1776— Fitted  to  lead  in  a  constitutional  controversy,  but  not  in  a 
revolutionary  one — His  method,  also,  too  gentle  for  the  later  stage  of 
the  Revolution— He  is  regarded  with  contempt  by  more  robust  poli- 
ticians—The injustice  then  done  to  his  talents  and  character  .  .  31 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 

THOMAS  PAINE  AS  LITERARY   FREELANCE   IN   THE  WAR   FOR 

INDEPENDENCE:  1776-1783. 

I.— Paine's  literary  work  between  January  and  July,  1776— He  then  joins 
the  Pennsylvania  troops,  and  serves  under  General  Rpberdeau— Also, 
as  aid-de-camp  to  General  Greene  at  Fort  Lee— Participates  in 

Washington's  retreat  across  New  Jersey 35 

II.— In  the  midst  of  this  retreat,  he  begins  at  Newark  the  writing  of 

The  Crisis,"  which  he  continues  at  the  subsequent  stopping  places 

-He  publishes  the  first  number  at  Philadelphia,  December  IQ,  1776 

—Electrical  effect  of  this  paper— Its  appeal  to  the  emotions  and  the 

needs  of  the  hour      ....  37 


CONTENTS.  vii 

III. — His  part  in  the  labors  and  sacrifices  of  the  war  for  Independence 
— His  several  employments  by  Congress — He  serves  under  General 
Greene  at  the  Battle  of  Brandywine — He  stands  by  Washington  at 
Valley  Forge — In  February,  1781,  he  accompanies  John  Laurens  on 
a  special  mission  to  France — Their  return  at  end  of  six  months — His 
chief  service  after  1776  as  a  writer  of  "The  Crisis" — The  last  num- 
ber of  "The  Crisis"  in  December,  1783 — His  poverty  during  those 
years  .  .  .  .  _ -39 

IV. — The  secret  of  Paine's  power  over  men  and  events — A  great  jour- 
nalist— His  aptness  in  expressing  from  day  to  day  the  real  thought  of 
the  people — The  range  of  his  discussions  during  the  war — He  repre- 
sents the  faith  of  the  American  people  in  themselves  and  in  a  Higher 
Power  helping  them — His  scornful  addresses  to  Lord  Howe  and  his 
brother — His  predictions  of  British  discomfiture — His  inspiring  ap- 
peals to  the  American  people  after  defeat  and  amid  discouragement,  41 

V. — At  the  approach  of  peace,  Paine  turns  from  a  prose  song  of  congratu- 
lation, to  explain  the  new  dangers  and  new  duties  then  confronting 
the  people — Financial  dishonor  and  disunion — His  last  literary  ser- 
vices in  the  Revolution  are  on  behalf  of  American  honesty,  and  of 
American  nationality "  .  .  47 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 

THE   LITERARY   WARFARE  AGAINST   AMERICAN   INDEPENDENCE  :    LOYALIST 
WRITERS   IN   PROSE  AND   VERSE:    1776-1783. 

I. — The  writings  of  the  Loyalists  during  this  stage  of  the  Revolution  in- 
ferior in  amount  to  those  of  the  Revolutionists — Their  decline  in  the 
use  of  serious  discussion — Three  peculiarities  in  the  attitude  of  the 
Loyalists — Their  confidence  in  the  soundness  of  their  own  opinions  ; 
their  contempt  for  the  Revolutionists  as  vulgar  and  unprincipled  ; 
their  perfect  expectation  of  the  success  of  the  British  arms  .  .  51 

II. — The  Loyalist  sarcasm  on  the  practical  denial  of  liberty  by  the  pre- 
tended American  champions  of  it — Many  colonists  forced  into  sup- 
port of  the  Revolutionary  measures — "The  Pausing  American 
Loyalist" — "  The  Rebels  " — "  A  Familiar  Epistle  "  ...  53 

III. — The  Loyalist  taunt  concerning  the  plebeian  origin  and  occupations 
of  the  Revolutionary  leaders — "A  Modern  Catechism" — List  of 
American  officers  as  published  in  Germany — The  "brace  of  Adamses " 
— A  Charleston  satire 56 

IV. — The  attacks  of  the  Tory  satirists  concentrated  on  Congress,  as  a 
body  representing  the  vulgarity  and  profligacy  of  the  Revolutionary 
movement  . 59 

V.— The  exploits  of  Congress  in  the  field  of  finance  a  theme  for  Tory 
derision — The  depreciation  of  American  paper-money — Jests  thereon 
from  the  Tory  newspapers — Satire  on  the  tattered  condition  of  the 
American  army  ..........  6l 


VJjj  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

VI. — Tory  jests  upon  individual  leaders  of  the  Revolution — Especial  at- 
tention paid  to  Thomas  Paine  .  .  ; 65 

VII. — Tory  mirth  over  the  military  and  naval  disappointments  of  the 
French  alliance — Failure  of  the  allied  campaign  of  1778 — "  The 
Epilogue,"  as  sung  by  Congress  at  the  conclusion  of  the  Farce  "  In- 
dependence " — Failure  of  the  allied  campaign  of  1779 — The  mirthful 
ballad  "  About  Savannah " — "A  New  Ballad."  .  V  .  .  67 

VIII. — Some  serious  Loyalist  discussion  of  th,e  state  of  affairs  consequent 
on  the  American  alliance  with  France — "Letters  of  Papinian  " — 
The  unnaturalness  of  the  French  alliance,  and  its  disastrous  effects, 
set  forth  in  "  A  Letter  to  the  People  of  America."  ....  72 

IX. — The  possible  calamities  to  overtake  the  Americans  at  the  hands  of 
their  French  allies,  exhibited  by  many  Tory  writers — Outline  of  their 
opinions  on  the  subject — "  The  Prophecy,"  on  French  and  Papal 
despotism  in  America,  after  its  separation  from  England  by  the  help 
of  Roman  Catholic  France ;i ••:  ;.  .  .  74 

X. — Distrust  as  to  the  wisdom  of  the  French  alliance,  even  among  Rev- 
olutionary statesmen — The  letters  of  Silas  Deane,  in  1781  .  .  77 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

THE  LITERARY   WARFARE  OF  THE  LOYALISTS  AGAINST  INDEPENDENCE: 
JOSEPH   STANSBURY,  TORY   SONG-WRITER   AND   SATIRIST. 

I. — The  special  difficulty  of  identifying  the  writers  of  Tory  productions, 
whether  serious  or  jocose — The  preeminence  of  Joseph  Stansbury  as  a 
writer  of  political  songs  and  of  playful  political  satires — His  personal 
history— A  favorite  in  the  society  of  Philadelphia  .  .  .  ;'  )  79 

II. — Like  all  other  Loyalists,  he  disapproved  of  the  colonial  policy  of 
the  home-government — His  verses,  about  1774,  "  On  the  Present 
Troubles"— His  effort  to  keep  alive  the  feeling  of  American  kinship 
with  England— His  songs  for  the  banquet  of  the  Sons  of  St.  George, 
1771,  and  1774  ;••.---.  .  .  8l 

HI.— Stansbury  draws  back  from  the  policy  of  carrying  resistance  to  the 
point  of  separation— His  epigram  on  a  fiery  Whig  preacher,  1776— 
Takes  refuge  with  the  British  army  in  New  York,  where  he  remains 
from  1778  till  1783— His  activity  as  a  writer  of  convivial  political 
verse  during  those  years— His  war  song,  "  The  Lords  of  the  Main," 
1780 85 

IV.— His  "  New  Song,"  on  the  inconsistencies  of  the  champions  of  free- 
dom in  America— His  song  for  "A  Venison  Dinner,"  1781— His 
effort  to  keep  up  confidence  in  the  suppression  of  the  rebellion- 
Loyalist  criticisms  on  the  inactivity  of  the  British  generals— His  satire 
on  Sir  Henry  Clinton 88 

V.— Stansbury's  optimism  survives  all  the  misfortunes  of  the  war—"  A 
Poetical  Epistle  to  His  Wife,"  1780— "  Liberty  "— "  Let  Us  be 
Happy  as  Long  as  We  Can,"  1782— Loyalist  devotion  to  principle, 


CONTENTS.  ix 

PAGE 

even  under  defeat  and  ruin  —  Stansbury's  lines  in  1783,  "God  Save 
the  King"  —  His  inability  to  keep  up  the  resentments  of  the  war  — 
His  poetic  irenicon  —  Homesick  in  Nova  Scotia  —  His  return  to  his 
old  home  as  a  reconstructed  American  Loyalist  .»-,,.  «  .  .  .  93 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

THE  LITERARY   WARFARE   OF  THE   LOYALISTS   AGAINST   AMERICAN   INDK- 
PENDENCE  :    JONATHAN  ODELL,  THEIR   CHIEF  SATIRIST. 

I.  —  Odell's  position  among  the  Loyalist  writers  —  His  relentless  spirit  in 

satire  described  by  himself  —  His  New  England  ancestry  —  Surgeon  in 
the  British  army  before  the  Revolution  —  In  1767,  he  takes  holy 
orders  in  London  —  His  settlement  as  rector  of  Burlington,  New 
Jersey  .  .  ...  .  .  .....  98 

II.  —  Odell  disapproves  of  the  American  policy  of  the  ministry,  but  would 

meet  it  by  constitutional  opposition  only  —  Takes  no  public  part  in 
the  controversy  till  after  the  beginning  of  hostilities  —  Outrage  upon 
his  private  correspondence  —  His  ode  for  the  king's  birthday,  June 
4,  1776  —  His  parole  to  remain  within  his  parish  —  Having  given  fresh 
offense,  he  is  hunted  from  his  hiding-places  —  His  flight  within  the 
British  lines,  late  in  December,  1776  .  ;  .  .  ,.  •  .-  .  IOO 

III.  —  Odell  received  into  confidence  at  the  British  headquarters  —  Remains 

in  New  York  till  the  close  of  the  war  —  Chaplain  to  a  corps  of 
Loyalist  troops  —  His  conception  of  the  proper  use  of  satire  in  contro- 
versy, after  serious  argument  has  been  exhausted  —  His  chief  satires, 
"  The  Word  of  Congress,"  September,  1779;  "  The  Congratulation," 
and  "The  Feu  de  Joie,"  November,  1779;  and  "The  American 
Times,"  1780  ...........  105 

IV.  —  Odell  follows  the  models  of  English  classical  satire  —  He  is  the  great 

exponent  of  Loyalist  conscience  and  emotion  in  the  last  years  of  the 
war  —  The  basis  of  their  political  system  of  politics  and  of  patriotic 
duty  —  Odell  denounces  both  the  ministerial  policy  and  American  vio- 
lence in  resisting  it  —  The  Revolution  not  a  case  of  justifiable  rebel- 
lion —  A  popular  phrensy  produced  by  political  sorcery  —  The  sorcerers 
discovered  by  the  poet  in  the  very  act  of  compounding  the  hell-broth 
of  rebellion  —  Its  ingredients  ........  107 

V.  —  The  futile  efforts  of  sane  men  to  stop  the  spread  of  Revolutionary 

madness  —  The  perpetual  renewal  of  error,  even  when  discomfited  — 
The  inexhaustible  supply  of   rebel  chiefs  —  American  society  given 
over  to  the  rule  of  the  worst  —  Description  of  the  Continental  Con- 
gress —  That  body  the  centre  of  all  political  mischief,  a  nest  of  robbers 
and  tyrants        ...........     HO 

VI.—  His  arraignment  of  Congress  for  its  duplicitj  —  It  is  a  political 
Proteus  —  He  satirizes  its  servants,  as  Thomas  Paine,  and  General 
John  Sullivan—  He  arraigns  the  chiefs  of  the  rebellion,  as  William 


xii  CONTENTS. 

II. — The  tragedy  of  "  Ponteach,  or  the- Savages  of  America,"  by  Major 
Robert  Rogers,  1766 — The  author's  acquaintance  with  the  American 
Indians  and  their  wrongs — Method  of  this  tragedy — Outline  of  its 
plot — Estimate  of  the  work — Fails  in  the  presentation  of  real 
savages .188 

III. — "Disenchantment,  or,  The  Force  of  Credulity,"  a  comic  opera, 

by  Andrew  Barfon,  1767 193 

IV. — A  Loyalist  colloquy,  "  The  Americans  Roused,  in  a  Cure  for  the 

Spleen,"  by  Jonathan  Sewall,  1774  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  193 

V. — Two  political  satires  in  dramatic  form  by  Mercy  Otis  Warren — 
"  The  Adulateur,  a  Tragedy,  as  it  is  now  Acted  in  Upper  Servia," 
1773 — Exhibits  historical  situations  in  New  England  from  1770  to 
1773 — Also,  the  prevailing  fear  and  hatred  of  Governor  Hutchinson 
— "  The  Group,"  a  metrical  play  in  two  Acts,  1775 — Satirizes  the 
British  and  Loyalist  leaders  in  Boston  just  prior  to  the  military  stage 
of  the  conflict— Her  two  elaborate  tragedies  in  blank  verse,  "  The 
Sack  of  Rome,"  and  "The  Ladies  of  Castile"  ....  193 

VI. — An  American  Chronicle  Play,  early  in  1776,  on  "  The  Fall  of 
British  Tyranny,  or,  American  Liberty  Triumphant.  The  First 
Campaign.  A  Tragi-Comedy  of  Five  Acts,  as  lately  planned  at  the 
Royal  Theatrum  Pandemonium  at  St.  James  " — A  jocular  and  rough 
Whig  satire— Its  chief  personages— Represents  the  British  attack  on 
American  rights  as  originating  in  the  ambition  of  Lord  Bute — 
Various  scenes  in  the  play— Satire  on  Lord  Dunmore,  and  the  British 
generals  in  America— The  Epilogue  alludes  to  "Common  Sense," 
and  avows  its  doctrine  .  .  .  .  .  ...  .  .  igg 

VII.— The  evacuation  of  Boston  by  the  British  in  March,  1776,  celebra- 
ted in  the  American  army  by  a  farce  entitled  "  The  Blockheads," 
in  reply  to  Burgoyne's  recent  farce  entitled  "  The  Blockade  "  .  .  207 

VIII.—"  The  Battle  of  Brooklyn,"  a  Loyalist  farce  just  after  the  Ameri- 
can defeat  on  Long  Island,  August,  1 776— Satirizes  the  American 
leaders  as  vulgar  adventurers,  and  reflects  some  of  the  coarse  personal 
scandals  of  the  time  .  .  .  2o8 

IX.— The  high  literary  merit  of  two  dramatic  poems  by  Hugh  Henry 
Brackenridge,  both  dealing  with  military  events  in  the  first  year  of 
the  war—"  The  Battle  of  Bunker's  Hill  "—The  motive  of  this  drama, 
in  the  moral  superiority  of  the  American  cause  compared  with  that  of 
the  enemy— Outline  of  the  poem  .  .  .  ,  .  .210 

X.— Brackenridge's  second  dramatic  poem,  "The  Death  of  General 
Montgomery  at  the  Siege  of  Quebec  "—Its  purpose,  to  stimulate 
American  military  ardor  by  stimulating  American  hatred  of  the  British 
-Outline  of  the  poem ,  ....  ....  .  218 

XL— Jonathan  Mitchell  Sewall's  "  Epilogue  to  Addison's  Tragedy  of 

Cat°,"i778 .  .  225 

XII.-"  The  Motley  Assembly,  a  Farce,"  1779,  a  satire  on  a  fashionable 
clique  in  Boston  accustomed  to  sneer  at  the  Revolution,  to  denounce 


CONTENTS.  xiii 


PAGB 


the  French  allies,  and  to  regret  the  good  old  days  of  the  British 

occupation -j       .^        .        .        .     225 

XIII.— "  The  Blockheads,  or,  Fortunate  Contractor,  an  Opera,  in  Two 

Acts,"  1782,  a  satire  on  the  French  Alliance 227 


CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

PRISON   LITERATURE. 

I. — Special  interest  attaching  to  narratives  of  American  prisoners  of  war 
in  the  hands  of  the  British — Ethan  Allen — His  complex  character, 
and  his  achievements  with  sword  and  tongue — A  prisoner  of  war 
from  1775  to  1778 — "A  Narrative  of  Colonel  Ethan  Allen's  Cap- 
tivity " — Its  quality  as  a  book — Reasons  for  the  severities  bestowed 
upon  him — His  experience  with  General  Prescott  in  Canada — His 
voyage  to  England — His  treatment  there — The  astonishment  excited 
by  him  among  the  natives  of  that  isle — His  compulsory  voyages  on 
various  British  vessels — At  Cape  Fear,  Halifax,  New  York — On 
parole  in  New  York — His  sight  of  the  sufferings  of  American 
prisoners  there  ...........  228 

II. — "A  Narrative  of  the  Captivity  and  Treatment  of  John  Dodge 

by  the  English  at  Detroit,"  1779 238 

III. — The  bad  preeminence  of  the  British  prison-ships  in  New  York 
harbor — "  The  Old  Jersey  Captive,  or,  a  Narrative  of  the  Captivity 
of  Thomas  Andros  on  board  the  Old  Jersey  Prison-Ship,"  1781 — 
The  career  of  Andros  from  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  till  1781 — His 
capture — His  descriptions  of  the  "  Old  Jersey,"  and  of  the  ways  of 
life  and  death  thereon 238 

IV. — "A  Narrative  of  the  Capture  of  Henry  Laurens,  and  of  His  Con- 
finement in  the  Tower  of  London  "  — The  high  character  of  Laur- 
ens— His  career  as  merchant  and  statesman — President  of  Congress 
— Sails  as  American  commissioner  to  Holland  in  1780 — His  capture 
at  sea — His  imprisonment  in  the  Tower  from  1780  to  1782 — The 
charm  of  his  story  of  this  experience  .  .  -"  ;  ' '  \  '  .  . '.'  .  242 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

PHILIP  FRENEAU   AS  POET  AND   SATIRIST   IN   THE  WAR  FOR  INDE- 
PENDENCE :   1778-1783. 

I. — Two  periods  of  Freneau's  activity  in  immediate  contact  with  the' 
Revolution — The  first  period  embraces  the  latter  half  of  the  year 
1775— The  second  period  extends  from  1778  to  1783— Freneau's 
abandonment  of  the  country  in  1776  and  his  stay  in  the  West  Indies 
till  1778 — His  poetic  work  there— Denounces  slavery  .  .  .  246 


XIV 


CO.\'T£.VTS. 


II.— His  return  to  his  country,  and  to  literary  activity  in  its  service,  in 

I77g His  confidence  in  the  success  of  the  Revolution— "  Stanzas 

on  the  New  American  Frigate  '  Alliance'  "—"America  Indepen- 
dent "—  Fierce  onslaughts  upon  King  George  the  Third— His  invec- 
tives against  Burgoyne  and  the  American  Loyalists  ....  250 

III.— His  poem  "  To  the  Dog  Sancho" 255 

IV.— His  contributions  to  "  The  United  States  Magazine  "  in  1779 — Two 

more  attacks  on  the  King 257 

V. — His  capture  and  imprisonment  by  the  British — He  is  stimulated 
thereby  to  new  and  fiercer  satires  against  the  enemy — "  The  British 

Prison-Ship" 253 

VI.—  His  principal  poems  for  the  years  1781,  1782,  and  1783  .         .         .263 
VII.—"  The  Political  Balance  ;  or,  The  Fates  of  Britain  and  America 

Compared" 2&* 

VIII.— "  The  Prophecy  " 270 

IX.— His  final  word  to  the  British  King 272 

X. — Freneau's  proper  rank  as  a  poet — A  pioneer  in  the  reform  of  eight- 
eenth century  English  verse— The  first  American  poet  of  Democracy, 
and  his  fidelity  to  that  character 273 

CHAPTER  XXXV. 

PULPIT-CHAMPIONS   OF   THE   AMERICAN   REVOLUTION. 

I.— The  tradition  of  leadership  inherited  by  the  pulpit  of  the  Revolution 
— The  political  power  of  the  preachers  as  recognized  by  Otis  and 
others — Public  occasions  for  political  discourse  from  the  pulpit  .  278 

II. — Charles  Chauncy's  services  to  the  Revolution  as  preacher,  author,  and 

political  monitor— His  special  enjoyment  of  theological  controversy  279 

III. — Sermon  before  the  Revolutionary  assembly  of  Massachusetts,  May 

3*i  I775»  by  Samuel  Langdon,  president  of  Harvard  College  .  .  282 

IV. — Our  first  national  Fast  Day,  July  20,  1775,  as  the  occasion  for 
sermons  in  all  the  colonies  on  the  political  and  military  crisis — At 
the  camp  in  Roxbury,  by  Ezra  Sampson — At  Philadelphia,  by  Thomas 
Coombe,  assistant  rector  of  Christ  Church  and  St.  Peter's  .  .  284 

V. — The  first  national  Fast  Day  as  observed  by  Congress  at  Philadel- 
phia— The  sermon  by  Jacob  Duche — His  history  and  character — 
His  brilliant  oratory— "  The  First  Prayer  in  Congress  "—The  eclat 
of  his  various  services  for  the  Revolutionary  cause — Under  the  mili- 
tary reverses  of  the  summer  of  1776,  he  loses  heart,  and  advises 
Washington  to  stop  the  war— Duche's  retreat  to  England,  and  popu- 
larity there— His  "  Discourses  on  Various  Subjects,"  1777— His  once 
famous  "  Caspipina's  Letters "  .  .  .-:."-»  '"v  .  286 

VI-— Jacob  Green,  a  preacher  of  Revolutionary  politics  in  New  Jersey     294 

VII.— Pulpit  warnings  against  the  moral  and  spiritual  dangers  of  the 
times— Oliver  Hart,  of  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  preaches  against 


CONTENTS.  XV 

the  sin  of  dancing — Israel  Evans  preaches  to  the  troops  in  Pennsyl- 
vania against  the  religious  apathy  and  immorality  then  prevalent  .  295 

VIII. — Hugh  Henry  Brackenridge  as  chaplain  in  Washington's  army  in 
1777 — His  previous  career  as  student,  teacher,  and  poet — His  "Six 
Political  Discourses  Founded  on  Scripture" — His  chant  of  patriotic 
hatred  and  vengeance — His  prophetic  woes  on  the  enemies  of  Ameri- 
can peace  and  freedom  .  ' .  ~  ..  .  .  .  .  297 

IX. — Samuel  Cooper  of  Boston — His  unusual  influence  in  letters,  society, 

and  affairs — His  political  essays — His  published  discourses  .  .  302 

X. — Sermon  by  Nathan  Fiske  of  Brookfield,  on  the  capture  of  Lord 

Cornwallis  •  .-.  ......  .  .  .  306 

XI. — Zabdiel  Adams's  election  sermon  in  Massachusetts,  1782         .         .     308 

XII. — Nathaniel  Whitaker  of  Salem — His  sermons  in  imprecation  of  the 

Tories  .  .  .....  .  %  .  .  .  .  .  308 

XIII. — Sermons  on  the  day  of  national  Thanksgiving  for  Independence 
and  Peace,  December  n,  1783 — By  Eliphalet  Porter,  at  Roxbury — 
By  David  Osgood  at  Medbury — By  John  Rodgers  in  New  York  .  310 

XIV. — George  Duffield  of  Philadelphia — His  career — His  prominence 
as  a  political  preacher — Extolled  by  John  Adams,  in  1775  and  1776 
— His  services  as  army  chaplain — As  a  mark  for  Odell's  satire — His 
sermon  on  the  advent  of  Peace  .  ...  .  .  .  312 

CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

THREE  ACADEMIC   PREACHERS  AND   PUBLICISTS. 

I.— William  Smith,  Provost  of  the  College  of  Philadelphia— His  many 
discourses  on  occasions  of  state — "  On  the  Duties  of  the  Christian 
Soldier" — "On  the  Present  Situation  of  American  Affairs,"  June 
23»  !?75 — His  retirement  at  the  approach  of  Independence — His 
discourses  in  the  latter  part  of  the  Revolution — His  quality  as  a 
writer  .  .........  .  .  »  .,,  .  .  317 

II. — John  Witherspoon,  President  of  the  College  of  New  Jersey — His 
arrival  in  America  in  1768,  and  prompt  identification  of  himself  with 
the  nobler  moods  of  American  society — Outline  of  his  previous  career 
— Eclat  attending  his  entrance  upon  his  work  at  the  college  .  .  319 

III. — Witherspoon's  fitness  for  the  varied  services  that  lay  before  him  in 
his  new  position — His  eminence  as  a  preacher — The  stimulus  he  gave 
to  the  development  of  the  College  of  New  Jersey  .  .  «  •  •  321 

IV. — Witherspoon's  career  as  political  writer  and  practical  statesman — 
Enters  Congress  in  June,  17/6 — Reasons  for  his  great  influence  in 
that  body — His  sermons  on  public  questions — His  miscellaneous  poli- 
tical writings,  grave  and  humorous  .  .  .  -,  ;-  «  .  .  323 

V. — Witherspoon's  treatment  of  the  leading  questions  then  in  dispute — 
Special  value  of  his  writings  on  public  finance — He  foresees  the  perils 
that  were  to  follow  American  Independence 327 


xvi  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

VI.— Ezra  Stiles,  President  of  Yale  College— His  ambition  for  universal 

scholarship 33<> 

VII.— Stiles's  numerous  unpublished  writings— His  few  published  writings 
—His  lack  of  ability  in  sustained  literary  expression — His  defects  in 
literary  taste 332 

VIII. — Estimate  of  Stiles's  services  to  civilization  in  America — His 
attitude  toward  the  chief  tendencies  of  "modern  thought — His  free- 
mindedness— His  confidence  in  the  victory  of  truth— His  great  charity 
—His  sagacious  judgments  concerning  secular  affairs— In  1760  and 
1761,  he  predicts  the  entire  movement  toward  American  union,  Inde- 
pendence, and  national  development 335 


CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

TWO  APOSTLES  OF   QUIETNESS   AND   GOODWILL  :   JOHN   WOOLMAN  AND 
ST.  JOHN   CREVECOZUR. 

I.— Comparison  between  Franklin's  "Autobiography"  and  John  Wool- 
man's  "  Journal " — The  spirit  of  Woolman's  life — He  is  weaned  from 
the  desire  for  outward  greatness — Begins  his  first  journey  to  visit 

Friends 339 

II. — John  Woolman's  apostleship — The  kindly  burden  thereof  as  set  forth 

in  his  "  Journal  " 342 

HI. — John  Woolman's  death  in  1772 — His  several  ethical  and  religious 
essays — An  unlettered  writer  whose  purity  of  style  is  born  of  the 
purity  of  his  heart — The  love  and  praise  of  him  by  Charles  Lamb, 
Channing,  Crabb  Robinson,  and  Whittier  .....  345 

IV. — St.  John  Crevecoeur's  "Letters  of  an  American  Farmer"  pub- 
lished in  1782 — Their  sweetness  of  tone  and  literary  grace — Personal 
history  of  the  author — His  personal  and  literary  traits  as  American 

farmer,  philosopher,  dreamer,  and  altruist 347 

V. — Crevecoeur's  description  of  the  American  colonies — The  limited 
range  of  his  topics — His  definition  of  an  American — His  sympathetic 
studies  of  nature — His  classic  contributions  to  the  literature  of  natural 

history ;.v       ,         .     349 

VI.— The  note  of  peace  in  Crevecceur's  book— He  celebrates  the  com- 
fort of  American  rural  life,  its  opportunity,  thoughtfulness,  equality, 
dignity,  friendliness,  its  happy  companionship  with  all  innocent  things,  351 
VII. — The  note  of  pain  in  Crevecoeur's  book — The  inevitable  barbarism 
of  negro  slavery— His  pathetic  picture  of  the  caged  negro— The  In- 
dian wrong  and  terror— This  quietist  appalled  by  the  wrangles  and 
violence  of  the  Revolution— His  idealized  descriptions  of  American 
felicity  both  fascinated  and  misled  many  readers  in  Europe— His 
influence  upon  the  English  poets,  especially  the  inventors  of 
' '  Pantisocracy "  .  .  .  .  .-*.-'.  .  .  .  354 


CONTENTS.  xvii 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

FRANKLIN   IN  THE  LITERATURE   OF   THE  REVOLUTION. 

I. — Franklin's  absence  from  America  during  the  larger  part  of  the  Rev- 
olution— His  vast  influence  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic — Political 
uses  of  his  fame  as  an  electrician  .  .  ,;.»  ,  .  ...  .  359 

II. — His  renown  prior  to  1764 — What  he  had  then  done  as  a  writer — 
Development  of  his  literary  powers  down  to  old  age — Quality  of  his 
humor ~  _  *:"«_..-•  .  362 

III. — Classification  of  his  writings  during  the  period  of  the  Revolution 
— Account  of  those  apart  from  that  controversy — His  proposal  to 
Madame  Helvetius  .  :.  ;;-.:»  .,  .  ,  .  .  .  .  367 

IV. — His  urbane  and  humorous  method  in  controversy — His  attitude 
toward  that  of  the  Revolution — General  view  of  his  writings  on  the 
subject  .  .  .  •„.•  -:•:,  .  ...... ...  .........  , :  .  .  370 

V. — His  chief  contributions  to  the  Revolutionary  dispute — His  "  Examina- 
tion " — "Causes  of  American  Discontents" — "On  the  Rise  and 
Progress  of  the  Differences  between  Great  Britain  and  her  American 
Colonies" — "Dialogue  between  Britain,  France,  Spain,  Holland, 
Saxony,  and  America  " — "  A  Catechism  relative  to  the  English  Debt" 
— His  emblematic  picture  of  Britannia  dismembered  .  .-  .  373 

VI. — His  special  use  of  satire  in  the  form  of  ludicrous  analogue — Bur- 
lesque of  extravagant  stories  told  in  England  respecting  the  colonies 
— "Rules  for  Reducing  a  Great  Empire  to  a  Small  One" — "An 
Edict  by  the  King  of  Prussia  " — Great  effects  of  the  latter  both  in  Eng- 
land and  in  America — His  satire  on  the  Anglo-German  traffic  in  troops 
for  America  .  .  -.a'.j  •-:*_.•/  >,]..>*/;•,  »  ''..  *.,  ,  •  •  »  •  37^ 

VII. — The  history  of  the  Revolution  as  composed  of  Franklin's  passing 
comments  on  its  successive  stages — A  continuous  reading  of  all  his 
Revolutionary  writings,  needful  for  an  adequate  impression  of  their 
worth  or  charm .>;,;,.-.  .  .  381 

CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

THE   WRITERS   OF   HISTORY. 

I. — Two  expressions  of  the  historic  spirit  during  the  Revolution — One 
resulting  in  local  colonial  history— The  other  resulting  in  histories 
of  the  Revolutionary  movement  and  therefore  representing  the  col- 
onies as  moving  forward  into  statehood  and  a  new  national  life  .  3^3 

II. — Stephen  Hopkins  as  a  representative  of  the  historic  spirit  applied  to 
local  themes — His  fragment  on  "  The  Planting  and  Growth  of  Provi- 
dence," 1762  and  1765 — Amos  Adams  and  his  "Concise  Historical 
View  of  the  Planting  and  Progressive  Improvement  of  New  England," 
1769 — Nathan  Fiske's  "  Historical  Discourse  "  for  the  town  of  Brook - 
field^L775 384 

III. — Robert  Proud,  and  his  "  History  of  Pennsylvania  "          .         .         .     386 


XVlii  CONTENTS, 

PACK 

IV. — How  religious  affiliations  overleaped  colonial  barriers  and  led  to 
more  comprehensive  historical  work — Morgan  Edwards  and  his  "  Ma- 
terials towards  a  History  of  the  American  Baptists,"  1770 — The 
intelligence  and  validity  of  his  method  as  an  historian — The  scope 
of  his  work — Examples  of  its  quality 387 

V. — Another  intercolonial  historian  is  Isaac  Backus,  preacher  and  politi- 
cian— His  "  History  of  New  England,  with  Particular  Reference  to 
the  Denomination  Called  Baptists,"  1777  and  1784 — His  motive  in 
writing  history — His  method  strictly  scientific,  notwithstanding  his 
lack  of  disinterestedness — Value  of  his  work 391 

VI. — Thomas  Hutchinson  as  an  historian  dealing  with  themes  both 
colonial  and  Revolutionary — The  peculiar  value  of  his  contributions 
to  American  history — His  writing  of  history  but  the  by-play  of  a  busy 
man  of  affairs — His  ancestry — His  career  as  merchant  and  politician 
— His  attitude  toward  the  Revolutionary  controversy  •  «  •  *  .  394 

VII. — Hutchinson's  early  passion  for  the  study  of  history,  particularly 
constitutional  history — His  preparation  for  the  writing  of  it — His  idea 
of  the  importance  of  primary  documents,  and  his  unrivaled  collection 
of  them — The  publication  in  1764  of  the  first  volume  of  his  "  His- 
tory of  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay  " — His  work  in  writing  the 
second  volume  interrupted  by  a  Boston  mob  in  August,  1765,  looting 
his  house  and  destroying  many  of  his  papers — Fortunate  recovery  of 
the  manuscript  of  the  second  volume — Its  publication  in  1767 — 
Characteristics  of  this  volume 397 

VIII. — Hutchinson  summoned  to  England  in  1774 — His  own  special 
purpose  in  going  there — Failure  of  his  efforts  to  dissuade  the  govern- 
ment from  its  impolitic  measures  towards  the  colonies — The  sorrows 
of  his  exile  in  England — Resumes  there  his  "  History,"  the  third 
volume  of  which  he  finishes  in  1778 — Contains  his  own  version  of  the 
Revolution  down  to  the  close  of  his  administration  as  governor  of 
Massachusetts— Its  first  publication  in  1828  ....  402 

IX. — Traits  of  Hutchinson  as  an  historian — The  distinctive  tone  of  each 
of  his  three  volumes— His  evident  truthfulness — His  judicial  tone— 
The  severest  test  of  his  fairness  applied  in  the  writing  of  his  third 
volume — An  examination  of  Palfrey's  estimate  of  him  as  an  historian 
—The  essence  of  his  politics  with  reference  to  the  Revolutionary 
dispute— His  portrait  of  Governor  Joseph  Dudley,  as  in  some  res- 
pects a  portrait  of  himself 405 

X. — A  pretended  historical  work  by  Samuel  Peters,  "  A  General  History 
of  Connecticut,"  1781 — The  career  of  Peters — The  notoriety  acquired 
by  his  book— Its  grotesque  fabrications  in  the  service  of  calumny — 
Clearly  not  intended  by  himself  as  a  mere  historical  romance  or  a 
satire  in  the  form  of  burlesque  history— Its  author's  mania  for  facts 
which  never  had  an  existence 412 

XL— The  development  of  the  military  stage  of  the  Revolution  accom- 
panied by  a  general  perception  of  its  historic  significance,  and  of  the 


CONTENTS.  Xix 

need  of  making  and  preserving  records  of  it — Examples  of  historical 
work  in  its  crudest  form — Especially  the  diaries  of  eye-witnesses  of 
its  events — James  Thacher's  "  Military  Journal  of  the  American  Rev- 
olutionary War" — "  A  Journal  of  Occurrences,"  by  Major  Return 
Jonathan  Meigs — George  Rogers  Clark's  "  Campaign  in  the  Illinois" 
— Tench  Tilghman's  "Journal,"  and  his  "  Diary  " — "The  Journal 
of  Lieutenant  William  Feltman  " 416 

XII. — The  beginnings  of  professed  histories  of  the  Revolution — Jonas 
Clark's  "Brief  Narrative"  of  the  events  of  April  19,  1775 — David 
Ramsay  as  a  collector  of  materials  for  a  history  of  the  Revolution 
— William  Henry  Drayton  as  an  historian  of  the  Revolution — A 
portion  of  his  work  burned  by  order  of  Congress — His  two  volumes 
on  the  history  of  the  war  in  the  southern  colonies  ....  418 

XIII. — Mercy  Warren  as  an  historian  of  the  Revolution — Her  great  op- 
portunities for  knowing  the  men  and  events  of  the  period — Her 
"  History  of  the  Rise,  Progress,  and  Termination  of  the  American 
Revolution  " — Its  undisguised  partisanship — Its  literary  qualities— Its 
historical  portraits  ..........  419 

XIV. — William  Gordon,  and  his  indefatigable  efforts  to  obtain  oral  and 
written  testimony  concerning  the  Revolution — His  evident  purpose 
to  be  truthful  and  fair — Fearing  American  prejudices  against  an  im- 
partial history  of  the  Revolution,  he  goes  to  England  to  publish  his 
work,  but  encounters  there  similar  prejudices — How  his  manuscript 
was  tampered  with — The  great  value  of  his  work,  even  as  thus 
mutilated .  .  423 

BIBLIOGRAPHY '.  429 

INDEX «...       .        .    485 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

SAMUEL   ADAMS  AND   WILLIAM    LIVINGSTON:     THEIR    LIT- 
ERARY  SERVICES   TO    THE   REVOLUTION. 

I. — The  decline  of  the  reputation  of  Samuel  Adams  since  the  Revolution — His 
literary  work  always  for  a  practical  end — Greatness  of  his  influence  as  a 
writer  during  the  Revolution. 

II. — Adams's  early  career — His  early  absorption  in  the  politics  of  his  town  and 
colony — His  chief  function  that  of  opposition — The  great  variety  of  public 
business  in  which  he  was  employed — In  1765  becomes  the  real  director  of 
the  policy  of  the  opposition  in  the  eastern  colonies. 

III. — The  disinterestedness  and  simplicity  of  Adams's  life — His  democratic 
ways — His  great  contemporary  renown  in  England  for  political  astuteness 
and  for  control  over  events — His  priority  in  the  championship  of  the  more 
important  Revolutionary  measures. 

IV. — Adams's  use  of  the  political  essay  as  an  instrument  of  immediate  influence 
— Had  the  instinct  of  a  great  journalist — His  willingness  to  produce  results 
and  to  keep  himself  out  of  sight — The  great  number  of  his  literary  dis- 
guises— His  extraordinary  diligence  as  a  political  writer. 

V. — Outline  of  Adams's  literary  labors — His  method  in  work — His  traits  as  a 
writer  and  as  a  controversialist. 

VI. — The  consistency  of  Adams's  public  career — His  controlling  principle  was 
individualism — His  application  of  that  principle  to  the  doctrines  of  liberty, 
loyalty,  civic  duty,  and  domestic  life. 

VII. — Adams  insists  upon  the  due  subordination  of  the  military  power  in  a  free 
community — His  early  predictions  of  Independence. 

VIII. — William  Livingston,  Revolutionary  agitator  and  first  governor  of  the 
State  of  New  Jersey — His  activity  as  a  political  writer — The  great  variety 
of  his  literary  services  to  the  Revolution — The  effectiveness  of  his  assaults 
upon  the  enemy  as  shown  by  their  extraordinary  hatred  of  him — His  own 
hearty  reciprocation  of  the  sentiment. 

I. 

WHEN  George  Bancroft  first  set  forth  before  the  world, 
about  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  story  of  the 
great  part  taken  by  Samuel  Adams  in  the  American  Revo- 


2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION, 

lution,  it  seemed  to  be  an  attempt  to  raise  a  mighty  reputa- 
tion from  the  dead ;  for  it  had  been  the  fate  of  this  man  to 
atone  for  the  prodigious  hold  he  had  upon  his  contempora- 
ries, by  losing  for  awhile  and  almost  altogether  his  hold 
upon  posterity.  Not  even  yet  has  the  time  come,  when  an 
adequate  account  of  the  significance  of  his  career,  whether 
as  a  man  of  affairs  or  as  a  man  of  letters,  can  be  read 
without  some  suspicion  of  paradox  and  extravagance. 

Samuel  Adams  was,  indeed,  a  man  of  letters,  but  he  was 
so  only  because  he  was  above  all  things  a  man  of  affairs. 
Of  literary  art,  in  certain  forms,  he  was  no  mean  master:  of 
literary  art  for  art's  sake,  he  was  entirely  regardless.  H£ 
was  perhaps  the  most  voluminous  political  writer  of  his  time 
in  America,  and  the  most  influential  politicaTwriter  of  his 
time  in  New  England ; /but  "everything  that  he  wrote  was 
meant  for  a  definite  practical  purpose,  and  nothing  that  he 
wrote  seemed  to  have  had  any  interest  for  him  aside  from 
that  purpose^" Accordingly,  as  has  been  said  by  his  latest 
biographer,  "  like  cannon  balls  which  sink  the  ship,  and  then 
are  lost  in  the  sea,  so  the  bolts  of  Samuel  Adams,  after  rid- 
dling British  authority  in  America,  must  be  sought  by 
diving  beneath  the  oblivion  that  has  rolled  over  them." 

Deep  as  is  the  obscurity  which  has  fallen  upon  his  literary 
services  in  the  cause  of  the  Revolution,  the  fame  of  those 
services  was,  at  the  time  of  them,  almost  unrivaled  by  that 
of  any  other  writer,  at  least  in  the  colonies  east  of  the  Hud- 
son River.  So  early  as  the  year  1765,  John  Adams  spoke 
of  him,  among  a  group  of  brilliant  and  accomplished  men, 
as  having  "  the  most  correct,  genteel,  and  artful  pen  "  of 
any  of  them.3  In  the  year  1774,  he  again  pointed  out  Sam- 
uel Adams  as  "  the  most  elegant  writer  "  who  had  figured 

1  James  Kendall  Hosmer,  "  Samuel  Adams,"  360.  This  is  one  of  the  vol- 
umes in  the  "  American  Statesmen  "  series,  and  for  thoroughness,  fairness,  and 
suggestiveness,  one  of  the  best.  It  is  especially  remarkable  for  a  certain  deli- 
cate insight  into  character,  and  for  its  candor  and  justice  toward  both  parties  in 
the  American  Revolution, — thus  heralding  the  new  age  of  American  historical 
writing. 

"  The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  ii.  163. 


SAMUEL  ADAMS.  3 

in  America  in  his  time.1  In  the  year  1768,  James  Otis,  with 
his  usual  amplitude  of  assertion,  publicly  declared  "  that 
there  was  not  a  person  in  England  capable  of  composing  so 
elegant,  so  pure,  and  so  nervous  a  writing,"  as  a  certain 
state  paper  by  Samuel  Adams  then  recently  given  to  the 
public.3  The  one  man  among  his  contemporaries  who  had 
the  most  occasion  to  know  and  to  dread  the  literary  skill  of 
Samuel  Adams,  bore  witness  to  the  fact  that,  though  he 
was  at  first  but  an  indifferent  writer,  yet  "  long  practice 
caused  him  to  arrive  at  great  perfection,  and  to  acquire  a 
talent  of  artfully  and  fallaciously  insinuating  into  the  minds 
of  his  readers  a  prejudice  against  the  character  of  aH  whom 
he  attacked,  beyond  any  other  man  I  ever  knew. ' '  *yr  '  Damn 
that  Adams,"  groaned  Governor  Bernard;  "  every  dip  of 
his  pen  stings  like  a  horned  snake. ''x' A  Loyalist  writer  in 
the  year  1775  spoke  facetiously  or  Samuel  Adams  as  "  a 
sachem  of  vast  elocution,"  and  then  added  with  more  seri- 
ousness,— "  what  proceeds  from  the  mouth  of  Adams,  is 
sufficient  to  fill  the  mouths  of  millions  in  America."  * 

II. 

Born  in  Boston  in  1722,  graduated  at  Harvard  in  1740,  he 
early  showed  an  invincible  passion  and  aptitude  for  politics. 
Though  both  orthodox  and  devout,  he  was  disinclined  to 
the  ministry.  Though  fond  of  the  discussion  of  politico- 
legal  questions,  he  was  easily  dissuaded  from  the  study  of 
the  law.  Enrolled  as  a  merchant's  clerk  in  his  native  town, 
he  had  no  difficulty,  after  a  brief  apprenticeship,  in  securing 

1  William  Vincent  Wells,  "  The  Life  and  Public  Services  of  Samuel  Adams," 
i.  446. 

9  "  Letters  to  the  Ministry  from  Governor  Bernard,"  40.  The  state  paper 
here  referred  to,  is  the  petition  to  the  king  passed  by  the  Massachusetts  House 
of  Representatives  in  1768. 

3  Thomas  Hutchinson,  "The  History  of  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay," 
iii.  295. 

4  "  The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  ii.  425-426. 

*  Thomas  Bolton,  "Oration,"  Boston,  March  15,  1775.  Cited  in  Wells, 
"  The  Life  and  Public  Services  of  Samuel  Adams,"  ii.  410  n. 


4  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

a  release  from  his  employer,  who  naively  explained  that 
young  Adams  "  would  never  do  for  a  merchant,"  as  "  his 
whole  soul  was  engrossed  by  politics."  Having  been  by 
his  father  set  up  in  trade,  with  a  capital  of  a  thousand 
pounds,  he  proved  himself  to  be  so  much  more  apt  at  part- 
ing with  his  goods  than  at  getting  pay  for  them,  that  he 
soon  had  nothing  left  of  what  his  father  had  given  him. 
Being  then  taken  as  a  partner  into  his  father's  business — 
that  of  a  brewer — and  being  upon  his  father's  death  in  1758 
made  his  successor  in  the  business,  he  continued  to  concern 
himself  so  much  with  the  affairs,  of  the  state  house  and  so 
little  with  those  of  the  malt  house,  that  even  the  petty 
revenue  to  be  derived  from  the  office  of  tax  collector  for 
the  town  of  Boston, — an  office  which  he  held  from  1756  to 
1764, — became  a  matter  of  convenience  to  him.2 

In  the  meantime,  the  man  whom  his  enemies  had  already 
nicknamed  "  Samuel  the  Maltster,"  and  "  Samuel  the 
Publican,"  was  far  advanced  in  that  line  of  activity  which 
subsequently  earned  for  him  the  additional  titles  of  "  Arch- 
Manager,"  "  Man  of  the  Town  Meeting,"  "  Father  of 
Democracy,"  "  Grand  Incendiary,"  "  Cromwell  of  New 
England,"  and  "  Man  of  the  Revolution."  The  one  title, 
however,  which  perhaps  best  describes  him,  as  being  free 
alike  from  sarcasm  and  from  panegyric,  is  one  which  seems 
never  to  have  been  given  to  him — that  of  Citizen.  It  was 
simply  as  a  citizen — it  was  in  the  exercise  of  the  rights  and 
duties  of  the  free  and  fearless  civic  character — that  he  found 
his  true  vocation.  Moreover,  under  the  peculiar  conditions 
of  his  time,  the  most  important  function  of  citizenship 
seemed  to  him  to  be  that  of  criticism,  opposition,  destruc- 
tion. For  precisely  that  function  he  was  supremely 
endowed, — he  was  the  incomparable  leader  of  his  fellow- 
citizens  in  the  development  of  astute,  far-reaching,  and 
masterly  measures  of  destructive  statesmanship.  At  the 

1  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  i.  12. 

9  The  old  and  oft-repeated  charge  that  Adams  was  a  peculator  in  this  office, 
has  been  disproved  by  A.  C.  Goodell,  "  Proc.  of  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.,"  xx.  213-223. 


SAMUEL  ADAMS.  5 

moment  when  the  business  of  constructive  statesmanship 
became  the  chief  function  in  the  emancipated  common- 
wealth, the  work  of  Samuel  Adams  was  done.1 

Even  his  thrifty  fellow-townsmen,  who  perhaps  nodded 
their  heads  at  his  thriftless  ways  in  all  matters  pertaining  to 
his  own  business,  could  not  fail  to  note  his  singular  appe- 
tence for  the  business  of  the  public — his  readiness  to  think 
and  write  and  speak  and  plot  and  otherwise  to  toil,  in  order 
that  the  interests  of  the  public  should  receive  no  harm. 
And  nothing  that  affected  the  public  interests  was  too  incon- 
siderable for  him  to  engage  in — if  the  public  so  desired.  In 
the  records  of  the  town  of  Boston — as  we  are  told  by  a 
writer 2  who  has  turned  them  over  with  this  subject  in  view 
— one  finds  the  name  of  Samuel  Adams  so  early  as  1753  as 
a  patient  plodder  in  town  business;  and  "  scarcely  a  year 
passes  from  that  date  until  the  town  meetings  cease,  crushed 
out  by  the  battalions  of  Gage,  when  his  name  does  not  ap- 
pear in  connections  becoming  constantly  more  honorable," 
— from  membership  of  committees  to  see  that  chimneys  are 
properly  inspected,  and  that  precautions  are  taken  against 
the  spread  of  small-pox,  to  membership  of  committees  to 
instruct  the  town's  representatives  in  the  assembly.  Finally, 
in  September,  1765,  in  the  fever-heat  of  opposition  to  the 
Stamp  Act,  he  himself  became  one  of  the  town's  repre- 
sentatives in  the  assembly ;  and  from  about  that  time,  until 
1774,  when  he  was  sent  to  represent  Massachusetts  in  the 
Continental  Congress,  he  was  the  real  director  of  the  policy 
of  opposition  in  the  eastern  colonies.3  In  the  assembly  of 
Massachusetts  no  other  member  could  rival  him  in  minute 
knowledge  of  the  rules  and  business  of  the  house,  in  labori- 
ous devotion  to  its  work,  in  steadiness,  endurance,  tact, 
shrewdness,  persuasiveness,  and  in  the  not  very  noble  art 
of  manipulating  committees  and  caucuses;  and  while  some 
other  men — notably  James  Otis  and  John  Adams — were  far 

I  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  ii.  466. 

II  Hosmer,  "  Samuel  Adams,"  36. 

3  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  i.  98. 


6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

more  brilliant  in  debate,  not  even  their  dashing  and  dazzling 
speeches  could  win  votes  as  did  the  brief,  unadorned, 
informing,  and  convincing  talks  of  Samuel  Adams. 

III. 

It  is  easy  to  see,  also,  that  his  political  influence  was 
vastly  increased  by  the  evident  purity  of  his  character,  his 
disinterestedness  as  to  pecuniary  gain,  and  his  unassuming 
ways.  He  began  to  illustrate  democratic  simplicity  and 
democratic  friendliness,  long  before  Jefferson  was  old 
enough  to  know  the  meaning  of  those  words.  Seated  on  a 
log  by  the  side  of  some  caulker  in  the  shipyard,  or  pausing 
on  a  street  corner  for  leisurely  and  confidential  discourse 
with  any  cobbler  or  hod  carrier  who  should  care  to  spend 
his  time  in  that  way,  he  won  extraordinary  affection  from 
his  fellow-townsmen  by  his  evident  willingness  to  impart  to 
the  humblest  of  them  the  political  fears,  and  hopes,  and 
aims,  which  possessed  his  own  soul  respecting  the  common- 
wealth. In  his  concern  for  the  interests  of  the  public,  he 
was  "  forgetful  of  the  ordinary  pursuits  which  occupy  the 
minds  of  men.  .  .  .  He  was  truly  and  really  contented 
with  poverty"1;  so  that,  in  his  old  age,  he  could  say, 
proudly,  that  "  a  guinea  had  never  glistened  in  his  eyes."  * 
Abstemious,  untiring,  unswerving,  he  seemed  never  to  care 
who  had  the  credit  of  his  measures — if  only  his  measures 
had  success.  "  He  eats  little,"  wrote  his  chief  antagonist 
in  the  Congress  of  1774,  "  drinks  little,  sleeps  little,  thinks 
much,  and  is  most  decisive  and  indefatigable  in  the  pursuit 
of  his  objects."  So  great  became  his  ascendency  over  the 
people,  that,  as  one  of  his  biographers  declares,  "  in  the 
stormiest  days  preceding  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  it  was 
common  among  the  vulgar  and  uneducated  to  assert  that 
he  was  actually  gifted  with  prophecy,  and  not  a  few  believed 
that  he  held  peace  or  war  in  his  keeping."4  In  1771, 

1  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  i.  272.  *  Ibid.  ii.  195. 

3  Galloway,  "  Historical  and  Political  Reflections,"  etc.,  67. 

4  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  ii.  241. 


SAMUEL   ADAMS.  J 

Hutchinson  reprobated  this  Boston  politician  as  "an  incen- 
diary equal  to  any  at  present  in  London."1  Two  years 
afterward,  in  a  private  letter  to  Lord  Dartmouth,  Hutchin- 
son explained  at  length  the  methods  by  which  Samuel 
Adams  had  made  himself  so  powerful  and  so  dangerous: 
"  Whenever  there  appears  a  disposition  to  any  conciliatory 
measures,  this  person,  by  his  art  and  skill,  prevents  any 
effect ;  sometimes  by  exercising  his  talents  in  the  news- 
papers; ...  at  other  times  by  an  open  opposition, 
and  this  sometimes  in  the  house,  where  he  has  defeated 
every  attempt  as  often  as  any  has  been  made.  But  his  chief 
dependence  is  upon  a  Boston  town  meeting,  where  he  orig- 
inates his  measures,  which  are  followed  of  course  by  the  rest 
of  the  towns,  and  of  course  are  adopted  or  justified  by  the 
assembly."  3  By  the  year  1774,  his  reputation  had  become 
so  great  in  England  that,  according  to  Josiah  Quincy,  many 
people  there  considered  him  "  the  first  politician  in  the 
world."  '  It  was  not  without  reason  that  in  the  royal  offers 
of  amnesty  to  the  American  rebels  in  case  of  their  repent- 
ance, no  place  for  repentance  was  left  for  one  who  was 
probably  the  first  to  avow  the  doctrine  of  American  Inde- 
pendence, and  who,  next  to  the  British  ministry  itself,  was 
probably  the  most  influential  in  securing  its  adoption. 
Even  though  a  disinterested  student  may  abate  somewhat 
from  the  extreme  assertions  made  on  his  behalf  by  recent 
eulogists  of  Samuel  Adams,  it  is  a  clear  token  of  the  im- 
mense influence  he  hacl  upon  political  and  military  events  in 
America,  especially  between  1765  and  1776,  that  it  is  now 
possible  for  reasonable  men  to  claim  for  him  that  he  was 
the  first  to  deny  all  legislative  authority  of  parliament  over 
the  colonies,  as  well  as  the  first  to  suggest  the  leading  meas- 
ures made  necessary  by  such  denial, — intercolonial  union, 
committees  of  correspondence,  circular  letters,  the  league 
for  non-importation,  and  the  establishment  of  an  incipient 

1  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  i.  398. 

5  Quoted  in  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  ii.  100. 

3  Josiah  Quincy,  "  Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Josiah  Quincy,  Junior,"  258. 


8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

national  government  under  the  title  of  the  Continental 
Congress.  Surely,  of  one  who  had  an  initial  and  a  neces- 
sary part  in  the  creation  of  a  series  of  political  devices  so 
thorough-going  and  so  epoch-making  as  were  these,  it  is 
not  altogether  an  extravagance  to  say — as  has  been  said  in 
our  day  by  a  masterly  critic  of  those  times — that,  ' '  in  the 
history  of  the  American  Revolution,"  Samuel  Adams  "  is 
second  only  to  Washington. ' '  ' 

IV. 

It  comports  with  the  particular  purpose  of  this  book,  to 
direct  attention  to  the  fact  that  one  principal  instrument  by 
means  of  which  Samuel  Adams  so  greatly  molded  public 
opinion,  and  shaped  political  and  even  military  procedure, 
was  the  pen.  /Of  modern  politicians,  he  was  among  the 
first  to  recognize  the  power  of  public  opinion  in  directing 
public  events,  and  likewise  the  power  of  the  newspaper  in 
directing  public  opinion.^  It  was,  therefore,  an  essential 
part  of  his  method  as  a  politician  to  acquire  and  to  exercise 
the  art  of  literary  statement  in  a  form  suited  to  that  partic- 
ular end.  He  had  the  instinct  of  a  great  journalist,  and  of 
a  great  journalist  willing  to  screen  his  individuality  behind 
his  journal.  In  this  service,  it  was  not  Samuel  Adams  that 
Samuel  Adams  cared  to  put  and  to  keep  before  the  public, 
— it  was  the  ideas  of  Samuel  Adams.  Accordingly,  of  all 
American  writers  for  the  newspapers  between  the  years 
1754  and  1776,  he  was  perhaps  the  most  vigilant,  the  most 
industrious,  the  most  effective,  and  also  the  least  identified. 
Ever  ready  to  efface  himself  in  what  he  did,  he  realized  that 
the  innumerable  productions  of  his  pen  would  make  their 
way  to  a  far  wider  range  of  readers,  and  would  be  all  the 
more  influential,  if  they  seemed  to  be  the  work,  not  of  one 
writer,  but  of  many.  Therefore,  he  almost  never  published 
anything  under  his  own  name;  but,  under  a  multitude  of 

1  John  Fiske,  quoted  by  Hosmer  in  "  Samuel  Adams,"  as  one  of  the  mottoes 
on  the  obverse  side  of  the  leaf  containing  the  dedication. 


SAMUEL   ADAMS.  9 

titular  disguises  which  no  man  has  yet  been  able  to  number, 
— as  "  Alfred,"  "  An  American,"  "  A  Bostonian,"  "  A 
Tory,"  "  A  Chatterer,"  "  A  Son  of  Liberty,"  "  An  Impe- 
rialist," "  An  Elector  in  1771,"  "  Valerius  Poplicola," 
V  A.,"  "  A.  B.,"  V  E.  A.,"  "  Z.,"  "  T.  Z.,"  "  Candidus," 
"  Determinatus, "  "  Sincerus,"  "  Populus, "  "  Cedant  Arma 
Togae,"  "  Principiis  Obsta,"  "  A  Religious  Politician," 
"  A  Layman,"  "  Observation,"  "  Shippen," — this  sleep- 
less, crafty,  protean  politician,  for  nearly  a  third  of  a  cen- 
tury, kept  flooding  the  community  with  his  ideas,  chiefly  in 
the  form  of  essays  in  the  newspapers, — thereby  constantly 
baffling  the  enemies  of  the  Revolutionary  movement,  and 
conducting  his  followers  victoriously  through  those  battles 
of  argument  which  preceded  and  then  for  a  time  accom- 
panied the  battles  of  arms.  "  Some  of  his  essays  over  one 
signature  extend,  in  consecutive  series,  through  several 
years, — the  argument  being  maintained  right  and  left  with 
his  various  Loyalist  assailants, — while,  with  different  names, 
he  kept  up  contests  simultaneously  with  others  of  the 
crown  writers  on  distinct  subjects.  All  this  time  his  pen 
was  employed  on  the  state  papers  of  the  legislature  and 
other  public  bodies,  and  in  his  extensive  correspondence 
with  patriots  in  the  other  colonies  and  with  gentlemen  in 
England.  ...  If  published  entire,  together  with  the 
arguments  of  his  antagonists,  they  would  present  a  formi- 
dable array  of  controversial  papers,  embracing  all  the  issues 
between  Great  Britain  and  the  colonies,  and  showing  the 
gradual  progress  of  events  which  culminated  in  American 
Independence."  ' 

V. 

In  the  long  line  of  his  state  papers — the  official  utterances 
of  the  several  public  bodies  with  which  he  was  connected 
and  which  so  long  trusted  him  as  their  most  deft  and  unerr- 
ing penman — one  may  now  trace,  almost  without  a  break, 
the  development  of  the  ideas  and  the  measures  which  formed 

1  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  i.  445  n. 


10  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

the  Revolution.  It  was  he  who  drafted,  both  in  1764  and 
in  1765,  the  instructions  of  the  town  of  Boston  to  its  repre- 
sentatives in  the  assembly1;  and  in  October,  1775,  the 
assembly's  answer  to  the  governor's  speech  a;  and  in  1768, 
the  assembly's  petition  to  the  king,  the  assembly's  letters 
to  the  chief  members  of  the  British  ministry,3  the  assembly's 
letter  of  instructions  to  its  agent  in  London,4  and  the 
assembly's  circular  letter  to  the  legislatures  of  the  other 
colonies5;  in  1769,  the  remonstrance  of  the  house  of  repre- 
sentatives to  the  governor,"  and  the  "  Appeal  to  the 
World,"  sent  forth  by  the  town-meeting  of  Boston7;  in 
1772,  Boston's  statement  of  the  "  Natural  Rights  of  the 
Colonists  as  Men  "  ";  in  1773,  the  two  answers  of  the  house 
of  representatives  to  the  governor's  speech  on  the  authority 
of  parliament,9  and  the  circular  letter  of  the  town  of  Boston 
to  all  its  sister  towns  in  Massachusetts10;  in  1774,  the  circu- 
lar letter  of  the  town  of  Boston  and  of  its  nearest  neighbors 
to  the  committees  of  correspondence  throughout  all  the 
colonies11;  in  1775,  the  address  of  the  Continental  Congress 
to  the  Mohawk  Indians12;  in  1776,  the  resolves  of  Congress 
for  the  disarmament  of  the  Tories13;  in  1778,  the  manifesto 
of  congress  against  the  barbarities  practised  by  their  ene- 
mies in  the  conduct  of  the  war14;  in  1779,  an  important 
portion  of  the  new  constitution  of  the  State  of  Massachu- 
setts, particularly  the  bill  of  rights,16  together  with  the 
address  of  the  constitutional  convention  to  the  people  of 
Massachusetts.18 

1  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  i.  46  and  65.  s  Ibid.  71  n. 

3  These  letters,  together  with  the  petition  to  the  king,  were  printed  the  same 
year  in  London,  by  Almon,  under  a  title  which  became  celebrated—"  The 
True  Sentiments  of  America." 

Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  i.  152-158.  6  Ibid.  170.  *  Ibid.  255-256. 
Ibid.  282.  8  Ibid.  502-504.  »  Ibid.,  ii.  29,  31  n.  10  Ibid.  108-109. 
1  Ibid.  157-158.  »  Ibid.  282-284.  13  Ibid.  364-366. 

4  Idid.  iii.  46-47. 

6  Ibid.  80-89.  Where  it  is  argued  that  too  much  has  been  claimed  for  John 
Adams  and  too  little  for  Samuel  Adams  as  to  the  authorship  of  this  important 
documeQt-  '•  Ibid.  90-96. 


SAMUEL  ADAMS.  II 

If  we  take  into  account  the  strain  of  thought  and  of 
emotional  energy  involved  in  all  these  years  of  fierce  polit- 
ical controversy  and  of  most  perilous  political  leadership,  we 
shall  hardly  fear  to  overestimate  the  resources  of  Sajnjiel 
Adams  in  his  true  career  of  agkator  andicoiioclast ; — espe- 
cially  the  elasticity,  the  to~ughness,  the  persistence  of  a 
nature  which  could,  in  addition  to  all  this,  undertake  and 
carry  through,  during  the  same  lojig  period,  all  the  work  he 
did  in  literary  polemics, — work  which  alone  might  seem 
enough  to  employ  and  tire  the  strength  even  of  a  strong 
man  who  had  nothing  else  to  do.  Some  glimpse  of  the 
secret  of  his  strength,  and  of  his  actual  method  while 
engaged  in  the  forging  of  his  politico-literary  thunderbolts, 
is  given  us  through  a  vivid  picture  of  him  as  drawn  by  his 
great-grandson:  "  Frugal  and  temperate  in  his  habits,  his 
wants  were  few,  and  his  powers  of  endurance  fitted  him  for 
ceaseless  industry.  Most  of  his  public  papers  were  written 
in  a  study  or  library  adjoining  his  bedroom;  and  his  wife, 
after  his  death,  related  how,  in  the  stillness  of  the  night, 
she  used,  in  the  Revolutionary  times,  to  listen  to  the  inces- 
sant motion  of  the  pen  in  the  next  room,  whence  the  solitary 
lamp,  which  lighted  the  patriot  in  his  labors,  was  dimly 
visible.  Mr.  Joseph  Pierce,  who  personally  knew  Samuel 
Adams,  and  whose  business  obliged  him  for  a  long  time  to 
pass  after  midnight  by  the  house,  related,  early  in  the  pres- 
ent century,  that  he  seldom  failed  to  see  the  study  lighted, 
no  matter  how  far  the  night  had  gone,  '  and  he  knew  that 
Sam  Adams  was  hard  at  work  writing  against  the  Tories.' 

The  traits  of  Samuel  Adams  the  writer  are  easily  defined 
— for  they  are  likewise  the  traits  of  Samuel  Adams  the 
politician,  and  of  Samuel  Adams  the  man.  His  funda- 
mental rule  for  literary  warfare  was  this — "  Keep  your 
enemy  in  the  wrong."5  His  style,  then,  was  the  expres- 
sion of  his  intellectual  wariness, — a  wariness  like  that  of  the 
scout  or  the  bush-whacker,  who  knows  that  behind  any  tree 

1  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  i.  202-203.  *  Ibid.  447. 


12  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

may  lurk  his  deadly  foe,  that  a  false  step  may  be  his  ruin, 
that  a  badly-aimed  shot  may  make  it  impossible  for  him 
ever  to  shoot  again.  Jefferson,  who  first  became  aware  of 
the  intellectual  quality  of  Samuel  Adams  as  it  came  out  in 
the  debates  of  Congress,  long  afterward  described  him  as 
"  truly  a  great  man,  wise  in  council,  fertile  in  resources, 
immovable  in  his  purposes.  ...  As  a  speaker  he  could 
not  be  compared  with  his.  living  colleague  and  namesake, 
whose  deep  conceptions,  nervous  style,  and  undaunted 
firmness,  made  him  truly  our  bulwark  in  debate.  But  Mr. 
Samuel  Adams,  although  not  of  fluent  elocution,  was  so 
rigorously  logical,  so  clear  in  his  views,  abundant  in  good 
sense,  and  master  always  of  his  subject,  that  he  commanded 
the  most  profound  attention  whenever  he  rose  in  an  assem- 
bly by  which  the  froth  of  declamation  was  heard  with  the 
most  sovereign  contempt."  ' 

Whether  in  oral  or  in  written  speech,  his  characteristics 
were  the  same,  —  simplicil)  icuteness,  logical  power,  and 
strict  adaptation  £f__means  to  the  practical  end  in  view. 

was    for    pffor<-^-pwf»rytl-iing    was    for 


He  wrote  pure  English,  and  in  a  style  severe,  felicitous, 
pointed,  egigj^nmatic.  Careful  as  to  facts,  disdainful  of 
rhetorical  excesses,  especially  conscious  of  the  strategic  folly 
involved  in  mere  overstatement,  an  adept  at  implication  and 
at  the  insinuating  light  stroke,  he  had  never  anything  to 
take  back  or  to  apologize  for.  In  the  wearisome  fondness 
of  his  century  for  Greek  and  Roman  analogies,  he  shared  to 
the  full;  and  in  a  less  degree,  in  its  passion  for  the  tags  and 
gew-gaws  of  classical  quotation.  Of  course,  his  style  bears 
the  noble  impress  of  his  ceaseless  and  reverent  reading  of 
the  English  Bible.  To  a  mere  poet,  he  seldom  alludes. 
Among  secular  writers  of  modern  times,  his  days  and  nights 
were  given,  as  occasion  served,  to  Hooker,  Coke,  Grotius, 
Locke,  Sidney,  Vattel,  Montesquieu,  Blackstone,  and 
Hume. 


"The  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,"  H.  A.  Washington  ed., 


vii.  126. 


SAMUEL  ADAMS.  13 

VI. 

Perhaps  no  long  public  career  was  ever  more  perfectly 
self-consistent  than  his.  From  boyhood  to  old  age,  his 
master  principle  was  individualism.  As  an  undergraduate 
in  college,  having  occasion  to  choose  a  subject  for  a  public 
discussion,  he  revealed  the  bent  of  his  mind  by  taking  that 
of  "  Liberty."  In  1743,  for  his  master's  degree  at  Har- 
vard, he  wrote  a  Latin  thesis  on  the  affirmative  side  of  the 
question, — "  Whether  it  be  lawful  to  resist  the  Supreme 
Magistrate,  if  the  Commonwealth  cannot  be  otherwise 
preserved,"  8 — a  mettlesome  doctrine,  which,  as  his  latest 
biographer  has  graphically  said,  "  he  proceeded  to  discuss 
in  the  presence,  not  only  of  the  college  dignitaries,  but  of 
the  new  governor,  Shirley,  and  the  crown  officials,  who  sat 
in  state  near  the  young  speakers  at  commencement,  as  do 
their  successors  to-day.  .  .  .  No  one  knew  that  as  the 
young  man  spoke,  then,  for  the  first  time,  one  of  the  great 
Revolutionary  group  was  asserting  the  right  of  resistance 
by  the  people  to  arbitrary  oppressors.  Shirley  was  perhaps 
lost  in  some  far-away  dream  of  how  he  might  get  at  the 
French ;  and  when  thirty  years  after,  in  his  retirement  at 
Dorchester,  he  asked  who  the  Sam  Adams  could  be  that 
was  such  a  thorn  in  the  side  to  his  successors  Bernard  and 
Hutchinson,  he  was  quite  unconscious  of  the  fact  that  he 
himself  had  had  the  benefit,  close  at  hand,  of  the  first 
scratch."  : 

From  the  day  of  his  graduation  till  his  work  as  a  political 
writer  was  done,  he  did  but  play  variations  on  this  robust 
doctrine  and  its  corollaries.  Men  shall  be  talking  much  of 
liberty — no  one  more  than  he ;  but  what  is  liberty?  Broadly, 
it  is  a  something  which  distinguishes  "  a  society  of  wise  and 
reasonable  creatures  from  the  brutal  herd,  where  the  strong- 

1  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  i.  6. 

*  Ibid.  10.     "  An  supremo  Magistratui  resistere  liceat,  si  aliter  servari  Res- 
publica  nequit  ?     Affirmat  respondens  Samuel  Adams." 
3  Hosmer,  "  Samuel  Adams,"  17-18. 


I4  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

est  horns  are  the  strongest  laws."1  "  The  perfection  of 
liberty,  .  .  .  in  a  state  of  nature,  is  for  every  man  to 
be  free  from  any  external  force,  and  to  perform  such  actions 
as  in  his  own  mind  and  conscience  he  judges  to  be  rightest ; 
which  liberty  no  man  can  truly  possess  whose  mind  is 
enthralled  by  irregular  and  inordinate  passions, — since  it  is 
no  great  privilege  to  be  free  from  external  violence,  if  the 
dictates  of  the  mind  are  controlled  by  a  force  within  which 
exerts  itself  above  reason."  a  As  "  no  man's  life  is  his  own  in 
such  a  sense  as  that  he  may  wantonly  destroy  it  at  his  own 
pleasure,  or  submit  it  to  the  wanton  pleasure  of  another,  so 
neither  is  his  liberty."  *  "  But,  alas!  in  this  exalted  sense, 
liberty  is  rather  admired  in  the  world  than  truly  enjoyed. 
What  multitudes  of  persons  are  there  who  have  not  so 
much  as  the  shadow  of  it;  who  hold  their  property  and 
even  their  lives  by  no  other  tenure  than  the  sovereign  will 
of  a  tyrant,  and  he  often  the  worst  and  most  detestable  of 
men,  who,  to  gratify  the  least  humor  or  passion  in  his. 
nature,  does  not  scruple  to  massacre  them  by  thousands!  "* 
So,  too,  in  his  time,  men  shall  be  talking  much  of  loyalty 
— others,  perhaps,  much  more  than  he.  But  what  is  loy- 
alty ?  According  to  Samuel  Adams,  it  is  "  the  beauty  and 
perfection  of  a  well-constituted  state.  It  cannot,  indeed, 
subsist  in  an  arbitrary  government,  because  it  is  founded  in 
the  love  and  possession  of  liberty.  It  includes  in  it  a  thor- 
ough knowledge  of  our  constitution,  its  conveniences  and 
defects  as  well  as  its  real  advantages;  a  becoming  jealousy 
of  our  immunities,  and  a  steadfast  resolution  to  maintain 
them.  It  delights  in  the  quiet  and  thankful  enjoyment  of 
a  good  administration,  and  it  is  the  scourge  of  the  griping 
oppressor  and  haughty  invader  of  our  liberties."  5  "  Who- 
ever, therefore,  insinuates  notions  of  government  contrary 
to  the  constitution,  or  in  any  way  winks  at  any  measures 
to  suppress  or  even  to  weaken  it,  is  not  a  loyal  man." 

1  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  i.  19.     This  book  is  the  best  repository  we  have 
of  the  writings  of  Samuel  Adams. 

8  Ibid.  3  Ibid  4  Ibid   20  5  Ibid-  l6  e  Ibid<  1?t 


SAMUEL  ADAMS.  15 

"  Whoever  acquaints  us  that  we  have  no  right  to  examine 
into  the  conduct  of  those  who,  though  they  derive  their 
power  from  us  to  serve  the  common  interests,  make  use  of 
it  to  impoverish  and  ruin  us,  is,  in  a  degree,  a  rebel — to  the 
undoubted  rights  and  liberties  of  the  people."  ' 

These  definitions,  put  forth  by  Samuel  Adams  when  he 
was  but  twenty-six  years  of  age — seventeen  years  before  the 
Stamp  Act,  twenty-eight  years  before  the  Declaration  of 
Independence — mark  the  solidity  and  the  clarity  of  the 
foundation  which  he  thus  early  laid  for  that  system  of  stal- 
wart political  philosophy  which  he  was  to  continue  to  teach 
during  all  those  years  of  storm  and  stress  wherein  he 
served  as  the  inspirer  and  leader  of  his  people.  More- 
over, while  keeping  full  in  view  that  side  both  of  liberty 
and  of  loyalty  which  points  toward  rights,  he  did  not  for- 
get that  for  both  there  was  a  side  which  points  toward 
duties.  "  It  is  not  unfrequent,"  said  he,  "  to  hear  men 
declaim  loudly  upon  liberty,  who,  if  we  may  judge  by  the 
whole  tenor  of  their  actions,  mean  nothing  else  by  it  but 
their  own  liberty, — to  oppress,  without  control  or  the 
restraint  of  laws,  all  who  are  poorer  or  weaker  than  them- 
selves. "a  "  He  that  despises  his  neighbor's  happiness 
because  he  wears  a  worsted  cap  or  leather  apron,  he  that 
struts  immeasurably  above  the  lower  size  of  people,  and 
pretends  to  adjust  the  rights  of  men  by  the  distinctions  of 
fortune,  is  not  over  loyal."  Nor  did  Samuel  Adams,  like 
some  other  speculative  democrats  of  that  age,  content  him- 
self with  being  a  democrat  chiefly  in  theory :  his  theory  of 
democracy  was  also  the  gentle  and  faithful  practice  of  his 
life.  Not  only  were  the  lowliest  and  most  helpless  people 
made  to  feel  in  his  presence  that  they  were  his  brethren, 
but  no  man,  no  woman,  however  lowly  and  helpless,  could 
be  his  slave.  When  one  day,  a  full  decade  before  the  Dec- 
laration of  Independence,  his  wife  told  him  of  the  valuable 
present  of  a  slave-girl  she  had  just  received,  he  said  to  her: 

1  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  i.  17.  *  Ibid.  22.  3  Ibid.  17. 


1 6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  A  slave  cannot  live  in  my  house:  if  she  comes,  she  must 
be  free. ' ' '     And  free  she  was. 

VII. 

On  no  other  topic  of  the  Revolution  was  his  writing  more 
trenchant  or  more  characteristic,  than  on  that  of  the  due 
subordination  of  the  military  power, — a  topic  which  to 
Americans  became  peculiarly  interesting  about  the  time  of 
the  entrance  of  the  British  regiments  into  the  town  of  Bos- 
ton in  1768.  "  Military  power,"  said  he  at  that  time,  "  is 
by  no  means  calculated  to  convince  the  understandings  of 
men.  It  may  in  another  part  of  the  world  affright  women 
and  children,  and  perhaps  some  weak  men,  out  of  their 
senses,  but  will  never  awe  a  sensible  American  tamely  to 
surrender  his  liberty."  "  Are  we  a  garrisoned  town,  or 
are  we  not  ?  If  we  are,  let  us  know  by  whose  authority  and 
by  whose  influence  we  are  made  so.  If  not — and  I  take  it 
for  granted  we  are  not — let  us  then  assert  and  maintain  the 
honor,  the  dignity,  of  free  citizens,  and  place  the  military 
where  all  other  men  are,  and  where  they  ought  always  and 
will  be  placed  in  every  free  country, — at  the  foot  of  the  com- 
mon law  of  the  land !  To  submit  to  the  civil  magistrate  in 
the  legal  exercise  of  power,  is  forever  the  part  of  a  good  sub- 
ject ;  and  to  answer  the  watchmen  of  the  town  in  the  night, 
may  be  the  part  of  a  good  citizen,  as  well  as  to  afford  them 
all  necessary  countenance  and  support.  But  to  be  called  to 
account  by  a  common  soldier,  or  any  soldier,  is  a  badge  of 
slavery  which  none  but  a  slave  will  wear."  " 

In  1773,  in  view  o'f  the  colossal  blunders  in  statesmanship 
presented  by  the  farcical  and  galling  policy  of  the  British 
king  and  ministry,  he  wrote:  "  That  Great  Britain  should 
continue  to  insult  and  alienate  the  growing  millions  who 
inhabit  this  country,  on  whom  she  greatly  depends,  and  on 
whose  alliance  in  future  time  her  existence  as  a  nation  may 
be  suspended,  is  perhaps  as  glaring  an  instance  of  human 

1  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  i.  138.  2   Ibid.  233.  3  Ibid.  231. 


WILLIAM  LIVINGSTON.  \-j 

folly  as  ever  disgraced  politicians  or  put  common  sense  to 
the  blush."  '  In  1774,  in  the  midst  of  the  labors  of  the 
first  Continental  Congress,  he  published  these  words  of 
stern  meaning:  "  If  the  British  administration  and  govern- 
ment do  not  return  to  the  principles  of  moderation  and 
equity,  the  evil  which  they  profess  to  aim  at  preventing  by 
their  rigorous  measures,  will  the  sooner  be  brought  to  pass, 
namely,  the  entire  separation  and  independence  of  the  colo- 
nies."8 "  I  wish  for  a  permanent  union  with  the  mother 
country,  but  only  on  the  terms  of  liberty  and  truth.  No 
advantage  that  can  accrue  to  America  from  such  an  union, 
can  compensate  for  the  loss  of  liberty."  In  February, 
1776,  when,  in  his  opinion,  no  choice  was  left  to  Americans 
but  that  between  servitude  under  Great  Britain  and  separa- 
tion from  her,  he  wrote:  "  I  account  a  state  a  moral  person, 
having  an  interest  and  will  of  its  own;  and  I  think  that 
state  a  monster  whose  prime  mover  has  an  interest  and  will 
in  direct  opposition  to  its  prosperity  and  security."  * 

VIII. 

Another  example  of  the  American  statesman  who,  while 
weighted  with  the  responsibilities  of  political  leadership,  had 
also  the  aptitude  and  the  inclination  for  much  work  as  a 
writer  in  the  political  journals,  was  William  Livingston,  a 
member  of  the  Continental  Congress  from  1774  to  1776,  for 
a  short  time  in  the  latter  year  a  brigadier-general  in  com- 
mand of  the  militia  of  New  Jersey,  and  from  August,  1776, 
until  his  death  in  July,  1790,  governor  of  that  State  by 
repeated  choice  of  its  people.5  A  positive,  aggressive, 
rugged  man,  with  Scottish  fire  and  Scottish  tenacity,  a 
good  lover,  a  good  hater,  the  robustness  of  his  temper 
streaked  with  veins  of  humor,  imagination,  and  tender- 

1  Wells,  "  Life  of  S.  Adams,"  ii.  91.  *  Ibid.  149. 

3  Ibid.  *  Ibid.  363. 

5  Of  the  character  of  William  Livingston,  I  have  treated  more  fully  in  my 
"  History-  of  American  Literature  during  the  Colonial  Time,"  ii.  218-223,  where 
also  will  be  found  an  account  of  his  literary  work  prior  to  the  Revolution. 


1 8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

ness,  a  considerable  student  of  books,  a  poet,  an  orator,1 
an  essayist,  a  satirist,  he  was  noted  throughout  the  last 
seven  years  of  the  Revolutionary  period  for  the  gusty  vigor 
with  which  he  governed  his  little  commonwealth,  organized, 
sustained,  and  spurred  on  her  soldiers,  and  to  the  military 
warfare  against  the  enemy  added  a  most  vivacious  literary 
warfare — bombarding  them  through  the  newspapers  with 
intermittent  showers  of  shot  and  shell  in  the  form  of  argu- 
ments, anathemas,  jokes,  and  jeers.  To  have  a  rough  and 
ready  part  in  that  species  of  warfare,  was  indeed  an  old 
habit  and  passion  of  his  life ;  and  after  many  a  noisy  and 
smoky  word-battle  with  his  antagonists  in  the  later  colonial 
days,  it  was  quite  impossible  for  him  to  refrain  from  enter- 
ing, in  a  similar  manner,  into  the  more  deadly  disputes  of 
the  Revolution. 

Undoubtedly,  a  considerable  number  of  his  contributions  to 
the  Revolutionary  newspapers  are  now  wholly  beyond  identi- 
fication. In  "  The  Pennsylvania  Packet  "  for  February  i8» 
1777,  is  to  be  seen  a  well-certified  and  a  most  typical  speci- 
men of  his  work,  entitled  "  The  Impartial  Chronicle,  or  the 
Infallible  Intelligencer:  upon  the  Plan  and  after  the  Manner 
of  the  New  York  Mercury,"  "—the  same  being  a  droll  and 
an  effective  burlesque  on  the  alleged  imaginativeness  and 
mendacity  of  the  Loyalist,  Hugh  Gaine,  as  a  purveyor  of 
political  and  military  news.  In  December,  1777,  being  then 
in  need  of  a  literary  organ  within  his  own  dominions,  he  gave. 
his  powerful  aid  to  the  establishment  of  "  The  New  Jersey 
Gazette,"  conducted  by  Isaac  Collins;  and  under  his  favor- 
ite pseudonym  of  "  Hortensius,"  Livingston  wrote  for  this 
paper,  especially  during  the  first  year  of  its  existence,  some 
of  the  most  telling  articles  it  contained,3 — such  as  the  fol- 

1  In  1776,  as  governor  of  New  Jersey,  Livingston  addressed  the  legislature  of 
that  State  in  a  speech,  which  was  declared  by  John  Adams  to  be  "  the  most 
elegant  and  masterly  ever  made  in  America."     "  Letters  of  John  Adams,  Ad- 
dressed to  His  Wife,"  i.  168. 

2  Reprinted  in  1789  by  Mathew  Carey  in  "  The  American  Museum,"  v.  295- 
298  ;  371-374. 

8  T.  Sedgwick,  "  Life  of  Livingston,"  247-248. 


WILLIAM  LIVINGSTON.  19 

lowing:  "  On  the  Exchange  of  Burgoyne,"  '  "On  the 
Conquest  of  America,"  2  "  A  Satire  on  Sir  William  Howe,"  * 

To  his  Majesty  of  Great  Britain,"  *  "  Annotations  on  his 
most  gracious  Majesty's  .  .  .  most  gracious  Speech,"  5 
"  On  Lord  North's  Speech,"'  "  On  Reunion  with  Great 
Britain,"7  and  "  On  the  British  Commissioners."  No 
modern  reader  of  these  essays  is  likely  to  regard  Theodore 
Sedgwick's  praise  of  them  as  excessive  when  he  declares 
that,  "  combining  eloquent  appeals  to  the  patriotism  of  the 
colonists,  with  the  most  scoffing  ridicule  of  the  menaces  and 
denunciations  of  the  British,  they  by  turns  enlisted  every 
feeling  which  can  arm  the  breasts  of  individuals  or  nations 
against  vacillation  and  fear."  During  a  part  of  the  year 
1779,  this  tireless  disputant  lent  the  help  of  his  slashing  pen 
to  the  columns  of  "  The  United  States  Magazine,"  pub- 
lished at  Philadelphia  under  the  editorship  of  Hugh  Henry 
Brackenridge.10 

It  is  a  somewhat  droll  fact  that,  in  the  very  midst  of  these 
versatile  and  quickening  efforts  for  the  great  cause,  he  was 
suddenly  persuaded  to  desist  from  them  altogether,  in  con- 
sequence, it  is  sa;d,  of  open  objections  made  by  members  of 
the  New  Jersey  legislature, — they  deeming  it  an  indecorum 
for  their  chief-magistrate  to  be  a  partisan  scribbler  in  the 
newspapers.11  At  any  rate,  his  literary  services  to  the  Revo- 
lution had  such  vindication  as  could  be  furnished  by  the 
superabounding  hatred  of  himself  with  which  they  inspired 
the  enemy.  "  My  good  friends  in  New  York,"  he  said  in 
1778  in  a  letter  to  Henry  Laurens,  "  have  faithfully  prom- 
ised to  cut  my  throat  for  writing — which  they  seem  to  resent 
more  than  fighting."12  In  the  meantime,  however,  and 
until  his  good  friends  in  New  York  should  find  it  conve- 
nient to  accomplish  their  design  upon  him,  they  partially 
appeased  their  impatience  by  applying  to  him  such  flatter- 

I  Dec.  17,  1777.        8  Dec.  24,  1777.        3  Jan.  7,  i?7«-        4  Jan-  2I'  X778. 
6  Feb.  ii,  1778.       •  May  6,  1778.        7  Sept.  9,  1778.        8  Sept.  21,  1778. 
*  T.  Sedgwick,  "  Life  of  Livingston,"  249-  lo  Ibid-  327- 

II  Ibid.  327-328.  "  Ibid.  280-281. 


2O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

ing  terms  as  "  Spurious  Governor,"  "  Don  Quixote  of  the 
Jerseys,"  "  Despot-in-Chief  in  and  over  the  rising  State  of 
New  Jersey,"  "  Itinerant  Dey  of  New  Jersey,"  "  Knight 
of  the  most  honorable  Order  of  Starvation,  and  Chief  of  the 
Independents."  For  a  man  like  Livingston  to  be  seriously 
disturbed  by  such  missiles,  was  hardly  probable :  he  himself 
in  his  day  had  fabricated  and  flung  too  many  of  them.  As 
to  the  hope,  so  frankly  avowed  by  the  Loyalists,  of  wreak- 
ing physical  vengeance  upon  him,  it  was  not  in  Livingston's 
nature  to  refuse  to  them  a  reciprocation  of  the  same  cordial 
sentiment ;  for,  at  a  time  when  the  affairs  of  the  Loyalists  in 
New  York  seemed  tumbling  to  ruin,  he  indicated  his  point 
of  view  respecting  the  chief  of  them,  by  saying  in  a  letter  to 
Gouverneur  Morris:  "  If  Rivington  is  taken,  I  must  have 
one  of  his  ears ;  Governor  Clinton  is  entitled  to  the  other ; 
and  General  Washington,  if  he  pleases,  may  take  his  head."  * 

1  Sedgwick,  "  Life  of  Livingston,"  247.  2  Ibid. 


CHAPTER    XXV. 

JOHN  DICKINSON  AS    PENMAN    OF    THE    AMERICAN 
REVOLUTION. 

I. — John -Dickinson's  ancestry  and  education — His  early  entrance  into  politics  in 
Delaware  and  Pennsylvania — In  the  Stamp  Act  Congress — In  the  Conti- 
nental Congress— Odium  incurred  in  1776  by  his  opposition  to  American 
Independence — His  military  services — Is  driven  into  retirement — His 
return  to  Congress  in  1779 — Governor  of  Delaware  in  1781,  and  of  Penn- 
sylvania in  1782. 

II. — The  brilliant  talents  and  services  which  won  for  him  the  title  of  "  Penman 
of  the  American  Revolution  " — As  a  writer  of  state  papers — As  a  writer  of 
political  essays  for  the  newspapers  and  of  pamphlets,  from  1762  to  1775. 

III. — Having  in  Congress  opposed  the  resolution  for  Independence,  he  joins 
the  army  to  fight  against  the  British — Both  these  acts  entirely  consistent 
with  his  avowed  principles — By  nature  and  training  a  conservative  and  a 
peace-maker — His  hatred  of  violence  and  war — Believes  that  all  difficulties 
between  the  colonies  and  the  mother-country  could  be  settled  in  a  peaceful 
way — His  characteristic  method  in  controversy — He  uses  English  princi- 
ples with  which  to  fight  against  English  aggressions — His  claim  that  the 
American  opponents  of  the  ministry  are  the  true  champions  of  English 
constitutional  liberty — His  efforts  to  avert  war  and  revolution. 

IV. — The  blending  of  his  influence  as  a  political  writer  during  the  Revolution, 
with  his  influence  as  a  politician — In  1767  he  succeeds  James  Otis  as  our 
predominant  political  writer,  as  in  1776  he  is  succeeded  by  Thomas  Paine 
— The  great  decline  of  Dickinson's  influence  in  1776— Fitted  to  lead  in  a 
constitutional  controversy,  but  not  in  a  revolutionary  one — His  method, 
also,  too  gentle  for  the  later  stage  of  the  Revolution — He  is  regarded  with 
contempt  by  more  robust  politicians — The  injustice  then  done  to  his 
talents  and  character. 

I. 

THE  year  1765,  which  is  marked  by  the  first  contiibu- 
tions  of  John  Dickinson  to  the  literature  of  the  American 
Revolution,  presents  him  to  us  as  an  accomplished  yrung 
barrister  of  Philadelphia,  already  noted  for  his  large  reading 


22  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

in  history  and  politics,1  already  noted  for  the  purity  and 
brilliance  of  his  English  style.  He  was  born  in  1732,  on 
the  eastern  shore  of  Maryland,  at  Crosia-Dore, — an  estate 
which  even  then  for  nearly  a  century  had  been  the  seat  of 
the  Dickinson  family,  as  it  still  is  after  the  lapse  of  a  second 
century  and  more  than  the  half  of  a  third.  Having  been 
carefully  educated  by  private  tutors  at  home,  he  read  law 
for  three  years  in  the  office  of  John  Moland  of  Philadelphia. 
In  1753,  he  was  entered  of  the  Middle  Temple,  London, 
where  he  resided  for  three  years,  having  for  fellow-students 
Edward  Thurlowe,  Lloyd  Kenyon,  and  William  Cowper. 
In  1760,  he  began  his  political  career  by  taking  a  seat 
as  member  of  the  assembly  of  Delaware.  In  1762,  accord- 
ing to  a  usage  then  not  uncommon,  he  was  transferred  to 
the  assembly  of  Pennsylvania ;  and  in  that  body  he  served 
with  great  distinction  until  1765,  and  again  from  1770 
until  the  expiration  of  the  colonial  government  in  1776. 
Moreover,  in  1765  he  represented  Pennsylvania  in  the 
Stamp  Act  Congress,  as  he  did  also  in  the  several  sessions 
of  the  Continental  Congress  from  1774  until  some  time  in 
July,  1776.  Having,  by  his  opposition  to  the  proposal  for 
American  Independence,  incurred  the  deep  dislike  and  dis- 
trust of  the  more  radical  members  of  the  party  to  which  he 
belonged,  he  left  his  seat  in  Congress  in  order  to  take  com- 
mand of  a  brigade  of  Pennsylvania  troops  called  out  to 
aid  in  resisting  the  threatened  attack  of  the  British  upon 
New  York;  and  on  the  tenth  of  August,  from  his  camp  at 
Elizabethtown,  New  Jersey,  he  thus  wrote  to  his  friend, 
Charles  Thomson,  secretary  of  Congress:  "  The  enemy  are 
moving,  and  an  attack  on  New  York  is  quickly  expected. 
As  for  myself,  I  can  form  no  idea  of  a  more  noble  fate  than, 
after  being  the  constant  advocate  for  and  promoter  of  every 
measure  that  could  possibly  lead  to  peace  or  prevent  her 

1  William  Rawle,  the  elder,  wrote  of  Dickinson  :  "  His  law  knowledge  was 
respectable,  although  not  remarkably  extensive,  for  his  attention  was  directed 
to  historical  and  political  studies."  Charles  Janeway  Stille,  "The  Life  and 
Times  of  John  Dickinson,"  37. 


JOHN  DICKINSON.  2$ 

return  from  being  barred  up;  after  cheerfully  and  delib- 
erately sacrificing  my  popularity  and  all  the  emoluments  I 
might  certainly  have  derived  from  it,  to  principle;  after 
suffering  all  the  indignities  that  my  countrymen  now  bear- 
ing rule  are  inclined,  if  they  could,  so  plentifully  to  shower 
down  upon  my  innocent  head, — than  willingly  to  resign  my 
life,  if  Divine  Providence  shall  please  so  to  dispose  of  me, 
for  the  defense  and  happiness  of  those  unkind  countrymen 
whom  I  cannot  forbear  to  esteem  as  fellow-citizens,  amidst 
their  fury  against  me." 

Notwithstanding  the  lofty  principle  upon  which  he  thus 
acted,  and  the  nobility  of  his  devotion  to  the  safety  of  his 
imperiled  countrymen,  he  was  pursued,  even  into  the  field 
of  battle,  by  the  enmity  of  his  late  associates,  unable,  as  is 
apt  to  be  the  case  with  all  revolutionary  associates,  to  par- 
don the  man  who,  having  gone  with  them  a  part  of  the 
way,  hesitated  to  go  with  them  the  whole  of  it.  "I  had 
not  been  ten  days  in  camp  at  Elizabethtown,"  he  wrote, 
<<  when  I  was  by  my  persecutors  turned  out  of  Congress. 
While  I  was  exposing  my  person  to  every  hazard,  and  lodg- 
ing every  night  within  half  a  mile  of  the  enemy,  the  mem- 
bers of  the  convention  at  Philadelphia,  resting  in  quiet  and 
safety,  ignominiously  voted  me,  as  unworthy  of  my  seat, 
out  of  the  national  senate."8  By  a  studied  insult,  like- 
wise, he  was  driven  soon  afterward  to  resign  his  commission 
in  the  army.3  Upon  his  return  to  Pennsylvania,  he  served 
for  a  short  time  in  its  legislature,  and  then  withdrew  to  an 
estate  of  his  in  Delaware,  resolved  to  retire  for  awhile  from 
all  participation  in  politics,  but  to  volunteer  as  a  private 
soldier  at  the  next  call  for  troops.4  In  this  capacity  he  car- 
ried a  musket  in  the  battle  of  Brandy  wine.6  In  May,  i/79> 
he  appeared  once  more  in  Congress,  but  as  a  member  from 
Delaware,  serving,  however,  only  until  the  autumn  of  that 
year.  In  1781,  he  was  made  governor  of  Delaware.  In 
1782,  he  was  made  governor  of  Pennsylvania,  and  as  such 

1  Stille,  "  Life  of  Dickinson,"  202-203.  s  Ibid.  206. 

3  Ibid.  4  Ibid.  209.  5  Ibid.  214. 


24  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

was  serving  the  commonwealth  at  the  close  of  the  Revo- 
lution.1 

II. 

This  is  the  man  who,  being  thus  occupied  during  all  those 
years  by  great  practical  employments  in  peace  and  war,  yet 
had  such  productiveness  in  literary  labor  and  so  exquisite  a 
genius  as  to  win  for  himself  the  title  of  "  Penman  of  the 
American  Revolution."  By  the  author  of  a  recent  sketch 
of  his  life,  he  has  been  described  as  "  the  great  colonial 
essayist."2  By  the  editor  of  the  latest  edition  of  his 
writings,  it  has  been  claimed  for  him  that,  in  the  literature 
of  the  Revolution,  he  is  "  as  preeminent  as  Washington  in 
war,  Franklin  in  diplomacy,  and  Morris  in  finance."  3 

No  other  man  in  those  days  had  a  finer  gift  for  putting 
into  form — into  luminous,  urbane,  and  stately  form — the 
constitutional  and  political  principles  on  which,  in  his  opin- 
ion, the  American  opposition  to  the  British  ministry  was  to 
be  conducted;  and,  prior  to  the  middle  of  1776,  no  other 
man  was  so  much  employed  by  the  several  public  bodies 
with  which  he  was  connected,  in  giving  expression  to  those 
principles  in  the  great  state  papers  of  the  time.  It  was  he 
who,  in  1765,  drafted  the  "  Resolutions  in  relation  to  the 
Stamp  Act,"  adopted  by  the  assembly  of  Pennsylvania,  as 
well  as  the  "  Declaration  of  Rights,"  and  the  "  Petition  to 
the  King,"  adopted  by  the  Stamp  Act  Congress.  It  was 
he  who,  in  July,  1774,  wrote  the  "  Resolves  "  promulgated 
by  the  convention  of  Pennsylvania;  also,  their  "  Instruc- 
tions to  the  Representatives  in  Assembly,"  and  their  elab- 
orate "  Essay  on  the  Constitutional  Power  of  Great  Britain 
over  the  Colonies  in  America."  It  was  he  who,  in  Octo- 

1  Both  in  Delaware  and  in  Pennsylvania,  the  governor  was  then  entitled 
president  of  the  supreme  executive  council. 

s  Wharton  Dickinson,  in  "  The  Magazine  of  American  History,"  x.  223. 

3  Paul  Leicester  Ford,  "The  Writings  of  John  Dickinson,"  i.  Preface  ix. 
This  edition,  which  is  to  be  included  among  the  issues  of  the  Historical  Society 
of  Pennsylvania,  is  still  in  process  of  publication. 


JOHN  DICKINSON.  2$ 

ber,  1774,  wrote  the  "  Address  of  Congress  to  the  Inhabi- 
tants of  the  Province  of  Quebec  "  and  the  first "  Petition  of 
Congress  to  the  King's  Most  Excellent  Majesty."  It  was 
he  who,  in  the  early  summer  of  1775,  wrote  the  second 

Petition  of  Congress  to  the  King's  Most  Excellent 
Majesty,"  as  well  as  "  The  Declaration  by  the  Representa- 
tives of  the  United  Colonies  of  North  America,  now  met  in 
Congress  at  Philadelphia,  setting  forth  the  Causes  and 
Necessity  of  their  taking  up  Arms."  J  It  was  he  who,  in 
November,  1775,  and  again  in  June,  1776,  wrote  the 

Instructions  "  of  Pennsylvania  to  its  representatives  in 
Congress;  who,  in  July,  1776,  wrote  the  "  Revision  of  the 
Bill  of  Rights  "  for  the  State  of  Pennsylvania;  who,  at 
about  the  same  time,  wrote  the  first  draft  of  the  "  Articles 
of  Confederation,"  as  then  submitted  to  Congress;  who, 
finally,  in  May,  1779,  wrote  the  "  Address  of  Congress  to 
the  Several  States  on  the  Present  Situation  of  Affairs." 

But  besides  these  imposing  official  expressions  of  the 
argument  and  sentiment  of  the  American  Revolution,  John 
Dickinson  likewise  gave  a  more  personal  utterance  to  them, 
in  almost  innumerable  ways,  through  the  public  press. 
During  a  period  reaching  back  to  at  least  three  years  prior 
to  the  Stamp  Act,  and  reaching  forward  to  at  least  one 
year  subsequent  to  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  he 
was  an  almost  constant  writer  of  political  essays  for  the 
newspapers,  of  broadsides,  and  of  other  fugitive  produc- 
tions,1 the  most  of  which,  as  he  probably  intended  they 

1  The  authorship  of  this  powerful  and  noble  paper  has  been  somewhat  in 
doubt,  partly  in  consequence  of  the  conflicting  claims  of  Jefferson  and  Dickin- 
son. The  claim  of  Dickinson  has,  however,  in  recent  years,  been  placed  be- 
yond question  by  George  Henry  Moore,  an  abstract  of  whose  paper  on  the 
subject  may  be  found  in  "  The  Magazine  of  American  History,"  viii.  514-516. 
More  adequate  quotations  from  it  are  given  by  Stille,  "  Life  of  Dickinson," 
Appendix  iv.  353-364.  The  paper  itself  was  printed  in  New  York,  1890,  and  is 
entitled  "John  Dickinson,  The  Author  of  the  Declaration  on  taking  up  arms 
in  1775."  Also,  "Jefferson's  Writings,"  P.  L.  Ford  ed.,  i.  Introd.  xxiv.  ;  and 
462-482. 

*  This,  in  substance,  seems  to  be  the  opinion  of  the  one  man  who,  by  his 


26  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

should  be,  are  now  quite  beyond  the  possibility  of  recogni- 
tion. A  mere  glance  at  the  list  of  his  miscellaneous  writ- 
ings upon  Revolutionary  topics — so  far  as  those  writings  are 
known  to  us — can  hardly  fail  to  give  the  reader  a  lively  im- 
pression of  the  literary  energy  and  versatility  of  the  man, 
and  of  the  vastness  of  the  work  he  did  during  those  tremen- 
dous years,  in  molding  the  opinions  of  his  countrymen, 
and  in  conveying  impulse  and  direction  to  events  which 
have  since  acquired  a  world-wide  celebrity  and  influence. 
Thus,  in  November,1  1765,  he  issued,  as  a  broadside,  a 
stirring  "  Address  to  Friends  and  Countrymen  on  the  Stamp 
Act";  and  this  he  reenforced  by  publishing  in  the  follow- 
ing month  a  plausible  and  strong  pamphlet,  entitled  "  The 
Late  Regulations  respecting  the  British  Colonies  Consid- 
ered." In  1766,  under  the  signature  of  "  A  North  Ameri- 
can," he  published  "  An  Address  to  the  Committee  of 
Correspondence  in  Barbadoes," — a  paper  bearing  upon  its 
title-page  a  sarcastic  motto  adapted,  rather  than  precisely 
quoted,  from  Shakespeare  ' : 

"  This  word  rebellion  hath  froze  them  up, 
Like  fish  in  a  pond." 

On  the  second  of  December,  1767,  in  "  The  Pennsylvania 
Chronicle,"  he  began  the  publication  of  a  series  of  essays, 
which  soon  attained  to  a  greater  reputation,  on  both  sides 
of  the  Atlantic,  than  had  been  reached  by  any  previous 
production  in  American  literature, — the  "  Letters  from  a 
Farmer  in  Pennsylvania,"  twelve  in  number,  the  last  one 
appearing  on  the  fifteenth  of  February,  1768."  In  April  of 

special  studies,  is  the  most  competent  to  give  an  opinion  on  the  subject,— Mr. 
Paul  Leicester  Ford,  to  whose  industry  in  research  and  to  whose  critical  acumen 
we  are  indebted  for  the  identification  of  a  number  of  John  Dickinson's  writings 
hitherto  unknown.  "  The  Writings  of  John  Dickinson,"  i.  Pref.  xi. 

1  The  exact  date  is  somewhat  in  doubt :  the  one  here  given  is  approximately 
correct. 

•  Second  Part  of  King  Henry  IV.,  i.  i.  This  use  among  us  of  the  word 
rebellion. so  early  as  the  year  1766,  is  notable. 

1  A  somewhat  extended  account  of  the  "  Farmer's  Letters  "  and  of  their  im- 
portant effects,  is  given  in  chapter  X.  of  this  work. 


JOHN  DICKINSON.  2/ 

that  year,  he  published  at  Philadelphia  "  An  Address  read 
at  a  Meeting  of  Merchants  to  consider  Non-Importation," 
— an  appeal  which  three  months  later  he  supplemented  by  a 
"  Letter  "  to  the  same  merchants  on  the  same  subject.  In 
July,  1768,  he  published  "  A  Song  for  American  Freedom," 
— a  rather  clumsy  hymn  of  patriotic  duty  and  enthusiasm, 
which,  however,  so  perfectly  fitted  the  needs  and~tKe~7n-eeds_ 
of  the  friends  of  the  Revolution  that,  in  spite  of  its  lack  of 
poetic  merit,  it  became,  in  all  parts  of  the  land,  and  down 
to  the  outbreak  of  hostilities,  the  most  popular  lyric  pro- 
duced among  us  during  that  period.  In  November,  1773, 
he  published  "  Two  Letters  on  the  Tea-Tax."  In  May, 
1774,  he  published  "  Letters  to  the  Inhabitants  of  the  Brit- 
ish Colonies" — these  letters  being  four  in  number.  In 
December,  1775,  he  published  a  "  Speech  to  the  Assembly 
of  New  Jersey."  In  July,  1776,  he  published  "  An  Essay 
for  a  Frame  of  Government  in  Pennsylvania."  l 


III. 


To  him  who  now  reads  that  John  Dickinson,  having 
opposed  in  Congress  the  resolution  for  American  Independ- 
ence, immediately  thereafter  left  that  body  in  order  to  lead 
a  brigade  of  American  troops  against  the  British,  it  will 
probably  seem  either  that  he  had  somewhat  too  suddenly 
repented  of  his  opposition  to  Independence,  or  else  that  he 
was  guilty  of  conduct  inconsistent  with  his  principles. 
Neither  inference  would  be  correct.  In  truth,  his  conduct 
throughout  that  particular  emergency  was  in  perfect  accord 
with  all  his  political  teachings,  which  involved,  especially, 
these  two  principles: — first,  that  it  was  the  ancient  and 
manly  method  of  loyal  Englishmen,  in  cases  of  extreme 
danger,  to  make  demand  for  political  rights  with  arms  in 

1  In  1801,  at  Wilmington,  Delaware,  was  published  in  two  volumes,  "  The 
Political  Writings  of  John  Dickinson,  Esq." 


28  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

their  hands,  and  even  embodied  in  military  array  against  the 
king's  troops;  and,  secondly,  that  every  citizen,  having  said 
and  done  his  best  to  secure  the  prevalence  of  his  own  view, 
was  bound  to  submit  himself  to  the  decision  of  the  com- 
munity to  which  he  belonged,  and  help  to  carry  it  out. 
Indeed,  no  other  American  who  finally  supported  the 
American  Revolution  in  its  ultimate  issue — that  of  secession 
from  the  empire — exhibited,  from  first  to  last,  a  more  per- 
fect familiarity,  or  a  more  perfect  sympathy,  with  the  great 
historic  precedents  set  by  the  English  people  in  the  man- 
agement of  fundamental  controversies  between  subjects  and 
their  sovereign. 

Both  by  nature  and  by  culture,  John  Dickinson  was  a 
conservative,  having  an  uncommon  horror  of  all  changes 
that  violated  the  sequences  of  established  law.  His  philos- 
ophy of  politics  was  practical,  rather  than  merely  specula- 
tive: it  was  the  product  of  an  orderly  and  peace-loving 
mind,  revering  the  dignity  of  human  nature,  familiar  with 
political  history,  trained  to  the  solution  of  legal  problems 
by  the  maxims  and  methods  of  English  law,  and  convinced 
that  every  dispute  between  man  and  man  could  better  be 
settled  by  reason  and  by  good  humor,  than  by  brute  fury 
and  brute  force.  In  the  alarming  differences  which  had 
arisen  between  the  American  portion  of  the  British  empire 
and  the  sovereign  power,  he  saw  no  difficulties  which  could 
not  under  such  treatment  be  happily  adjusted,  if,  indeed, 
both  parties  to  the  controversy  sincerely  desired  them  to  be 
so  adjusted.  Accordingly,  in  all  his  writings,  whether  offi- 
cial or  personal,  his  endeavor  was  to  place  the  American 
claim  on  historic  constitutional  grounds — such  as  English- 
men at  home  must  respect ;  to  persuade  all  Americans,  in 
the  assertion  of  their  rights,  to  be  fearless  and  firm,  as  their 
English  ancestors  had  always  been  under  similar  circum- 
stances; to  persuade  both  Americans  and  Englishmen  that 
they  were  alike  interested  in  a  wise,  just,  and  lasting  settle- 
ment of  this  great  dispute,  and  that,  in  its  discussion,  the 
exercise  of  amenity  and  of  good  humor  would  be  of  the 


JOHN  DICKINSON.  29 

greatest  use.  Always  he  prefers  to  fight  English  oppres- 
sion by  English  principles  against  oppression;  to  shew  to 
the  people  of  England,  that  it  was  their  own  rulers,  and 
not  the  Americans,  who  were  violating  the  constitution; 
and  that  the  demands  of  the  Americans,  so  far  from  being 
the  spawn  of  a  factious  or  revolutionary  temper,  were 
derived  immediately  from  "  the  records,  statutes,  law- 
books,  and  most  approved  writers  of  our  mother-country — 
those  '  dead  but  most  faithful  counselors  '  (as  Sir  Edward 
Coke  calls  them)  '  who  cannot  be  daunted  by  fear,  nor  muz- 
zled by  affection,  reward,  or  hope  of  preferment,  and  there- 
fore may  safely  be  believed.'"1  "We  well  know,"  he 
wrote  in  1774,  "  that  the  colonists  are  charged  by  many  per- 
sons in  Great  Britain,  with  attempting  to  obtain  .  .  . 
a  total  Independence  on  her.  As  well  we  know  the  accusa- 
tion to  be  utterly  false.  .  .*»ac  i  NOLUMBUS  LEGES 
ANGLIC  MUTARI.  This  is  the  rebellion  with  which  we 
are  stigmatized.  We  have  committed  the  like  offense,  that 
was  objected  by  the  polite  and  humane  Fimbria  against  a 
rude  senator  of  his  time :  we  have  '  disrespectfully  refused 
to  receive  the  whole  weapon  into  our  body.'  We  could  not 
do  it,  and — live;  but  that  must  be  acknowledged  to  be  a 
poor  excuse,  equally  inconsistent  with  good  breeding  and 
the  supreme  legislature  of  Great  Britain.  For  these  ten 
years  past,  we  have  been  incessantly  attacked.  Hard  is  our 
fate,  when,  to  escape  the  character  of  rebels,  we  must  be 
degraded  into  that  of  slaves;  as  if  there  was  no  medium 
between  the  two  extremes  of  anarchy  and  despotism,  where 
innocence  and  freedom  could  find  repose  and  safety.  Why 
should  we  be  exhibited  to  mankind  as  a  people  adjudged 
by  parliament  unworthy  of  freedom  ?  The  thought  alone 
is  insupportable.  Even  those  unhappy  persons,  who  have 
had  the  misfortune  of  being  born  under  the  yoke  of  bond- 
age ...  no  sooner  breathe  the  air  of  England,  though 
they  touch  her  shore  only  by  accident,  than  they  instantly 

1  "  The  Political  Writings  of  John  Dickinson,"  P.  L.  Ford  ed.,  ii.  41. 


JO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

become  freemen.  Strange  contradiction !  The  same  king- 
dom, at  the  same  time,  the  asylum  and  the  bane  of  liberty ! 
"  To  return  to  the  charge  against  us,  we  can  safely 
appeal  to  that  Being,  from  whom  no  thought  can  be  con- 
cealed, that  our  warmest  wish  and  utmost  ambition  is,  that 
we  and  our  posterity  may  ever  remain  subordinate  to,  and  de- 
pendent upon,  our  parent  state.1  This  submission  our  reason 
approves,  our  affection  dictates,  our  duty  commands,  and  our 
interest  enforces.  If  this  submission,  indeed,  implies  a  disso- 
lution of  our  constitution,  and  a  renunciation  of  our  liberty, 
we  should  be  unworthy  of  our  relation  to  her,  if  we  should 
not  frankly  declare,  that  we  regard  it  with  horror ;  and  every 
true  Englishman  will  applaud  this  just  distinction,  and  can- 
did declaration.  Our  defense  necessarily  touches  chords  in 
unison  with  the  fibres  of  his  honest  heart.  They  must 
vibrate  in  sympathetic  tones.  If  we,  his  kindred,  should  be 
base  enough  to  promise  the  humiliating  subjection,  he  could 
not  believe  us.  We  should  suffer  all  the  infamy  of  the 
engagement,  without  finding  the  benefit  expected  from 
being  thought  as  contemptible  as  we  should  undertake 
to  be. 

But  this  submission  implies  not  such  insupportable 
evils;  and  our  amazement  is  inexpressible,  when  we  con- 
sider the  gradual  increase  of  these  colonies  from  their  small 
beginnings  in  the  last  century  to  their  late  flourishing  con- 
dition, and  how  prodigiously,  since  their  settlement,  our 
parent  state  has  advanced  in  wealth,  force,  and  influence, 
till  she  has  become  the  first  power  on  the  sea,  and  the  envy 
of  the  world, — that  these  our  better  days  should  not  strike 
conviction  into  every  mind,  that  the  freedom  and  happiness 
of  the  colonists  are  not  inconsistent  with  her  authority  and 
prosperity.  .  .  .  What  unknown  offenses  have  we 
committed  against  her  within  these  ten  years,  to  provoke 
such  an  unexampled  change  in  her  conduct  towards  us  ? 
In  the  last  war,  she  acknowledged  us  repeatedly  to  be  faith- 

1  This  avowal  was  made  by  Dickinson,  and  officially  promulgated  by  the 
Convention  of  Pennsylvania,  in  July,  1774. 


JOHN  DICKINSON.  3! 

fui,  dutiful,  zealous,  and  useful  in  her  cause.  Is  it  criminal 
in  us  that  our  numbers,  by  the  favor  of  Divine  Providence, 
have  greatly  increased  ?  That  the  poor  choose  to  fly  from 
their  native  countries  in  Europe  to  this  continent  ?  Or, 
that  we  have  so  much  improved  these  woods,  that  if  we  can 
be  forced  into  an  unsuccessful  resistance,  avarice  itself  might 
be  satiated  with  our  forfeitures  ? 

"  It  cannot  with  truth  be  urged  that  projects  of  innova- 
tion have  commenced  with  us.  Facts  and  their  dates  prove 
the  contrary.  Not  a  disturbance  has  happened  on  any  part 
of  this  continent,  but  in  consequence  of  some  immediately 
preceding  provocation.  .  .  .  Our  highest  pride  and 
glory  has  been,  with  humble  and  unsuspecting  duty  to  labor 
in  contributing  to  elevate  her  to  that  exalted  station  she 
holds  among  the  nations  of  the  earth,  and  which,  we  still 
ardently  desire  and  pray,  she  may  hold,  with  fresh  acces- 
sions of  fame  and  prosperity,  till  time  shall  be  no  more. 

"  These  being  our  sentiments,  and,  we  are  fully  con- 
vinced, the  sentiments  of  our  brethren  throughout  the  colo- 
nies, with  unspeakable  affliction  we  find  ourselves  obliged 
to  oppose  that  system  of  dominion  over  us,  arising  from 
counsels  pernicious  both  to  our  parent  and  to  her  children ; 
to  strive,  if  it  be  possible,  to  close  the  breaches  made  in  our 
former  concord,  and  stop  the  sources  of  future  animosities. 
And  may  God  Almighty,  who  delights  in  the  titles  of  just 
and  meciful,  incline  the  hearts  of  all  parties  to  that  equitable 
and  benevolent  temper,  which  is  necessary  solidly  to  estab- 
lish peace  and  harmony,  in  the  place  of  confusion  and 
dissension."  * 

IV. 

If  we  attempt  to  estimate  the  practical  effects  of  John 
Dickinson's  work  as  a  political  writer  during  the  American 
Revolution,  we  shall  find  it  not  easy  to  disentangle  and  to 
separate  them  from  the  practical  effects  of  his  work  as  a 

1  "  The  Political  Writings  of  John  Dickinson,"  P.  L.  Ford  ed.,  ii.  48-5?- 


32  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

politician.  The  two  lines  of  power  were  closely  inter- 
woven :  each,  in  the  main,  helped  the  other,  as  each  was 
liable,  in  its  turn,  to  be  hindered  by  the  other.  At  any 
rate,  just  as  the  politico-literary  influence  of  James  Otis 
was,  upon  the  whole,  predominant  in  America  from  1764 
until  1/67,  so,  from  the  latter  date  until  some  months  after 
the  outbreak  of  hostilities  in  1775,  was  the  politico-literary 
influence  of  John  Dickinson  predominant  here.  Moreover, 
as  he  succeeded  to  James  Otis  in  the  development  of  Revo- 
lutionary thought,  so  was  he,  at  last,  succeeded  by  Thomas 
Paine,  who  held  sway  among  us,  as  the  chief  writer  of  polit- 
ical essays,  from  the  early  part  of  1776  until  the  close  of  the 
Revolution  itself. 

The  prodigious  decline  in  the  influence  of  John  Dickin- 
son, at  the  approach  of  the  issue  of  Independence,  is  a 
thing  not  hard  to  explain :  it  was  due  in  part  to  his  per- 
sonal characteristics,  in  part  to  the  nature  of  his  opin- 
ions. From  the  beginning  of  the  troubles  until  some 
months  after  the  first  shedding  of  blood,  in  1775,  public 
opinion  in  America  had  set  strongly  in  favor  of  making 
demand — even  armed  demand — for  our  political  rights,  but 
without  any  rupture  of  the  colonial  tie.  It  was,  therefore, 
a  period  calling  for  clear  and  resolute  statements  of  our 
claims,  but  with  loyalty,  urbanity,  and  tact.  To  be  the 
chief  literary  exponent  of  such  a  period,  John  Dickinson 
was  in  every  way  fitted  by  talent,  by  temperament,  by 
training.  A  man  of  wealth,  cultivation,  and  elegant  sur- 
roundings, practically  versed  in  the  law  and  in  politics,  con- 
siderate, cautious,  disinclined  to  violent  measures  and  to 
stormy  scenes,  actuated  by  a  passion  for  the  unity  and 
greatness  of  the  English  race  and  for  peace  among  all  men, 
it  was  his  sincere  desire  that  the  dispute  with  the  mother 
country  should  be  so  conducted  as  to  end,  at  last,  in  the 
perfect  establishment  of  American  constitutional  rights 
within  the  empire,  but  without  any  hurt  or  dishonor  to 
England,  and  without  any  permanent  failure  in  respect  and 
kindness  between  her  and  ourselves. 


JOHN  DICKINSON.  33 

Nevertheless,  in  1775,  events  occurred  which  gave  a 
different  aspect  to  the  whole  dispute,  and  swept  an  appar- 
ent majority  of  the  American  people  quite  beyond  the 
sphere  of  such  ideas  and  methods.  John  Dickinson's  con- 
cession to  parliament  of  a  legislative  authority  over  us,  even 
to  a  limited  extent,  was  roughly  discarded ;  instead  of  which 
was  enthroned  among  us  the  unhistoric  and  makeshift  doc- 
trine that  American  allegiance  was  due  not  at  all  to  parlia- 
ment, but  to  the  crown  only.  Moreover,  the  moderation  of 
tone,  the  urbane  speech,  the  civility  in  conduct,  exemplified 
by  Dickinson  in  all  this  dispute  with  England,  then  became 
an  anachronism  and  an  offense.  We  were  plunged  at  last 
into  civil  war — we  had  actually  reached  the  stage  of  revolu- 
tion ;  and  the  robust  men  who  then  ruled  the  scene,  being 
of  opinion  that  revolutions  are  apt  to  take  place  in  some 
disregard  of  urbanity,  and  that  civil  wars  have  a  peculiar 
tendency  to  give  prominence  to  whatever  is  uncivil,  were 
disposed,  with  no  little  contempt,  to  brush  aside  the  moder- 
ate, conservative,  and  courteous  Dickinson,  who,  either  for 
advice  or  for  conduct,  seemed  to  them  to  have  no  further 
function  to  perform  in  the  American  world.  His  "  Farmer's 
Letters  "  were  declared  by  Jefferson  to  have  been  "  really 
an  '  ignis  fatuus, '  misleading  us  from  true  principles." 
Even  Edward  Rutledge,  who,  in  June,  1776,  agreed  with 
Dickinson  in  his  opposition  to  the  plan  for  Independence, 
nevertheless  expressed  some  impatience  with  his  intellectual 
fastidiousness  and  nicety, — declaring  that  the  "  vice  of  all 
his  productions,  to  a  considerable  degree, "  was  "  the  vice 
of  refining  too  much."1  Of  course,  to  an  impetuous  and 
blustering  man  of  affairs  like  John  Adams,  such  a  political 
theorist  as  John  Dickinson,  with  his  qualms  and  his  scruples 
and  his  splitting  of  hairs,  could  have  seemed  but  a  "  piddling 

1  "The  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,"  H.  A.  Washington  ed.,  vi.  486. 
Though  the  words  cited  in  the  text  were  written  by  Jefferson  as  late  as  in  1815, 
they  evidently  represent  the  opinions  held  by  him  in  1776. 

*  "  The  Correspondence  and  Public  Papers  of  John  Jay,"  H.  P.  Johnston 
ed.,  i.  67. 

VOL.    H. — 3 


34  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

genius,"  who,  for  a  whole  year  before  the  proclamation 
of  American  Independence,  had  been  giving  "  a  silly  cast 
to  our  whole  doings."  '  This  celebrated  sneer  of  John 
Adams's,  which  occurs  in  a  letter  of  his  written  from 
Philadelphia  in  July,  1775,  was  followed,  in  April,  1777,  by 
an  allusion  to  the  same  person,  by  the  same  letter-writer, 
implying  that,  as  he  thought,  the  public  had  in  the  mean- 
time come  over  to  his  contemptuous  opinion  of  Dickinson : 
"  The  Farmer  turns  out  to  be  the  man  that  I  have  seen 
him  to  be  these  two  years.  He  is  in  total  neglect  and  dis- 
grace here.  I  am  sorry  for  it,  because  of  the  forward  part 
he  took  in  the  beginning  of  the  controversy.  But  there  is 
certainly  such  a  thing  as  falling  away  in  politics,  if  there  is. 
none  in  grace."  * 

In  the  close  quarters  and  heated  air  of  the  actual  conflict, 
John  Dickinson,  it  may  be,  could  hardly  have  expected  to 
receive  appreciation,  forbearance,  or  even  simple  justice, 
from  his  angry  political  associates,  then  playing  a  desperate 
game  which,  for  many  of  them,  meant  either  success  or  the 
scaffold.  It  will  be  the  privilege  of  Time  through  her 
mouthpiece,  History,  to  temper  somewhat  the  harsh  esti- 
mates which  prevailed  during  the  later  portion  of  his  life, 
respecting  this  able,  brilliant,  and  noble-minded  man. 

1  "  Letters  of  John  Adams,  Addressed  to  his  Wife,"  i.  268,  Appendix.  This 
letter  was  addressed  to  James  Warren  of  Plymouth  ;  was  intercepted  and  pub- 
lished by  the  enemy  ;  and  for  a  time  brought  considerable  disrepute  and  ill 
will  upon  the  writer  of  it. 

*  Ibid.  207-208.  In  the  original,  the  word  "  Farmer"  is  indicated  by  the 
first  letter  only. 


CHAPTER   XXVI. 

THOMAS   PAINE    AS    LITERARY    FREELANCE    IN    THE    WAR 
FOR   INDEPENDENCE:     1/76-1783. 

I. — Paine's  literary  work  between  January  and  July,  1776 — He  then  joins  the 
Pennsylvania  troops,  and  serves  under  General  Roberdeau — Also,  as  aid- 
de-camp  to  General  Greene  at  Fort  Lee — Participates  in  Washington's 
retreat  across  New  Jersey. 

II. — In  the  midst  of  this  retreat,  he  begins  at  Newark  the  writing  of  "  The 
Crisis,"  which  he  continues  at  the  subsequent  stopping  places — He  pub- 
lishes the  first  number  at  Philadelphia,  December  19,  1776 — Electrical 
effect  of  this  paper — Its  appeal  to  the  emotions  and  the  needs  of  the  hour. 

III. — -His  part  in  the  labors  and  sacrifices  of  the  war  for  Independence— His 
several  employments  by  Congress — He  serves  under  General  Greene  at  the 
Battle  of  Brandywine — He  stands  by  Washington  at  Valley  Forge — In  Feb- 
ruary, 1781,  he  accompanies  John  Laurens  on  a  special  mission  to  France 
— Their  return  at  end  of  six  months — His  chief  service  after  1776  as  a 
writer  of  "  The  Crisis  " — The  last  number  of  "The  Crisis  "  in  December, 
1783 — His  poverty  during  those  years. 

IV. — The  secret  of  Paine's  power  over  men  and  events — A  great  journalist — 
His  aptness  in  expressing  from  day  to  day  the  real  thought  of  the  people — 
The  range  of  his  discussions  during  the  war — He  represents  the  faith  of 
the  American  people  in  themselves  and  in  a  Higher  Power  helping  them — 
His  scornful  addresses  to  Lord  Howe  and  his  brother— His  predictions  of 
British  discomfiture — His  inspiring  appeals  to  the  American  people  after 
defeat  and  amid  discouragement. 

V. — At  the  approach  of  peace,  Paine  turns  from  a  prose  song  of  congratulation, 
to  explain  the  new  dangers  and  new  duties  then  confronting  the  people — 
Financial  dishonor  and  disunion — His  last  literary  services  in  the  Revolu- 
tion are  on  behalf  of  American  honesty,  and  of  American  nationality. 

I. 

t 

IN  the  interval  between  the  publication  of  his  pamphlet, 
"  Common  Sense,"  in  January,  1776,  and  the  final  deter- 
mination of  Congress,  six  months  later,  to  take  the  very 
course  recommended  in  that  pamphlet,  Thomas  Paine  fbl- 

35 


36  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

lowed  up  the  lines  of  argument  and  appeal  on  which  he  had 
thus  wrought,  by  writing  for  a  Philadelphia  journal  a  series 
of  at  least  four  articles  over  the  signature  of  "  The  Forest- 
er." '  During  this  interval,  also,  appeared  in  Philadelphia 
a  brochure  which  in  our  time  has  been  confidently  attrib- 
uted to  Paine,  bearing  the  whimsical  title, — "  A  Dialogue 
between  the  Ghost  of  General  Montgomery  just  arrived 
from  the  Elysian  Fields,  and  an  American  Delegate,  in  a 
Wood  near  Philadelphia," — a  well-managed  political  collo- 
quy, in  which  the  argument  for  Independence  is  developed 
with  much  of  Paine's  vigor,  but  perhaps  with  rather  more 
accuracy,  delicacy,  and  polish,  than  one  expects  to  find  in 
him. 

But  the  man  who  had  so  brilliantly  served  the  American 
cause  by  the  pen,  seems  to  have  been  eager  to  serve  it  by 
the  sword  also.  Accordingly,  in  the  summer  of  1776,  soon 
after  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  he  joined  as  a  vol- 
unteer General  Roberdeau's  division  of  the  Pennsylvania 
troops,  called  "  the  flying  camp."  With  these  troops  he 
served  at  Perth  Amboy,  and  at  Bergen;  and  when,  after  a 
few  weeks,  their  time  expired  and  they  returned  home, 
Paine,  unwilling  at  such  a  time  to  avail  himself  of  such  an 
excuse  for  leaving  the  field,  "  went  to  Fort  Lee  and  served 
as  aid-de-camp  to  General  Greene,  .  .  .  and  was  with 
him  during  the  whole  of  the  black  times  of  that  trying  cam- 
paign."  Benjamin  Rush  mentions  that  during  that  period, 
Paine  lived  a  good  deal  with  officers  of  the  first  rank  in  the 
army,  at  whose  tables  his  '  Common  Sense  '  always  made 
him  a  welcome  guest."  3  General  Greene  himself,  in  a  let- 

1  Dunlap's  "  Pa.  Packet,  or  the  General  Advertiser,"  for  April  i,  April  15, 
April  22,  and  May  20,  1776.  No  other  number  appeared  in  that  paper  down 
to  July  i.  I  think  the  fourth  number  was  the  last  of  the  series.  I  found 
the  first  three  numbers  in  "  The  Pa.  Gazette,"  for  April  3,  April  10,  and 
April  24  ;  but  the  fourth  number  I  failed  to  find  in  that  paper.  Rush  speaks, 
Cheetham,  38,  of  these  essays  as  appearing  "  in  Mr.  Bradford's  paper,"  i.  e., 

The  Pa.  Journal,"  where  Conway,  "  Life,"  i.  73,  seems  to  have  read  them. 

8  Paine's  own  words.     "  Political  Writings,"  ii.  493. 

8  Cheetham,  38. 


THOMAS  PAINE.  37 

ter  written  at  Fort  Lee  to  his  wife,  on  the  second  of  Novem- 
ber, gives  a  glimpse  of  the  daily  life  of  his  military  family, 
especially  mentioning  the  curious  fact  that  in  that  time  of 
appalling  distress,  Paine  was  "  perpetually  wrangling  about 
mathematical  problems"1  with  a  certain  other  officer  of 
the  army. 

Whoever  served  in  the  American  army,  in  any  capacity, 
in  the  autumn  of  1776,  had  an  employment  full  of  discom- 
fort and  peril.  On  the  twenty-seventh  of  August,  Wash- 
ington had  suffered  a  shattering  defeat  in  the  battle  of  Long 
Island.  Then  had  followed,  in  awful  rapidity,  a  gloomy 
succession  of  disasters, — the  abandonment  of  New  York  on 
the  fifteenth  of  September,  the  defeat  at  White  Plains  on 
the  twenty-eighth  of  October,  the  surrender  of  Fort  Wash- 
ington on  the  sixteenth  of  November,  the  stampede  from 
Fort  Lee  on  the  eighteenth  of  November,  finally,  Washing- 
ton's harassed  retreat  through  New  Jersey,  and,  on  the 
eighth  of  December,  his  escape  across  the  Delaware.  In 
all  these  calamitous  and  distressing  experiences, — defeats, 
retreats,  marchings,  and  countermarchings,  before  a  victori- 
ous and  scornful  foe, — Paine  seems  to  have  participated. 
A  letter-writer  in  the  British  army,  describing  the  capture 
of  Fort  Lee,  connects  Paine  with  the  event  in  a  somewhat 
grotesque  manner:  he  relates  that  on  the  appearance  of 
the  British  troops  before  that  fortress,  "  the  rebels  fled  like 
scared  rabbits,"  leaving  in  their  intrenchments  "  some  poor 
pork,  a  few  greasy  proclamations,  and  some  of  that  scoun- 
drel '  Common  Sense  '  man's  letters,  which  we  can  read  at 
our  leisure,  now  that  we  have  got  one  of  the  '  impregnable 
redoubts  '  of  Mr.  Washington's  to  quarter  in." ' 

II. 

It  was  in  the  midst  of  the  dismay  and  disorder  of  this 
retreat  across  New  Jersey,  that  Paine  was  inspired  to  begin 
that  series  of  impassioned  and  invigorating  pamphlets 

1  G.  W.  Greene,  "  The  Life  of  Nathaniel  Greene,"  i.  253. 
8  Markoe,  in  Moore,  "  Diary  of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  i.  350. 


38  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

which  at  once  became  famous  under  the  title  of  "  The 
Crisis,"  and  which  continued  to  appear  intermittently  down 
to  the  close  of  the  war.  He  has  himself  related  how,  on 
the  scrambling  retreat  from  Fort  Lee,  he  began  at  Newark 
the  first  number  of  "  The  Crisis,"  "  and  continued  writing 
it,"  as  he  says,  "  at  every  place  we  stopt  at,"  '  until  it  was 
finished,  and  issued  from  the  press  at  Philadelphia  on  the 
nineteenth  of  December,11 — just  four  days  before  that  on 
which  Washington  announced  to  some  of  his  officers  his 
purpose  to  recross  the  Delaware  and  to  strike  the  enemy  at 
Trenton.  Those  were  perhaps  the  darkest  days  of  the  Rev- 
olution. Even  Washington  had  then  written:  "  If  every 
nerve  is  not  strained  to  recruit  the  new  army  with  all  possi- 
ble expedition,  I  think  the  game  is  pretty  nearly  up."  * 
It  was  under  such  circumstances  that  the  first  number  of 
The  Crisis,"  *  bearing  the  resounding  signature  of  "  Com- 
mon Sense,"  greeted  the  American  people  with  words  that 
were  electrical,  and  that  soon  became  classic:  "These 
are  the  times  that  try  men's  souls.  The  summer  soldier 
and  the  sunshine  patriot  will,  in  this  crisis,  shrink  from  the 
service  of  his  country;  but  he  that  stands  it  now,  deserves 
the  love  and  thanks  of  man  and  woman.  Tyranny,  like 
hell,  is  not  easily  conquered ;  yet  we  have  this  consolation 
with  us,  that  the  harder  the  conflict,  the  more  glorious  the 
triumph."  * 

As  he  passes  on  from  paragraph  to  paragraph  of  this 
tremendous  harangue,  he  touches  with  unfailing  skill,  with 
matchless  power,  the  springs  of  anxiety,  anger,  contempt, 

"  Political  Writings,"  ii.  493.       .  ~  , 

*  First  in  "  The  Pennsylvania  Journal  "  on  the  date  above  mentioned.  Con- 
way,  "  Life,"  i.  85.  It  was  then  issued  in  pamphlet  form,  dated  Dec.  23,  1776- 
"  Writings,"  Sparks  ed.,  iv.  231. 

4  This  title,  which  of  course  was  an  obvious  one  for  a  pamphlet  written  under 
such  circumstances,  had  been  several  times  used  before  Paine  made  it  famous  ; 
by  Samuel  Cooper  for  a  pamphlet  against  the  excise,  published  in  Boston  in 
1754  I  and  by  a  writer  in  London  in  1766  for  a  pamphlet  in  defense  of  the  col- 
onies against  the  policy  of  the  Stamp  Act.  According  to  Lossing,  "  Cycl.  U.  S. 
Hist.,  i.  347,  the  title  was  also  used  in  London,  in  1775-1776,  for  a  series  of  pa- 
pers "  to  be  continued  weekly  during  the  present  bloody  civil  war  in  America." 

1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  7=;. 


THOMAS  PAINE.  39 

love  of  home,  love  of  country,  fortitude,  cool  deliberation, 
and  passionate  resolve;  and  he  closes  with  such  a  battle- 
call  as  might  almost  have  startled  slain  patriots  from  their 
new  graves  under  the  frozen  clods:  "  Up  and  help  us;  lay 
your  shoulders  to  the  wheel ;  better  have  too  much  force 
than  too  little,  when  so  great  an  object  is  at  stake.  Let  it 
be  told  to  the  future  world,  that  in  the  depth  of  winter, 
when  nothing  but  hope  and  virtue  could  survive,1  the  city 
and  country,  alarmed  at  one  common  danger,  came  forth  to 
meet  and  repulse  it.  ...  It  matters  not  where  you 
live,  or  what  rank  of  life  you  hold,  the  evil  or  the  blessing 
will  reach  you  all.  .  .  .  The  heart  that  feels  not  now, 
is  dead.  The  blood  of  his  children  will  curse  his  cowardice, 
who  shrinks  back  at  a  time  when  a  little  might  have  saved 
the  whole,  and  made  them  happy.  I  love  the  man  that  can 
smile  in  trouble,  that  can  gather  strength  from  distress,  and 
grow  brave  by  reflection.  'T  is  the  business  of  little  minds 
to  shrink ;  but  he  whose  heart  is  firm,  and  whose  conscience 
approves  his  conduct,  will  pursue  his  principles  unto  death. 
.  .  .  It  is  the  madness  of  folly  to  expect  mercy  from 
those  who  have  refused  to  do  justice.  ...  By  perse- 
verance and  fortitude,  we  have  the  prospect  of  a  glorious 
issue ;  by  cowardice  and  submission,  the  sad  choice  of  a 
variety  of  evils, — a  ravaged  country,  a  depopulated  city, 
habitations  without  safety,  and  slavery  without  hope,  our 
homes  turned  into  barracks  and  bawdy-houses  for  Hessians, 
And  a  future  race  to  provide  for,  whose  fathers  we  shall 
doubt  of.  Look  on  this  picture  and  weep  over  it ;  and  if 
there  yet  remains  one  thoughtless  wretch  who  believes  it 
not,  let  him  suffer  it  unlamented."  * 

III. 

From  the  day  on  which  he  finished  this  pamphlet  onward 
to  the  very  close  of  the  war,  Paine  seems  to  have  had  his 

1  In  the  text  occurs  here  a  supernumerary  "  that,"  which  may  have  been  due 
to  a  mere  slip  of  the  pen,  but  more  likely  indicates  the  actual  state  of  Paine's 
grammatical  development  at  that  time. 

s  "  Political  Writings,"  ii.  80-82. 


40  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

personal  share  in  nearly  every  form  of  service  or  of  privation 
which  befell  the  American  people.  During  the  greater  por- 
tion of  this  period,  he  gained  his  livelihood  either  by  acting 
as  secretary  to  the  committee  of  Congress  on  foreign  affairs, 
or  as  clerk  in  the  commercial  house  of  Owen  Biddle,  or  as 
clerk  to  the  general  assembly  of  Pennsylvania.  In  Septem- 
ber, 1777,  while  preparing  at  Philadelphia  the  dispatches  of 
Congress  for  Franklin  in  Paris,  he  was  interrupted  by  the 
booming  of  the  cannon  at  Brandywine.  Instantly  dashing 
off  a  fresh  number  of  "  The  Crisis,"  for  the  purpose  of  giv- 
ing check  to  a  popular  panic,  he  threw  aside  his  pen  and  by 
personal  entreaty  endeavored  to  induce  the  authorities  to 
adopt  some  practicable  plan  for  a  volunteer  defense  of  the 
city.  Failing  in  this,  he  hurried  away  to  the  army,  and  as 
aid-de-camp  to  General  Greene,  and  perhaps  in  other 
capacities  as  well,  he  partook  to  the  full  of  the  toils  and 
perils  of  the  troops  during  the  remainder  of  that  autumn, 
even  standing  by  Washington's  side  in  the  grim  retirement 
of  Valley  Forge.1  In  February,  1781,  at  a  time  when 
further  American  resistance  was  in  danger  of  collapsing 
through  sheer  lack  of  the  means  to  carry  on  the  war,  Paine 
sailed  out  of  Boston  harbor  on  the  frigate  "Alliance,"  in 
the  company  of  Colonel  John  Laurens, — the  latter  going  as 
minister  extraordinary  to  France  for  the  purpose  of  securing 
for  Congress  a  special  loan  from  the  king.  Just  six  months 
afterward,  Paine  and  Laurens  again  appeared  in  Boston 
harbor,  having  with  them,  as  the  fruits  of  their  expedition, 
2,500,000  livres  in  silver,  and  in  convoy  a  ship  laden  with 
clothing,  ammunition,  arms, — a  most  opportune  supply, 
which  had  perhaps  an  essential  part  in  the  train  of  events 
which  led,  two  months  later,  to  the  surrender  of  Corn- 
wallis." 

Noble-minded  and  important  as  were  these  various  ser- 

1  Paine  gave  a  graphic  sketch  of  his  military  experiences  at  that  time,  in  a 
long  letter  to  Franklin,  which  is  printed  in  Conway,  "  Life,"  i.  104-113. 

"  Secret  Journals  of  Cong.,"  i.  351,  368-375  ;  Hildreth,  iii.  363.     "  Writ- 
ings of  Geo.  Washington,"  Ford  ed.,  ix.  355  n. 


9 

THOMAS  PAINE.  4 1 

vices  rendered  by  Paine  to  the  American  cause,  on  sea  and 
land,  in  office  and  field,  they  could  in  no  way  be  compared, 
as  contributions  to  the  success  of  the  Revolution,  with  the 
work  which  he  did  during  those  same  imperiled  years 
merely  as  a  writer,  and  especially  as  the  writer  of  "  The 
Crisis."  Between  December,  1776,  when  the  first  pamphlet 
of  that  series  was  published,  down  to  December,  1783,  when 
the  last  one  left  the  printer's  hands,  this  indomitable  man 
produced  no  less  than  sixteen  pamphlets  under  the  same 
general  title,  adapting  his  message  in  each  case  to  the 
supreme  need  of  the  hour,  and  accomplishing  all  this  liter- 
ary labor  in  a  condition  of  actual  poverty, — poverty  so 
great  that  on  one  occasion,  shortly  after  his  return  from 
France,  he  was  obliged  to  apologize  to  his  friend  Laurens, 
then  at  the  siege  of  Yorktown,  for  some  delay  in  forwarding 
to  headquarters  a  pair  of  new  boots  which  that  gallant  offi- 
cer had  ordered  in  Philadelphia,  by  the  naive  confession 
that  he  had  not  then  in  hand  money  enough  to  pay  the 
bootmaker.1 

IV. 

The  marvelous  power  which  this  untitled  and  impecu- 
nious penman  wielded  over  the  minds  of  men  and  over  the 
course  of  events,  during  the  entire  period  of  our  Revolution, 
was  essentially  the  power  of  a  great  journalist.  He  had  to 
the  full  the  journalistic  temperament, — its  tastes,  capacities, 
limitations.  He  had  no  interest  in  the  past  except  so  far  as 
the  past  had  a  direct  message  for  the  present.  His  life  was 
the  life  of  to-day.  He  rose  from  his  bed  every  morning  to 
ask  what  was  the  uppermost  thought,  the  keenest  necessity, 
the  most  notable  event,  of  that  particular  day.  Books  to 
him  were  of  no  vital  account :  his  only  library  was  a  heap  of 
pamphlets,  and  a  pocket  stuffed  full  of  newspapers.  All 
that  he  wrote  was  suggested  by  an  occasion,  and  was  meant 
for  one.  By  some  process  of  his  own  he  knew  just  what  the 

1  Paine's  letter  to  Laurens,  in  Conway,  "  Life,"  i.  173-174. 


42  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

people  thought,  feared,  wished,  loved,  and  hated:  he  knew 
it  better  than  they  knew  it  themselves.  The  secret  of  his 
strength  lay  in  his  infallible  instinct  for  interpreting  to  the 
public  its  own  conscience  and  its  own  consciousness,  and  for 
doing  this  in  language  which,  at  times,  was  articulate  thun- 
der and  lightning.  The  history  of  the  long  war  may  be  read 
in  the  blazing  light  of  these  mighty  pamphlets,  in  which 
with  the  confident  look,  with  the  unhesitating  voice,  of  a 
leader  born  to  lead,  he  rallied  the  people  in  many  an  hour 
of  disaster  and  fright,  pleaded  with  them,  rebuked  them, 
inspired  them,  and  pointed  out  to  them  the  path  of  duty 
and  of  victory,  or,  standing  in  front  of  them,  on  their  behalf 
flung  his  jests,  taunts,  and  maledictions  at  the  foe.  Thus, 
he  addresses,  on  one  occasion,  the  leading  British  officer 
just  then  in  America,  in  order,  as  he  says  to  him,  "  to 
expose  the  folly  of  your  pretended  authority  as  a  commis- 
sioner, the  wickedness  of  your  cause  in  general,  and  the  im- 
possibility of  your  conquering  us  at  any  rate."  As  regards 
the  American  people,  he  says,  "  my  intention  is  to  shew 
them  their  true  and  solid  interest ;  to  encourage  them  to 
their  own  good ;  to  remove  the  fears  and  falsities  which  bad 
men  have  spread,  and  weak  men  have  encouraged ;  and  to 
excite  in  all  men  a  love  for  union,  and  a  cheerfulness  for 
duty."  ' 

In  those  days,  certainly,  Thomas  Paine  represented,  not 
only  the  faith  of  the  people  in  themselves,  but  their  faith 
in  God  and  in  God's  guidance  and  mastery  of  the  affairs  of 
this  world,  and  in  the  ultimate  victory  of  God's  cause 
against  every  possible  league  of  men  and  of  devils.  Speak- 
ing always  in  the  character  of  an  avowed  Christian,  and  to  a 
nation  of  Christians,  Paine  declares:  "  God  Almighty  will 
not  give  up  a  people  to  military  destruction,  or  leave  them 
unsupportedly  to  perish,  who.  have  so  earnestly  and  so 
repeatedly  sought  to  avoid  the  calamities  of  war,  by  every 
decent  method  which  wisdom  could  invent.  Neither  have 

1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  94. 


THOMAS  PAINE.  43 

I  so  much  of  the  infidel  in  me  as  to  suppose  that  He 
has  relinquished  the  government  of  the  world,  and  given 
us  up  to  the  care  of  devils."  "  If  we  believe  the  power  of 
hell  to  be  limited,  we  must  likewise  believe  that  their 
agents  are  under  some  providential  control. "  '  '  *  There  has 
been  such  a  chain  of  extraordinary  events  in  the  discovery 
of  this  country  at  first,  in  the  peopling  and  planting  it  after- 
wards, in  the  rearing  and  nursing  it  to  its  present  state,  and 
in  the  protection  of  it  through  the  present  war,  that  no  man 
can  doubt  but  Providence  hath  some  nobler  end  to  accom- 
plish than  the  gratification  of  the  petty  elector  of  Hanover, 
or  the  ignorant  and  insignificant  king  of  Britain."  We  dare 
to  believe  that  ours  is  the  cause  to  which  Providence  will  give 
the  victory,  because  "  we  fight  not  to  enslave,  but  to  set  a 
country  free,  and  to  make  room  upon  the  earth  for  honest 
men  to  live  in."  * 

And  who  is  it,  at  this  late  day,  who  can  any  longer  doubt 
the  wisdom  of  our  resolve  to  cast  aside  the  colonial  charac- 
ter, and  to  set  up  a  national  establishment  for  ourselves  ? 
"  To  know  whether  it  be  the  interest  of  this  continent  to  be 
Independent,  we  need  only  ask  this  easy,  simple  question: 
Is  it  the  interest  of  a  man  to  be  a  boy  all  his  life  ?  " 

And  you,  my  Lord  Howe,  in  your  so-called  proclama- 
tion,— a  preposterous  compound  of  assumptions,  promises, 
and  threats, — you  have  the  audacity  to  speak  of  our  claim 
to  Independence  as  something  "  extravagant  and-  inadmis- 
sible." "  Why,  God  bless  me,  what  have  you  to  do  with 
our  Independence  ?  We  ask  no  leave  of  yours  to  set  it  up ; 
we  ask  no  money  of  yours  to  support  it ;  we  can  do  better 
without  your  fleets  and  armies  than  with  them ;  you  may 
soon  have  enough  to  do  to  protect  yourselves  without  being 
burdened  with  us.  We  are  very  willing  to  be  at  peace  with 
you,  to  buy  of  you  and  sell  to  you,  and,  like  young  begin- 
ners in  the  world,  to  work  for  our  living.  Therefore,  why 


1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  76,  77-  *  Ibid-  146-147,  131. 

3  Ibid.  105. 


44 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


do  you  put  yourselves  out  of  cash,  when  we  know  you 
cannot  spare  it,  and  we  do  not  desire  you  to  run  into 
debt  ?"' 

And,  moreover,  what  a  ridiculous  thing  it  is  for  a  man  in 
your  circumstances  to  issue  a  proclamation  at  all!  "  Your 
authority  in  the  Jerseys  is  now  reduced  to  the  small  circle 
which  your  army  occupies,  and  your  proclamation  is  no- 
where else  seen,  unless  it  be  to  be  laughed  at.  The  mighty 
subduers  of  the  continent  have  retreated  into  a  nut-shell; 
and  the  proud  forgivers  of  our  sins  are  fled  from  those  they 
came  to  pardon.  .  .  .  In  short,  you  have  managed  your 
Jersey  expedition  so  very  dexterously,  that  the  dead  only 
are  conquerors,  because  none  will  dispute  the  ground  with 
them."  ' 

As  to  those  troops  of  yours,  with  which  you  have  tried 
to  overawe  us,  and  from  which  the  world  has  been  taught 
to  expect  so  much,  what  is  their  real  condition  ?  "  Like  a 
wounded,  disabled  whale,  they  want  only  time  and  room  to 
die  in ;  and  though  in  the  agony  of  their  exit,  it  may  be 
unsafe  to  live  within  the  flapping  of  their  tail,  yet  every 
hour  shortens  their  date,  and  lessens  their  power  of  mis- 
chief."1 "  Their  condition  is  both  despicable  and  deplor- 
able: out  of  cash,  out  of  heart,  out  of  hope.  A  country 
furnished  with  arms  and  ammunition,  as  America  now  is, 
with  three  millions  of  inhabitants,  and  three  thousand  miles 
distant  frem  the  nearest  enemy  that  can  approach  her,  is 
able  to  look  and  laugh  them  in  the  face. ' '  4 

Your  cargo  of  pardons,"  he  says  contemptuously  to  the 
three  British  commissioners  who  came  out  in  1778,  "  will 
have  no  market.  It  is  unfashionable  to  look  at  them — even 
speculation  is  at  an  end.  They  have  become  a  perfect  drug, 

and  no  way  calculated  for  the  climate. You  may  plan 

and  execute  little  mischiefs;  but  are  they  worth  the  ex- 
pense they  cost  you,  or  will  such  partial  evils  have  any 

1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  86.  2  Ibid.  92. 

3  Ibid.  101.  <  Ibid.  122.  s  Ibid.  157. 


THOMAS  PAINE.  45 

effect  on  the  general  cause  ?  Your  expedition  to  Egg- 
Harbor  will  be  felt  at  a  distance  like  an  attack  upon  a  hen- 
roost, and  expose  you  in  Europe  with  a  sort  of  childish 
phrenzy.  Is  it  worth  while  to  keep  an  army  to  protect  you 
in  writing  proclamations,  or  to  get  once  a  year  into  winter- 
quarters  ?  " 

As  he  had  bestowed  much  frankness  on  Lord  Howe,  he  is 
disposed  to  treat  his  brother,  Sir  William,  with  equal  dis- 
tinction :  "  Indolence  and  inability  have  too  large  a  share  in 
your  composition,  ever  to  suffer  you  to  be  anything  more 
than  the  hero-of  little  villanies  and  unfinished  adventures."  * 

"  Let  me  ask,  sir,  what  great  exploits  have  you  per- 
formed ?  Through  all  the  variety  of  changes  and  opportu- 
nities which  the  war  has  produced,  I  know  no  one  action  of 
yours  that  can  be  styled  masterly.  You  have  moved  in  and 
out,  backward  and  forward,  round  and  round,  as  if  valor 
consisted  in  a  military  jig.  The  history  and  figure  of  your 
movements  would  be  truly  ridiculous  could  they  be  justly 
delineated.  They  resemble  the  labors  of  a  puppy  pursuing 
his  tail ;  the  end  is  still  at  the  same  distance,  and  all  the 
turnings  round  must  be  done  over  again."  "  The  time, 
sir,  will  come  when  you,  in  a  melancholy  hour,  shall  reckon 
up  your  miseries,  by  your  murders  in  America.  Life  with 
you  begins  to  wear  a  clouded  aspect.  The  vision  of  pleas- 
urable delusion  is  wearing  away,  and  changing  to  the  bar- 
ren wild  of  age  and  sorrow.  The  poor  reflection  of  having 
served  your  king  will  yield  you  no  consolation  in  your  part- 
ing moments.  He  will  crumble  to  the  same  undistinguish- 
able  ashes  with  yourself,  and  have  sins  enough  of  his  own  to 
answer  for.  It  is  not  the  farcical  benedictions  of  a  bishop, 
nor  the  cringing  hypocrisy  of  a  court  of  chaplains,  nor  the 
formality  of  an  act  of  parliament,  that  can  change  guilt  into 
innocence,  or  make  the  punishment  one  pang  the  less.  You 
may,  perhaps,  be  unwilling  to  be  serious ;  but  this  destruc- 
tion of  the  goods  of  Providence,  this  havoc  of  the  human 

1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  165.  a  Ibid.  134.  8  Ibid.  140-141. 


46  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

race,  and  this  sowing  the  world  with  mischief,  must  be 
accounted  for  to  Him  who  made  and  governs  it.  To  us 
they  are  only  present  sufferings,  but  to  Him  they  are  deep 
rebellions."  ' 

Turning  to  his  fellow-countrymen  on  the  day  after  a  har- 
rowing defeat,  his  words  go  forth  as  a  trumpet  call  to  reas- 
surance and  to  a  renewal  of  the  conflict :  ".  Those  who  expect 
to  reap  the  blessings  of  freedom,  must  like  men  undergo  the 
fatigues  of  supporting  it.  The  event  of  yesterday  was  one 
of  those  kind  alarms  which  are"  just  sufficient  to  rouse  us  to 
duty,  without  being  of  consequence  enough  *to  depress  our 
fortitude.  It  is  not  a  field  of  a  few  acres  of  ground,  but  a 
cause,  that  we  are  defending;  and  whether  we  defeat  the 
enemy  in  one  battle,  or  by  degrees,  the  consequence  will  be 
the  same.  .  .  .  We  have  always  been  masters  at  the 
last  push,  and  always  shall  be  while  we  do  our  duty.  .  .  . 
Shall  a  band  of  ten  or  twelve  thousand  robbers,  who  are 
this  day  fifteen  hundred  or  two  thousand  men  less  in  strength 
than  they  were  yesterday,  conquer  America,  or  subdue  even 
a  single  State  ?  The  thing  cannot  be  done,  unless  we  sit 
down  and  suffer  them  to  do  it.  Another  such  a  brush,  not- 
withstanding we  lost  the  ground,  would,  by  still  reducing 
the  enemy,  put  them  in  a  condition  to  be  afterwards  totally 
defeated.  .  .  .  It  is  distressing  to  see  an  enemy  advan- 
cing into  a  country,  but  it  is  the  only  place  in  which  we  can 
beat  them,  and  in  which  we  have  always  beaten  them,  when- 
ever they  have  made  the  attempt.  .  .  .  You  have  too 
much  at  stake  to  hesitate.  You  ought  not  to  think  an  hour 
upon  the  matter,  but  to  spring  to  action  at  once.  Other 
States  have  been  invaded ;  have  likewise  driven  off  the 
invaders.  Now  our  time  and  turn  is  come,  and  perhaps  the 
finishing  stroke  is  reserved  for  us.  When  we  look  back  on 
the  dangers  we  have  been  saved  from,  and  reflect  on  the 

1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  145-146. 

5  The  text  reads  "  is."  On  the  day  after  an  unfortunate  battle,  most  men, 
especially  most  men  whose  efforts  to  be  grammatical  have  been  postponed  until 
middle  life,  are  liable  to  some  embarrassment  from  their  nominatives. 


THOMAS  PAJXE. 


47 


success  we  have  been  blessed  with,  it  would  be  sinful  either 
to  be  idle  or  to  despair." 

Near  the  close  of  the  first  three  years  of  the  war,  he  sums 
up  the  results  in  a  single  sentence:  "  It  is  now  nearly  three 
years  since  the  tyranny  of  Britain  received  its  first  repulse  by 
the  arms  of  America, — a  period  which  has  given  birth  to  a 
new  world,  and  erected  a  monument  to  the  folly  of  the 
old."1 

V. 

And  when,  at  last,  the  final  victory  is  come  and  actual 
peace  draws  on,  this  unfatigued  prophet  consents  to  pause 
long  enough  to  chant,  in  sinewy  prose,  a  virile  song  of  con- 
gratulation ;  but  almost  before  its  close  he  begins  to  beckon 
his  fellow-countrymen  away  from  mere  exultation,  and  from 
past  success,  to  point  toward  the  new  dangers  and  the  new 
duties  which  that  very  success  is  about  to  lay  upon  them : 
"  The  times  that  tried  men's  souls  are  over — and  the  great- 
est and  completest  Revolution  the  world  ever  knew,  glori- 
ously and  happily  accomplished.  But  to  pass  from  the 
extremes  of  danger  to  safety — from  the  tumult  of  war  to  the 
tranquillity  of  peace — though  sweet  in  contemplation,  re- 
quires a  gradual  composure  of  the  senses  to  receive  it.  Even 
calmness  has  the  power  of  stunning,  when  it  opens  too- 
instantly  upon  us.  ...  In  the  present  case,  the  mighty 
magnitude  of  the  object,  the  various  uncertainties  of  fate 
which  it  has  undergone,  the  numerous  and  complicated  dan- 
gers we  have  suffered  or  escaped,  the  eminence  we  now 
stand  on,  and  the  vast  prospect  before  us,  must  all  conspire 
to  impress  us  with  contemplation.  To  see  it  in  our  power 
to  make  a  world  happy,  to  teach  mankind  the  art  of  being 
so,  to  exhibit  on  the  theatre  of  the  universe  a  character 
hitherto  unknown,  and  to  have,  as  it  were,  a  new  creation 
intrusted  to  our  hands,  are  honors  that  command  reflection, 
and  can  neither  be  too  highly  estimated,  nor  too  gratefully 
received.  In  this  pause,  then,  of  reflection,  while  the  storm 

1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  128-130.  *  Ibid.  149. 


48  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

is  ceasing,  and  the  long-agitated  mind  vibrating  to  a  rest, 
let  us  look  back  on  the  scenes  we  have  passed,  and  learn 
from  experience  what  is  yet  to  be  done." 

But  just  before  us  lie  two  immense  dangers:  the  first, 
financial  dishonor,  the  second,  disunion.  To  guard  against, 
to  avert,  these  two  dangers — this  is  the  new  duty  which 
now  summons  us:  "  The  debt  which  America  has  con- 
tracted, compared  with  the  cause  she  has  gained,  and  the 
advantages  to  flow  from  it,  ought  scarcely  to  be  mentioned. 
Character  is  much  easier  kept  than  recovered ;  and 
that  man,  if  any  such  there  be,  who,  from  sinister  views,  or 
littleness  of  soul,  lends  unseen  his  hand  to  injure  it,  con- 
trives a  wound  it  will  never  be  in  his  power  to  heal.  As  we 
have  established  an  inheritance  for  posterity,  let  that  inher- 
itance descend,  with  every  mark  of  an  honorable  convey- 
ance. The  little  it  will  cost  compared  with  the  worth  of 
the  States,  the  greatness  of  the  object,  and  the  value  of 
national  character,  will  be  a  profitable  exchange. ' '  * 

But  that  which  must  more  forcibly  strike  a  thoughtful, 
penetrating  mind,  and  which  includes  and  renders  easy  all 
inferior  concerns,  is  the  union  of  the  States.  On  this,  our 
great  national  character  depends.  It  is  this  which  must  give 
us  importance  abroad  and  security  at  home.  ...  In 
short,  we  have  no  other  national  sovereignty  than  as  United 
States.  .  .  .  Individuals,  or  individual  States,  may  call 
themselves  what  they  please;  but  the  world,  and  especially 
the  world  of  enemies,  is  not  to  be  held  in  awe  by  the  whist- 
ling of  a  name.  Sovereignty  must  have  power  to  protect 
all  the  parts  that  compose  and  constitute  it ;  and  as  the 
United  States,  we  are  equal  to  the  importance  of  the  title, 
but  otherwise  we  are  not.  Our  union,  well  and  wisely 
regulated  and  cemented,  is  the  cheapest  way  of  being  great 
— the  easiest  way  of  being  powerful,  and  the  happiest  inven- 
tion in  government  which  the  circumstances  of  America 
can  admit  of  .  .  .  .  I  ever  feel  myself  hurt  when  I  hear 

1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  256-257.  2  Ibid.  258-259. 


THOMAS  PAINE. 


49 


the  union,  that  great  palladium  of  our  liberty  and  safety, 
the  least  irreverently  spoken  of.  It  is  the  most  sacred  thing 
in  the  constitution  of  America,  and  that  which  every  man 
should  be  most  proud  and  tender  of.  Our  citizenship  in 
the  United  States  is  our  national  character.  Our  citizen- 
ship in  any  particular  State  is  only  our  local  distinction.  By 
the  latter  we  are  known  at  home,  by  the  former  to  the 
world.  Our  great  title  is  AMERICANS."  ' 

1  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  259-260. 


CHAPTER   XXVII. 

THE  LITERARY  WARFARE  AGAINST  AMERICAN  INDEPEND- 
ENCE:    LOYALIST   WRITERS   IN   PROSE 
AND   VERSE:    1776-1783. 

I.— The  writings  of  the  Loyalists  during  this  stage  of  the  Revolution  inferior 
in  amount  to  those  of  the  Revolutionists — Their  decline  in  the  use  of 
serious  discussion — Three  peculiarities  in  the  attitude  of  the  Loyalists — 
Their  confidence  in  the  soundness  of  their  own  opinions  ;  their  contempt 
for  the  Revolutionists  as  vulgar  and  unprincipled  ;  their  perfect  expecta- 
tion of  the  success  of  the  British  arms. 

II. — The  Loyalist  sarcasm  on  the  practical  denial  of  liberty  by  the  preten-lad 
American  champions  of  it — Many  colonists  forced  into  support  of  the 
Revolutionary  measures — "The  Pausing  American  Loyalist" — "The 
Rebels"—"  A  Familiar  Epistle." 

III. — The  Loyalist  taunt  concerning  the  plebeian  origin  and  occupations  of  thf* 
Revolutionary  leaders — "  A  Modern  Catechism  " — List  ot  American  officer*, 
as  published  in  Germany — The  "  brace  of  Adamses  " — A  Charleston  satire. 

IV. — The  attacks  of  the  Tory  satirists  concentrated  on  Congress,  as  a  body 
representing  the  vulgarity  and  profligacy  of  the  Revolutionary  movement. 

V. — The  exploits  of  Congress  in  the  field  of  finance  a  theme  for  Tory  derision 
— The  depreciation  of  American  paper-money — Jests  thereon  from  the 
Tory  newspapers— Satire  on  the  tattered  condition  of  the  American  army- 

VI.— Tory  jests  upon  individual  leaders  of  the  Revolution— Especial  attention 
paid  to  Thomas  Paine. 

VII.— Tory  mirth  over  the  military  and  naval  disappointments  of  the  French 
alliance — Failure  of  the  allied  campaign  of  1778 — "  The  Epilogue,"  a» 
sung  by  Congress  at  the  conclusion  of  the  Farce  "  Independence  "—Fail- 
ure of  the  allied  campaign  of  1779— The  mirthful  ballad  "  About  Savan^ 
nah"— "A  New  Ballad." 

VIII.— Some  serious  Loyalist  discussion  of  the  state  of  affairs  consequent  on 
the  American  alliance  with  France— "  Letters  of  Papinian  "—The  unnat 
uralness  of  the  French  alliance,  and  its  disastrous  effects,  set  forth  in  "  A 
Letter  to  the  People  of  America." 

IX. — The  possible  calamities  to  overtake  the  Americans  at  the  hands  of  their 
French  allies,  exhibited  by  many  Tory  writers— Outline  of  their  opinions 
on  the  subject—"  The  Prophecy,"  on  French  and  Papal  despotism  in 
America,  after  its  separation  from  England  by  the  help  of  Roman  Catholic 
France. 

X.— Distrust  as  to  the  wisdom  of  the  French  alliance,  even  among  Revolution* 
ary  statesmen— The  letters  of  Silas  Deane,  in  1781. 
50 


LOYALIST    WRITERS.  51 

I. 

IN  the  effort  to  obtain  a  just  view  of  the  part  actually 
taken  by  the  Loyalist  writers,  especially  in  the  final  and 
supreme  stage  of  the  Revolution  when  Independence  had 
become  its  avowed  object,  we  find  ourselves  confronting, 
at  the  outset,  two  notable  facts:  first,  the  marked  inferi- 
ority of  Loyalist  literature,  as  regards  mere  amount,  by 
comparison  with  the  literature  produced  during  the  same 
time  by  the  Revolutionists;  secondly,  the  lessened  confi- 
dence of  the  Loyalist  writers  in  serious  argumentative  dis- 
cussion, together  with  a  corresponding  increase  in  their 
employment  of  mere  emotional  appeal — that  is,  of  rapturous 
assertions  of  the  nobility,  strength,  and  assured  success  of 
their  own  cause,  and  derisive  assertions  of  the  baseness  and 
the  weakness  of  the  cause  of  their  countrymen  in  rebellion. 

That  the  writings  of  the  Loyalists,  from  1776  to  1783, 
were  in  number  inferior  to  those  of  the  opposite  party,  can 
now  surprise  no  one  who  considers  the  circumstances  of  that 
time,  when  all  active  Loyalists  had  been  ruthlessly  harried 
out  of  the  country  or  harried  into  the  enemy's  lines,  and 
when  in  all  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land,  from  New 
Hampshire  to  Georgia,  not  a  newspaper,  not  a  printing- 
press,  was  left  at  their  service,  excepting,  of  course,  in  the 
city  of  New  York  and  in  such  other  large  towns  as  might 
chance  to  be  for  any  part  of  the  time  under  British  occupa- 
tion. Moreover,  it  will  not  be  forgotten  that  such  execrable 
things  as  Tory  writings,  even  if  they  got  into  print,  could 
hardly  get  into  circulation;  they  could  come  in  only  as 
they  were  smuggled  in,  and  they  could  pass  from  hand  to 
hand  only  by  that  sort  of  stealth  which  is  itself  a  confession 
of  crime. 

As  regards  mere  vivacity,  the  literature  of  the  Loyalists 
is  in  no  respect  a  loser  by  its  increasing  disuse  of  serious 
debate,  any  more  than  it  is  a  loser  thereby  as  regards  its 
importance  for  historic  interpretation— for  its  use  to  us  in 
our  effort  to  enter  into  the  inward  life  of  that  period.  On 


52  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

both  sides,  men  took  part  in  the  struggle,  not  merely  with 
their  brains  and  their  hands,  but  with  their  hearts;  they 
waged  the  war  in  the  sphere  of  sentiment  and  passion,  as 
well  as  in  that  of  reason  and  physical  force ;  they  hurled  at 
one  another  not  only  facts  and  arguments,  but  sarcasms  and 
taunts  and  curses ;  they  fought  one  another,  as  with  logic, 
so  also  with  wit  and  humor  and  scoff  and  scorn.  Of  course, 
the  spiritual  history  of  such  a  controversy  is  left  half  told, 
so  long  as  the  emotional  side  of  it  is  left  untold. 

Finally,  if  we  would  do  justice  to  this  branch  of  Loyalist 
literature — if  we  would  even  understand  it — we  must  have 
in  mind  certain  peculiarities  in  the  attitude  of  the  Loyalists 
toward  the  Revolution,  and  especially  toward  their  own 
countrymen  who  were  pushing  it  on.  In  the  first  place, 
as  to  the  constitutional  and  political  questions  involved  in 
the  controversy,  the  Loyalists  had  an  unclouded  conviction 
that  they  themselves  were  right.  In  the  second  place, 
belonging  as  they  did,  in  many  cases,  to  the  oldest,  wealth- 
iest, most  dignified  families  in  the  country,  and  accustomed 
always  to  take  the  lead  in  the  affairs  of  their  several  colo- 
nies, they,  of  course,  looked  down  with  contempt  and  dis- 
gust upon  the  whole  Revolution  as  a  thoroughly  plebeian 
movement, — propelled  from  the  beginning,  as  they  thought, 
by  upstarts  and  adventurers, — obscure  attorneys,  black- 
smiths, shopkeepers,  and  ploughmen,  who  were  thus  pre- 
suming to  flout  at  their  betters,  and  to  turn  the  world 
upside  down  in  the  hope  of  being  themselves  at  last  on  top. 
In  the  third  place,  the  Loyalists  fully  expected  to  be  on  the 
winning  side.  They  had  the  most  perfect  assurance  of  the 
ultimate  and  utter  failure  of  the  rebellion ;  they  could  not 
conceive  it  as  possible,  that  these  colonial  rebels,  with  their 
lack  of  money,  their  lack  of  military  supplies,  their  lack  of 
military  training  and  experience,  could  hold  out  very  long, 
even  though  they  should  at  last  have  foreign  help,  as  against 
the  most  stupendous  military  and  naval  power  in  the  modern 
world. 

These  three  peculiarities  in  the  attitude  of  the  Loyalists 


LOYALIST   WRITERS.  53 

resulted  in  such  a  condition  of  mind  as  made  it  natural  for 
them  to  apply  to  the  rebellion,  and  especially  to  the  rebels, 
whatever  words  they  could  command  from  the  vocabulary 
of  derision  and  hate,  all  the  more  so  when  they  finally  lost 
faith  in  any  good  to  be  got  by  arguing  with  these  extremely 
determined  criminals.  Then,  indeed,  with  whatever  gifts 
they  had  for  prose  or  verse,  they  set  themselves  to  the  task 
of  keeping  up  their  own  spirits  and  of  keeping  down  the 
spirits  of  their  opponents,  by  lyric  celebrations  of  the  nobil- 
ity and  invincible  might  of  their  own  cause,  and  by  the 
most  scornful  vituperation  of  the  cause  which  they  so  hated 
and  despised.  Since  they  could  not  reason  down  the  rebel- 
lion, they  meant,  not  only  to  fight  'it  down,  but  to  laugh  it 
down,  to  sneer  it  down,  and  to  make  it  seem  to  all  the  world 
as  ridiculous  as,  to  themselves,  it  already  seemed  sordid  and 
vulgar  and  weak. 

II. 

From  the  very  beginning  of  any  sharp  division  between 
the  two  parties,  a  favorite  sarcasm  on  the  part  of  the  Tories 
had  been  one  aimed  at  the  gross  inconsistency  of  the  Whigs 
in  conducting  what  they  called  the  cause  of  liberty  by 
methods  which  simply  crushed  and  stifled  liberty, — the  only 
liberty  allowed  to  anybody  by  the  Whigs  being  the  liberty 
to  think  just  as  they  thought.  Consequently,  not  a  few 
persons,  it  was  said,  were  included  in  the  Whig  ranks 
because  of  their  own  timidity;  they  had  been  dragooned 
and  terrorized  into  an  apparent  support  of  the  Revolution ; 
their  Whiggism  was  but  a  mask  assumed  for  personal  safety 
against  intolerable  social  pressure  and  mob-violence.  Thus, 
the  most  practical  measure  of  the  Congress  of  1774  was  its 
so-called  "  association,"  which  had  been  carried  into  every 
community  and  had  been  offered  for  the  individual  assent  of 
every  colonist.  From  that  moment,  fidelity  to  the  "  asso- 
ciation "  had  become  a  test  of  every  man's  political  recti- 
tude. He  who  should  hesitate,  above  all,  he  who  should 
refuse,  to  sign  the  "  association,"  became  the  object  of 


54  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

public  suspicion  and  detestation ;  and  if  at  all  prominent  in 
the  community,  he  was  liable  to  gross  personal  indignities — 
to  be  tarred  and  feathered,  to  have  his  house  mobbed,  to  be 
ruined  in  business  and  in  property.  Many  a  man,  said  the 
Loyalists,  had  signed  the  "  association,"  not  because  he 
desired  to  do  so,  but  because  he  did  not  dare  to  refuse. 
There  remain  to  us  from  that  time  some  capital  verses  in 
the  form  of  a  parody  on  Hamlet's  soliloquy,  illustrating  the 
moral  ignominy  of  this  situation,  wherein,  according  to  the 
Tories,  multitudes  of  loyal  Americans  were  compelled  to 
become  trimmers  and  hypocrites  and  rebels,  or  else  to  flee 
from  home  and  country  and  their  established  means  of  live- 
lihood, and  to  find  in  'England  only  exile,  the  cold  pity  of 
strangers,  and  in  many  cases  hunger  and  rags  and  a  miser- 
able death.  This  little  poem,  written  by  some  unknown 
Tory  of  that  period,  is  called  "  The  Pausing  American 
Loyalist  ";  and  it  represents  such  a  person  as  communing 
with  himself  over  the  horrid  situation,  and  balancing  in  his 
mind  the  contrasted  claims  of  that  frightful  alternative  which 
was  thus  presented  to  him : 

"  To  sign,  or  not  to  sign  ! — That  is  the  question  : 
Whether  't  were  better  for  an  honest  man 
To  sign — and  so  be  safe  ;  or  to  resolve, 
Betide  what  will,  against  '  associations,' 
And,  by  retreating,  shun  them.     To  fly — I  reck 
Not  where — and,  by  that  flight,  t'  escape 
Feathers  and  tar,  and  thousand  other  ills 
That  Loyalty  is  heir  to  :  't  is  a  consummation 
Devoutly  to  be  wished.     To  fly— to  want — 
To  want  ? — perchance  to  starve  !     Ay,  there  's  the  rub  ! 
For,  in  that  chance  of  want,  what  ills  may  come 
To  patriot  rage,  when  I  have  left  my  all, 
Must  give  me  pause  !     There  's  the  respect 
That  makes  us  trim,  and  bow  to  men  we  hate. 
For,  who  would  bear  th'  indignities  o'  th'  times, 
Congress  decrees,  and  wild  Convention  plans, 
The  laws  controll'd,  and  inj'ries  unredressed, 


LOYALIST    WRITERS.  55 

The  insolence  of  knaves,  and  thousand  wrongs 
Which  patient  liege  men  from  vile  rebels  take, 
When  he,  sans  doubt,  might  certain  safety  find, 
Only  by  flying  ?     Who  would  bend  to  fools, 
And  truckle  thus  to  mad,  mob-chosen  upstarts, 
But  that  the  dread  of  something  after  flight 
(In  that  blest  country,  where,  yet,  no  moneyless 
Poor  wight  can  live)  puzzles  the  will, 
And  makes  ten  thousands  rather  sign — and  eat, 
Than  fly — to  starve  on  Loyalty  ! 
Thus,  dread  of  want  makes  cowards  of  us  all ; 
And,  thus,  the  native  hue  of  Loyalty 
Is  sicklied  o'er  with  a  pale  cast  of  trimming ; 
And  enterprises  of  great  pith  and  virtue, 
But  unsupported,  turn  their  streams  away, 
And  never  come  to  action."  ' 

If,  while  the  two  parties  were  thus  beginning  to  take  sides 
upon  the  issue  thus  formed,  such  tyranny  was  exercised 
over  the  opinions  and  actions  of  men,  to  what  monstrous 
size  might  not  this  tyranny  be  expected  to  grow  after  the 
issue  had  become  settled,  and  seasoned,  in  blood  ?  At  no 
later  period  of  the  Revolution,  therefore,  was  there  any  fail- 
ure on  the  part  of  the  Tory  writers  to  call  attention  to  this 
shocking  aspect  of  the  much-vaunted  movement  for  liberty : 
as,  in  1778,  in  a  ballad  called  "  The  Rebels," — 

"  For  one  lawful  ruler,  many  tyrants  we  Ve  got, 
Who  force  young  and  old  to  their  wars,  to  be  shot "  * ; 

or,  as  in  "A  Familiar  Epistle,"  addressed  to  Robert  Wills, 
the  printer  of  the  "  Carolina  Gazette,"  by  a  young  Loyalist 

1  This  parody,  which  clearly  belongs  to  the  period  between  the  first  and 
second  Congresses,  is  given  by  F.  Moore,  "  Diary  of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  i.  169,  as 
from  the  "  Middlesex  Journal  "  for  Jan.  30,  1776,  where,  if  that  date  be  cor- 
rectly given,  it  was  probably  reproduced  from  some  copy  printed  at  least  a  year 
earlier. 

*  The  whole  ballad  is  given  in  F.  Moore,  "  Songs  and  Ballads  of  the  Rev.," 
108. 


56  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

of  Charleston,  who  was  seized  and  thrown  into  jail  for  the 
crime  of  having  written  it : 

"  Excuse  me,  dear  Robert,  I  can't  think  it  true, 
Though  Solomon  says  it,  that  nothing  is  new. 
Had  he  lived  in  these  times,  we  had  rather  been  told 
Our  West  World  's  so  new,  it  has  nothing  that 's  old. 
Put  should  he  insist  in  his  own  way  to  have  it, 
I  would  beg  leave  to  ask  of  this  wise  son  of  David 
A  few  simple  questions  :  as,  where  he  e'er  saw 
Men  legally  punished  for  not  breaking  the  law  ? 

I  Tarr'd,  feather'd,  and  carted  for  drinking  Bohea  ? — 
And  by  force  and  oppression  compell'd  to  be  free?— • 
The  same  men  maintaining  that  all  human  kind 
Are,  have  been,  and  shall  be,  as  free  as  the  wind, 
Yet  impaling  and  burning  their  slaves  for  believing 
The  truth  of  the  lessons  they  're  constantly  giving  ? "  * 

III. 

Closely  connected  with  this  taunt  that  the  pretended 
champions  of  liberty  were  actual  perpetrators  of  despotism, 
and,  indeed,  often  woven  with  it  into  the  same  passage  of 
satire,  was  the  added  taunt  as  to  their  low  origin  and  vulgar 
occupations  and  characters : 

"  With  loud  peals  of  laughter,  your  sides,  sirs,  would  crack, 
To  see  General  Convict,  and  Colonel  Shoe-black, 

With  their  hunting-shirts  and  rifle-guns  ; 
See  cobblers  and  quacks,  rebel  priests  and  the  like, 
Pettifoggers  and  barbers,  with  sword  and  with  pike, 
All  strutting,  the  standard  of  Satan  beside, 
And  honest  names  using,  their  black  deeds  to  hide."* 

1  The  whole  poem  is  given  in  "  The  Loyalist  Poetry  of  the  Rev.,"  58-60. 
Its  exact  date  is  not  ascertained.     Though  it  appeared  in  "  The  Pennsylvania 
Ledger"  for  February  14,  1778,  it  had  probably  been  printed  before. 

2  Part  of  the  ballad  called   "The  Rebels,"  by  the    Loyalist   officer,  John 
Ferdinand  Smyth,  in  F.  Moore,  "  Songs  and  Ballads  of  the  Rev.,"  197-198. 


LOYALIST    WRITERS.  57 

The  keynote  of  a  great  deal  of  Loyalist  sarcasm  is  given 
in  this  charge  that  the  Revolutionist  party  is  a  party  of 
upstarts  and  nobodies,  while  the  Loyalist  leaders,  from  their 
superior  wealth,  cultivation,  social  position,  and  from  their 
habits  of  political  prominence,  claimed  to  be  and  seemed  to 
be  the  old  nobility,  who,  standing  by  the  law  and  the  right, 
were  being  displaced  and  hustled  aside  by  proletariats — by 
political  parvenus  and  nondescripts.  The  Revolution  was 
brought  about,  they  said,  not  by  the  true  men  of  the  coun- 
try— the  men  who  had  the  most  stake  in  it — but  by  needy 
young  lawyers,  by  bankrupts  and  defaulters,  by  uneasy 
adventurers,  by  word-spouting  cobblers  and  tinkers  who 
found  mending  the  state  an  easier  and  a  more  lucrative  job 
than  that  of  mending  kettles  and  patching  shoes.  Thus, 
in  "The  New  York  Gazette"  for  May  23,  1778,  was 
printed  "  A  Modern  Catechism,"  consisting,  in  part,  of  the 
following  questions  and  answers : 

"  Q.  Who  have  been  the  principal  advocates  for,  and 
instigators  of,  the  American  Revolution  ? 

"  A.  An  unprincipled  and  a  disappointed  faction  in  the 
mother  country,  and  an  infernal,  dark-designing  group  of 
men  in  America  audaciously  styling  themselves  a  Con- 
gress. 

"  Q.     What  kind  of  men  compose  the  Congress  ? 

"A.  It  consists  of  obscure,  pettifogging  attorneys, 
bankrupt  shopkeepers,  outlawed  smugglers,  etc.,  etc. 

"  Q.     Of  what  complexion  are  their  mobs  and  leaders  ? 

A  The  wretched  banditti  .  .  .  are  the  refuse  and 
dregs  of  mankind ;  their  generals  are  men  of  rank  and  honor 
nearly  on  a  par  with  those  of  the  Congress." 

Even  in  Europe  was  spread  this  opinion  as  to  the  low- 
born origin  and  vulgar  characters  of  many  of  the  Revolu- 
tionist party,  as  may  partly  be  seen  from  a  list  of  them 
drawn  up  by  Professor  August  Schlozer,  of  Gottingen,  prob- 
ably from  information  furnished  him  by  some  of  the  German 
auxiliaries  in  America.  According  to  this  list,  General 
McDougall  was  originally  a  sailor,  Arnold  a  horse-dealer, 


58  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Putnam  an  inn-keeper,  Sullivan  a  breeches-maker,  Knox  a 
blacksmith,  Greene  an  advocate,  disbarred,  Wayne  a  tanner- 
boy,  Irvine  a  hatter,  Maxwell  a  swineherd,  Nagle  a  cowherd, 
and  Glover  a  tailor;  while  others  are  named  as  of  broken 
and  disreputable  business  antecedents.1  It  was  no  uncom- 
mon thing,  in  the  earlier  years  of  the  Revolution,  for  Samuel 
Adams  to  be  described  as  a  mere  tax-collector  embarrassed 
by  official  dishonesty,  as  a  vulgar  and  an  unscrupulous  village 
politician;  and  John  Adams,  as  a  reckless  political  adven- 
turer, with  nothing  to  lose  and  everything  to  win  by  tumult, 
as  spurred  on  to  desperate  measures  by  poverty,  by  disap- 
pointment, and  by  a  passion  for  notoriety;  and  when,  in 
1770,  Governor  Shirley  spoke  contemptuously  of  their  lack 
of  standing,  describing  them  as  that  "  brace  of  Adamses," 
the  younger  of  them  replied  in  language  which  seemed 
proudly  to  concede  the  point  of  social  inferiority :  Is  it 
not  a  pity  that  a  brace  of  so  obscure  a  breed  should  be  the 
only  ones  to  defend  the  household,  when  the  generous  mas- 
tiffs and  best-blooded  hounds  are  all  hushed  to  silence  by 
the  bones  and  crumbs  that  are  thrown  to  them  ?  Even 
Cerberus  himself  is  bought  off  with  a  sop."  " 

In  a  different  form  the  same  classic  sneer  of  the  Tories  is 
embalmed  in  these  lines,  written  by  an  unknown  versifier  in 
South  Carolina: 

"  Not  only  our  money  from  nothing  appears, 
From  nothing  our  hopes,  and  from  nothing  our  fears, 
From  nothing  our  statesmen,  our  army,  our  fleet, — 
From  nothing  they  came,  and  to  nought  they  '11  retreat, 
And  no  arms  they  handle  so  well  as  their  feet. 
Down  at  night  a  bricklayer  or  carpenter  lies, 
With  next  sun  a  Lycurgus  or  Solon  doth  rise  ; 

Priests,  tailors,  and  cobblers  fill  with  heroes  the  camp, 
And  sailors,  like  crawfish,  crawl  out  of  each  swamp."  * 

1  Aug.  L.  Schlozer.  "  Correspondence,"  viii.  3. 

"  The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  ii.  233,  295. 
8  "  The  Loyalist  Poetry  of  the  Rev.,"  59-60. 


LOYALIST    WRITERS.  59 

IV. 

Moreover,  it  is  habitual  with  the  Loyalist  writers  to  speak 
of  the  men  who  brought- on  and  conducted  the  Revolution, 
not  only  as  upstarts,  as  mere  nobodies  tossed  into  promi- 
nence by  social  commotion,  but  as  positively  bad  men,  as 
insincere  and  selfish  men,  as  political  hypocrites  and  knaves, 
who  were  knowingly  misleading  the  people  into  crime  and 
ruin.  No  doubt  the  Tories  truly  thought  that  the  Revolu- 
tionary leaders  were  as  a  class  what  they  uniformly  called 
them,  great  scoundrels;  and  finding  the  choicest  representa- 
tives of  these  scoundrels  brought  together  in  Congress,  very 
naturally  they  poured  out  upon  that  particular  body  by  name 
their  choicest  execration.  A  sufficiently  vigorous  example 
of  this  pleasant  habit  of  theirs  is  furnished  to  our  hands  by 
a  Tory  ballad  called  "  The  Congress,"  which  was  written 
in  the  spring  of  1776,  and  which  at  once  endeared  itself  to 
the  whole  Tory  party  by  the  comprehensiveness  and  alacrity 
of  its  curses  upon  every  man  and  hat  and  shoestring  in  that 
detestable  sham-legislature : 

"  These  hardy  knaves  and  stupid  fools, 
Some  apish  and  pragmatic  mules, 
Some  servile  acquiescing  tools, — 

These,  these  compose  the  Congress  ! 

"  When  Jove  resolved  to  send  a  curse, 
And  all  the  woes  of  life  rehearse, 
Not  plague,  not  famine,  but  much  worse- 
He  cursed  us  with  a  Congress. 

"  Then  peace  forsook  this  hapless  shore, 
Then  cannons  blazed  with  horrid  roar  ; 
We  hear  of  blood,  death,  wounds,  and  gore, 
The  offspring  of  the  Congress. 

"  Imperial  Rome  from  scoundrels  rose, 
Her  grandeur  's  hailed  in  verse  and  prose  ; 


60  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Venice  the  dregs  of  sea  compose  ; 
So  sprung  the  mighty  Congress. 

"  When  insects  vile  emerge  to  light, 
They  take  their  short  inglorious  flight, 
Then  sink  again  to  native  night, 
An  emblem  of  the  Congress. 

"With  freemen's  rights  they  wanton  play; 
At  their  command,  we  fast  and  pray  ; 
With  worthless  paper  they  us  pay, 
A  fine  device  of  Congress. 

"  With  poverty  and  dire  distress, 
With  standing  armies  us  oppress, 
Whole  troops  to  Pluto  swiftly  press, 
As  victims  to  the  Congress. 


"  Good  Lord  !  disperse  this  venal  tribe ; 
Their  doctrine  let  no  fools  imbibe — 
Let  Balaam  no  more  asses  ride, 

Nor  burdens  bear  to  Congress. 

"  With  puffs,  and  flams,  and  gasconade, 
With  stupid  jargon  they  bravade  ; 
We  transports  take — Quebec  invade — 
With  laurels  crown  the  Congress. 

"  Our  mushroom  champions  they  dragoon, 
We  cry  out  hero,  not  poltroon, 
The  next  campaign  we  '11  storm  the  moon, 
And  there  proclaim  the  Congress. 

"  Old  Catiline,  and  Cromwell  too, 
Jack  Cade,  and  his  seditious  crew, 
Hail  brother-rebel  at  first  view, 

And  hope  to  meet  the  Congress. 


LOYALIST    WRITERS.  6l 

"  The  world  's  amazed  to  see  the  pest 
The  tranquil  land  with  wars  infest  ; 
Britannia  puts  them  to  the  test, 

And  tries  the  strength  of  Congress. 

"  O  goddess,  hear  our  hearty  prayers  ; 
Confound  the  villains  by  the  ears  ; 
Disperse  the  plebeians — try  the  peers, 
And  execute  the  Congress. 

"  See,  see,  our  hope  begins  to  dawn  ! 
Bold  Carleton  scours  the  Northern  lawn, 
The  sons  of  faction  sigh  forlorn, 
Dejected  is  the  Congress. 

"  Clinton,  Burgoyne  and  gallant  Howe, 
Will  soon  reward  our  conduct  true, 
And  to  each  traitor  give  his  due, 
Perdition  waits  the  Congress. 


"  Prepare,  prepare,  my  friends,  prepare 
For  scenes  of  blood,  the  field  of  .war  ; 
To  royal  standard  we  '11  repair, 

And  curse  the  haughty  Congress. 

"  Huzza  !  huzza  !  we  thrice  huzza  ! 
Return  peace,  harmony,  and  law  ! 
Restore  such  times  as  once  we  saw, 
And  bid  adieu  to  Congress."  ' 

V. 

Besides  the  vulgarity  and  the  political  profligacy  of  the 
men  who  composed  the  American  Congress,  the  amazing 
exploits  of  that  body  in  the  field  of  public  finance  were  a 


"  The  Loyalist  Poetry  of  the  Rev.,"  70-74. 


62  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

theme  for  inextinguishable  laughter  on  the  part  of  the 
Tories.  It  must  be  admitted  that,  to  an  unfriendly  ob- 
server, there  was  no  slight  inducement  to  satire  in  the  fiscal 
policy  of  this  famous  legislature,  obliged,  as  it  was,  to  pro- 
vide for  the  expenses  of  a  great  war,  and  yet  being  itself 
destitute  of  the  power  to  raise  a  dollar  by  any  form  of  tax- 
ation. No  doubt,  also,  there  were  in  Congress  some  mem- 
bers with  very  magnificent  conceptions  of  the  ability  even 
of  such  a  legislature  to  create  money  merely  by  setting 
in  motion  a  printing  press;  like  that  delegate  who,  in  a 
debate  on  the  necessity  of  a  tax  as  a  means  of  getting 
money  for  the  public  debt,  is  said  to  have  exclaimed — "  Do 
you  think,  gentlemen,  that  I  will  consent  to  load  my  con- 
^stituents  with  taxes,  when  we  can  send  to  our  printer  and 
f  get  a  wagon-load  of  money,  one  quire  of  which  will  pay  for 
the  whole  ?"  l 

Whatever  may  have  been  its  justification,  Congress  did 
attempt  to  create  money  by  its  own  fiat  as  applied  to  certain 
oblong  bits  of  paper,  and  with  results  among  the  most 
ghastly  in  the  history  of  finance;  its  issues  of  such  money 
amounting  to  six  millions  of  dollars  in  1775,  to  nineteen 
millions  in  1776,  to  thirteen  millions  in  1777,  to  over 
sixty-three  millions  in  1778,  and  to  one  hundred  and  forty 
millions  in  1779."  Although,  at  first,  this  paper  circulated 
at  par,  yet  shortly  after  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
the  process  of  depreciation  began  and  then  went  on  with 
terrific  speed.  At  the  end  of  the  year  1777,  one  Con- 
gress-dollar was  worth  only  thirty-three  cents,  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  year  1779  only  twelve  cents,  and  at  the 
beginning  of  1780  less  than  two  cents.3  A  correspondent 
of  General  Gates,  writing  from  Virginia  in  the  latter  year, 
mentions  the  payment  of  eleven  dollars  for  a  pound  of 
brown  sugar,  of  seventy-five  dollars  for  a  yard  of  linen,  and 

1  Pelatiah  Webster,  "  Political  Essays,"  7-8  n. 

4  Charles  J.  Bullock,  "The  Finances  of  the  U.  S.  from   1775  to  1789,  with 
Especial  Reference  to  the  Budget,"  130. 
3  Ibid.  126,  129,  130,  136. 


LOYALIST    WRITERS.  63 

of  one  hundred  dollars  for  a  pound  of  tea.1  When,  in  the 
year  1780,  Gates  was  ordered  by  Congress  to  proceed  from 
his  home  in  Virginia  to  the  army  in  South  Carolina, — not  a 
long  journey — he  was  allowed  thirty-thousand  dollars  in 
continental  money  for  his  traveling  expenses.  On  arriving 
at  his  destination,  he  found  it  necessary  to  build  a  hundred 
yards  of  picketing  as  an  enclosure  for  some  British  prisoners 
in  his  custody,  and  was  somewhat  startled  to  find  that  it 
cost  him  $500,000.'  In  1781,  Jefferson  records  the  fee  of 
his  physician  for  two  calls  as  $3000,  and  the  price  of  three 
quarts  of  brandy  as  $355.50.  Thomas  Paine  mentions  the 
purchase  of  a  pair  of  woolen  stockings,  for  which  he  paid 
$300. 3 

This  grotesque  depreciation  in  the  currency  provided  by 
the  Revolutionary  government  seemed  to  be  ominous  of  its 
inevitable  and  speedy  failure  in  the  attempt  to  keep  up  the 
war  with  only  such  sinews  of  war;  and  doubtless,  it  was  for 
its  tremendous  effect  in  deepening  and  extending  public 
expectation  of  the  speedy  collapse  of  the  Revolution,  that 
the  comedy  of  Congressional  financiering  received  so  much 
attention  from  the  Tory  humorists.  Within  three  months 
after  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  the  "  New  York 
Gazette  "  contained  a  satirical  advertisement  calling  for  a 
quantity  of  Congress-dollars  as  a  particularly  cheap  form  of 
papering  for  the  walls  of  a  house ;  and,  at  about  the  same 
time,  a  lampoon  insinuating  that  this  money  was  then  com- 
monly used  for  kindling  fires,  lighting  pipes,  shaving,  and  still 
more  ignoble  uses;  and  a  year  or  two  later,  the  account  of  a 

Dream,"  wherein  was  seen  a  vision  of  the  "  hall  of  jus- 
tice "  in  the  nether  world,  and  the  arrival  there  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  American  Congress.  These  mighty  senators 

were  so  fond  of  their  usurped  dignity  as  to  have  brought 
their  chairs  along  with  them  at  the  expense  of  paying 
double  ferriage  "  in  crossing  the  Styx.  This  additional 

1  I  take  these  items  from  the  Gates  Papers,  still  unpublished,  belonging  to 
the  N.  Y.  Historical  Society. 

2  Gates  Papers.  3  Conway,  "  Life  of  Paine,"  i.  161. 


64  THE   A  At  ERIC  AN  REVOLUTION. 

charge,  however,  had  made  little  difference  to  them,  "  as 
they  had  all  taken  in  Charon,  who  was  such  a  simpleton  as 
to  take  Congress-dollars  in  payment,  which  he  is  now  offer- 
ing at  the  rate  of  thirty-seven  for  one,  swearing  at  the  same 
time  that  "  these  American  Congressmen  "  and  their  lumber 
were  the  most  disagreeable  load  he  ever  carried ;  for  every 
one  in  his  turn  attempted  to  take  the  helm,  and  one  Put- 
nam was  finding  fault  with  the  constitution  of  his  boat."  ' 
Even  among  the  friends  of  the  Revolution,  the  disgust  of 
the  people  with  the  currency  provided  by  Congress  became 
so  great  that  in  1781,  according  to  a  lively  narrative  given 
in  the  same  repository  of  Loyalist  humor,  there  was  in 
Philadelphia  a  boisterous  parade  composed  of  citizens  of 
that  town  wearing  paper  dollars  in  their  hats  for  cockades, 
and  carrying  in  front  of  them  a  dog  besmeared  with  tar  but 
having  paper  dollars  stuck  on  instead  of  feathers,  this  dog 
being  followed  by  a  jailor  in  the  act  of  refusing  the  paper 
money  which  a  poor  prisoner  had  offered  him  for  a  glass  of 
rum,  and  by  a  group  of  tradesmen  who  had  shut  up  their 
shops  and  would  sell  no  more  goods  for  such  money.*  All 
this  was  exhibited  in  front  of  the  state  house,  with  Con- 
gress inside  and  invited  to  witness  the  spectacle  without  any 
charge. 

Of  course,  in  such  a  condition  of  the  public  finances,  the 
officers  and  men  of  the  Revolutionary  army  were  reduced 
to  the  greatest  distress,  and  often  presented  a  tattered  ap- 
pearance perhaps  unrivaled  in  military  history,  except  by 
Falstaff's  men, — since  the  paper  dollars  in  which  they 
received  their  pay,  instead  of  relieving  them,  only  added  to 
the  rags  of  which  they  already  had  an  abundance.  After  the 
arrival  of  the  French  allies,  many  American  officers  were 
unable,  for  lack  of  decent  clothes  and  decent  food,  to  recip- 
rocate social  courtesies  with  these  elegant  foreign  friends. 
Not  from  inhumanity,  surely,  but  on  account  of  its  perti- 
nence to  the  question  as  to  how  long  a  rebellion  supported 

1  "  The  New  York  Gazette,"  Jan.  30,  1779.  3  Ibid.  May  12,  1781. 


LOYALIST    WRITERS.  65 

in  such  a  way  might  be  expected  to  hold  out,  this  impov- 
erished condition  of  the  American  army  was  constantly  held 
up  to  ridicule.  A  single  specimen  of  such  Tory  ridicule 
may  suffice  us :  it  is  an  entry  in  the  diary  of  a  British  officer 
in  New  York  for  March  I,  1777.  "  A  deserter  from  the 
rebel  army  at  Westchester,  who  came  into  New  York  this 
morning,  says  that  the  Congress  troops  are  suffering  ex- 
tremely for  food  and  rum ;  that  there  is  not  a  whole  pair  of 
breeches  in  the  army ;  and  that  the  last  news  from  Mr. 
Washington's  camp  was,  that  he  had  to  tie  up  his  with 
strings,  having  parted  with  the  buttons  to  buy  the  neces- 
saries of  life.  There.is  great  plenty  of  rag  money,  but  since 
old  Franklin  went  to  France,  there  is  no  one  left  to  argue 
it  into  the  favor  of  the  Jerseymen,  who,  though  justly  called 
Republican^  are  not  willing  to  give  even  bad  provisions  for 
Congress  notes,  or  mere  rebel  promises  to  pay." 

VI. 

The  Tory  humorists  were  by  no  means  content  with  ridi- 
cule of  the  rebellion  in  general,  or  even  of  certain  great 
groups  of  rebels  embodied  in  the  shape  of  a  congress  or  of 
an  army ;  they  perhaps  found  their  keenest  sport  in  pointing 
their  shafts  at  individual  rebels,  as  Washington,  Charles 
Lee,  Putnam,  William  Livingston,  Robert  Morris,  Frank- 
lin, the  Adamses,  and,  especially,  at  their  own  erring  brother 
of  the  quill,  Mr.  Thomas  Paine.  Thus,  in  their  chief  news- 
paper, for  January  30,  1779,  are  reported,  by  the  favorite 
means  of  a  prophetic  vision,  certain  transactions  soon  to 
take  place  in  the  infernal  regions,  involving  the  doom  to  be 
meted  out  to  the  leading  rebels,  as  fast  as  they  shall  present 
themselves  before  that  ultimate  tribunal.  Among  them,  in 
due  course,  arrived  Paine,  who,  having  "  a  huge  bundle  of 
papers  on  his  back,  openly  accused  Mr.  Robert  Morris  of 
negligence  and  dishonesty  in  his  dealings  with  the  public. 

1  Smythe's  Diary,  cited  in  F.  Moore,  "  Diary  of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  i.  399-400. 


66  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Morris  arose  in  great  rage  to  reply,  or  knock  him  down," 
whereupon  the  papers  on  Paine's  shoulders,  "  expanding 
themselves,  assumed  the  form  of  wings;  and  his  body, 'sud- 
denly diminishing,  exhibited  the  form  of  a  mosquito,  which 
immediately  flew  away  into  Tartarus,  where  he  found  the 
climate  agreeable  to  his  constitution." 

Some  months  afterward,  in  the  same  newspaper,  the  same 
troublesome  rebel  penman  is  made  the  object  of  a  salutation 
so  ardent  as  to  require  the  aid  of  verse : 

"  Hail  mighty  Thomas  !  in  whose  works  are  seen 
A  mangled  Morris  and  distorted  Deane  ; 
Whose  splendid  periods  flash  for  Lee's  defense, — 
Replete  with  everything  but  Common  Sense. 
You,  by  whose  labors  no  man  e'er  was  wiser, 
You,  of  invective  great  monopolizer  ; 
You,  who,  unfeeling  as  a  Jew  or  Turk, 
Attack  a  Jay,  a  Paca,  and  a  Burke  ; 
You,  who,  in  fervor  of  satiric  vein, 
Maul  and  abuse  the  mild  and  meek  Duane, 
And  eager  to  traduce  the  worthiest  men, 
Despite  the  energy  of  Drayton's  pen, — 
O  say,  what  name  shall  dignify  the  lays 
Which  now  I  consecrate  to  sing  thy  praise  ! 
In  pity  tell  by  what  exalted  name 
Thou  would'st  be  damned  to  an  eternal  fame : 
Shall  Common  Sense,  or  Comus  greet  thine  ear, 
A  piddling  poet,  or  puffed  pamphleteer  ? 

. 

But  sure  no  mortal  mother  did  thee  bear  ; — 
Rather  a  colic  in  the  prince  of  air, 
On  dusky  pinions  borne  o'er  ^Ether's  plain, 
Expelled  thee  from  him  in  a  griping  pain. 

Such  was  thy  brigin  :  such  be  thy  fate — 
To  war  'gainst  virtue  with  a  deadly  hate  ; 
By  daily  slanders  earn  thy  daily  food, 
Exalt  the  wicked,  and  depress  the  good  ; 


LOYALIST    WRITERS.  6/ 

And,  having  spent  a  lengthy  life  in  evil 
Return  again  unto  thy  parent  devil !  "  * 

VII. 

A  tremendous  opportunity  for  the  Tory  satirists  was  fur- 
nished by  what  proved  to  be  the  military  and  naval  anti- 
climax of  the  French  alliance, — that  grotesque  and  yet 
imposing  combination  of  the  autocrat  of  France  with  these 
fierce  democrats  of  America  whose  political  principles  con- 
tained nothing  which  was  not  detestable  to  him.  As  to  the 
Americans  themselves,  the  immediate  effects  of  the  French 
alliance  were  to  relax  their  own  energies  in  the  war,  and  to 
deepen  still  further  that  torpor,  that  supineness,  that  reluc- 
tance to  make  any  more  sacrifices  for  the  Revolution,  which 
had  already  grieved  the  heart  and  paralyzed  the  arm  of 
Washington.  That  the  king  of  France  had  resolved  to  pay 
off  sundry  old  scores  against  his  good  brother,  the  king  of 
England,  by  putting  his  own  fleets  and  armies  at  the  service 
of  the  American  insurgents,  was  an  announcement  received 
in  America  by  the  most  gleeful  predictions  of  immediate 
and  vast  successes  against  the  British  arms  on  land  and  sea. 
For  several  years,  however,  these  predictions  failed  to  come 
true. 

Thus,  the  first  campaign,  that  of  1778,  brought  with  it 
only  such  humiliations  as  the  defeat  at  Monmouth,  the  fail- 
ure of  the  French  fleet  to  appear  at  the  right  time  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Delaware,  its  failure  to  overcome  the  diffi- 
culty of  an  allied  attack  on  New  York,  its  failure,  also,  in 
the  allied  attack  on  Newport.  In  short,  the  first  year  of 
the  French  alliance  had  been  a  fiasco.  In  view  of  these  facts, 
the  Loyalists  raised  the  cry  of  victory, — claiming  that^the 

1  "  The  New  York  Gazette,"  for  August  n,  i?79-  This  newspaper,  printed 
by  James  Rivington,  is  the  great  reservoir  for  Loyalist  humor  and  sarcasm  dur- 
ing the  Revolution.  The  files  of  that  paper  most  used  by  me  in  these  researches 
are  those  in  the  library  of  the  N.  Y.  Historical  Society,  although  I  have  also 
turned  over  copies  to  be  seen  elsewhere,  as  at  Boston,  Worcester,  and  Phila- 
delphia. 


68  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

rebel  cause  was  ruined  and  was  about  to  be  abandoned. 
An  example  of  this  is  furnished  by  a  sprightly  and  good- 
humored  song,  to  the  tune  of  "  Deny  Down,"  which  was 
printed  in  broadside,  and  was  posted  up  in  the  streets  of 
New  York,  and  even  of  Philadelphia,  in  October,  1778.  It 
is  entitled  "  The  Epilogue,"  and  is  supposed  to  be  sung  by 
the  members  of  the  Continental  Congress  at  the  conclusion 
of  the  farce  "  Independence,"  which  they  had  been  for 
several  years  so  ingloriously  playing: 

"  Our  farce  is  now  finished,  your  sport 's  at  an  end  ! 
But  ere  you  depart,  let  the  voice  of  a  friend, 
By  way  of  a  chorus,  the  evening  crown 
With  a  song  to  the  tune  of  a  hey  derry  down, 
Derry  down,  down,  hey  derry  down. 

"  Old  Shakespeare,  a  poet  who  should  not  be  spit  on, 
Although  he  was  born  in  an  island  called  Britain, 
Hath  said  that  mankind  are  all  players  at  best — 
A  truth  we  '11  admit  of,  for  sake  of  the  jest. 

"  On  this  puny  stage  we  've  strutted  our  hour, 
And  have  acted  our  parts  to  the  best  of  our  power  ; 
That  the  farce  hath  concluded — not  perfectly  well — 
Was  surely  the  fault  of  the  Devil  in  Hell  ! 

"  This  Devil  you  know,  out  of  spleen  to  the  Church, 
Will  oftentimes  leave  his  best  friends  in  the  lurch, 
And  turn  them  adrift  in  the  midst  of  their  joy, — 
'T  is  a  difficult  matter  to  cheat  the  Old  Boy. 

"  Since  this  is  the  case,  we  must  e'en  make  the  best 
Of  a  game  that  is  lost  :  let  us  turn  it  to  jest ! 
We  '11  smile,  nay,  we  '11  laugh,  we  '11  carouse,  and  we  '11  sing, 
And  cheerfully  drink  life  and  health  to  the  king. 

"  Let  Washington  now  from  his  mountains  descend — 
Who  knows  but  in  George  he  may  still  find  a  friend  ? 


LOYALIST   WRITERS.  69 

A  Briton,  although  he  loves  bottle  and  wench, 
Is  an  honester  fellow  than  parle  vous  French. 

"  Our  great  '  Independence  '  we  give  to  the  wind, 
And  pray  that  Great  Britain  may  once  more  be  kind : 
In  this  jovial  song  all  hostility  ends, 
And  Britons  and  we  will  forever  be  friends. 

"  Boys,  fill  me  a  bumper  !  now  join  in  the  chorus  ! 
There  is  happiness  still  in  the  prospect  before  us. 
In  this  sparkling  glass,  all  hostility  ends, 
And  Britons  and  we  will  for  ever  be  friends  !  "  l 

As  to  the  second  campaign  under  the  French  alliance, 
that  of  1779,  its  only  successes — like  those  at  Stony  Point 
and  Paulus  Hook — were  in  slight  actions  from  which  the 
French  were  absent;  its  greatest  disaster  was  in  the  only 
action  of  the  year  at  which  the  French  were  present.  For, 
after  the  affair  off  Newport  in  the  preceding  year,  D'Es- 
taing,  having  first  gone  into  Boston  harbor  and  there 
repaired  his  fleet,  had  flitted  away  to  the  West  Indies,  and 
thenceforward,  for  many  months,  was  seen  no  more.  In 
September  of  1779,  in  response  to  American  solicitations, 
he  sailed  for  the  coast  of  Georgia  "  with  a  fleet  consisting 
of  twenty  sail  of  the  line,  two  of  fifty  guns,  and  eleven 
frigates.  As  soon  as  his  arrival  was  known,  General  Lin- 
coln with  the  army  under  his  command  marched  for  Savan- 
nah. .  .  .  Before  the  arrival  of  General  Lincoln,  Count 
D'Estaing  demanded  a  surrender  of  the  town  to  the  arms  of 
France.  Prevost  asked  a  suspension  of  hostilities  twenty- 
four  hours  for  preparing  terms,  and  the  request  was  incau- 
tiously granted.  Before  the  stipulated  time  had  elapsed, 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Maitland,  with  about  800  men,  after 
struggling  with  great  difficulties,  arrived  from  Beaufort, 
and  joined  the  royal  army  at  Savannah.  ...  On  the 
morning  of  the  4th  of  October,  the  batteries  of  the  besiegers 
were  opened  with  9  mortars,  37  pieces  of  cannon  from  the 

1  The  entire  song  is  given  in  F.  Moore,  "  Songs  and  Ballads,"  etc.,  220-223. 


TO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

land  side,  and  15  from  the  water.  ...  It  was  deter- 
mined to  make  an  assault.  .  .  .  On  the  Qth  of  October, 
while  two  feints  were  made  with  the  militia,  a  real  attack 
was  made  on  Spring  Hill  battery  just  as  daylight  appeared, 
with  two  columns  consisting  of  35CXD  French,  600  Conti- 
nentals, and  350  of  the  inhabitants  of  Charleston.  The 
principal  of  these  columns,  commanded  by  Count  D'Estaing 
and  General  Lincoln,  marched  up  boldly  to  the  lines ;  but 
a  heavy  and  well  directed  fire  from  the  galleys  threw  the 
front  of  the  column  into  confusion.  The  places  of  those 
who  fell  being  instantly  supplied  by  others,  it  still  moved 
on  until  it  reached  a  redoubt,  where  the  contest  became 
more  fierce  and  desperate.  ...  A  French  and  an 
American  standard  were  for  an  instant  planted  on  the  para- 
pet ;  but  the  assailants,  after  sustaining  the  enemy's  fire  for 
fifty-five  minutes,  were  ordered  to  retreat.  Of  the  French, 
637,  and  of  the  Continentals  and  militia,  241  were  killed  or 
wounded.  Immediately  after  this  unsuccessful  assault,  the 
militia  almost  universally  went  to  their  homes,  and  Count 
D'Estaing,  reembarking  his  troops  and  artillery,  left  the 
continent."  ' 

.Such  was  the  end  of  the  second  year  of  the  French  alli- 
ance ;  and  at  the  festival  of  mirth  which  this  event  gave  to 
the  Loyalists,  one  of  the  dishes  with  which  they  regaled 
themselves  was  this  jocular  street-ballad  telling  the  story  of 
the  allied  attack  on  Savannah : 

"  With  warlike  parade, 

And  his  Irish  brigade, 
His  ships  and  his  spruce  Gallic  host,  sir, 

As  proud  as  an  elf, 

D'Estaing  came  himself, 
And  landed  on  Georgia's  coast,  sir. 

"  There  joining  a  band, 
Under  Lincoln's  command, 

1  A.  Holmes,  "Annals,"  etc.,  ii.,  297-298. 


LOYALIST    WRITERS.  Jl 

Of  rebels  and  traitors  and  Whigs,  sir, 

'Gainst  the  town  of  Savannah 

He  planted  his  banner, 
And  then  he  felt  wondrous  big,  sir. 

"  With  thund'ring  of  guns, 

And  bursting  of  bombs, 
He  thought  to  have  frightened  our  boys,  sir  ; 

But  amidst  all  their  din, 

Brave  Maitland  pushed  in, 
And  Moncrieffe  cried,  '  A  fig  for  your  noise,  sir  ! ' 

"  Chagrined  at  delay, 

As  he  meant  not  to  stay, 
The  Count  formed  his  troops  in  the  morn,  sir; 

Van,  centre,  and  rear 

Marched  up  without  fear, 
Cocksure  of  success,  by  a  storm,  sir. 

"  Though  rude  was  the  shock, 

Unmoved  as  a  rock 
Stood  our  firm  British  bands  to  their  works,  sir  ; 

While  the  brave  German  corps 

And  Americans  bore 
Their  parts  as  intrepid  as  Turks,  sir. 

"  Then  muskets  did  rattle, 

Fierce  raged  the  battle, 
Grapeshot,  it  flew  thicker  than  hail,  sir ; 

The  ditch, filled  with  slain, 

Blood  dyed  all  the  plain, 
When  rebels  and  French  turned  tail,  sir. 


"  There  Pulaski  fell, 

That  imp  of  old  Bell, 
Who  attempted  to  murder  his  king,  sir  ; 
But  now  he  is  gone — 


J2  THE  AMERICAN  DEVOLUTION. 

Whence  he  '11  never  return, 
But  will  make  Hell  with  treason  to  ring,  sir. 

"  To  Charleston  with  fear, 

The  rebels  repair  ; 
D'Estaing  scampers  back  to  his  boats,  sir  ; 

Each  blaming  the  other, 

Each  cursing  his  brother, 
And — may  they  cut  each  other's  throats,  sir."1 

Upon  the  whole,  the  military  events  of  the  year  1779 
bore  so  unfavorable  an  aspect  for  the  Revolutionary  cause 
as  to  give  some  ground  for  the  enemy's  claim  that  the 
rebels,  cursed  by  the  outstretched  hand  of  France,  had  at 
last  reached  the  penitential  stage  of  the  business;  as  is 
exemplified  by  this  stanza  from  "  A  New  Ballad,"  which 
made  its  first  appearance  in  England  that  year: 

"  Our  brethren  so  frantic, 

Across  the  Atlantic, 
Who  quit  their  old  friends  in  a  huff, 

In  spite  of  their  airs, 

Are  at  last  at  their  prayers, 
And  of  fighting  have  had  quantum  suff."1 

VIII. 

It  has  been  already  mentioned  that,  after  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  there  was  among  the  Loyalist  writers  a 

jvery  general  disuse  of  serious  argument  in  their  discussion 
of  any  part  of  the  Anglo-American  controversy.  To  this 
statement  at  least  one  exception  must  be  made — having 
reference  to  a  most  solemn  phase  of  the  situation  brought 
about  by  the  open  alliance  of  France  with  the  insurgent 
Americans.  Upon  the  entrance  of  their  ancient  and  dreaded 
enemy  as  an  ally  of  one  branch  of  the  English  race  then  at 

"war  with  the  other  branch  of  it,  there  seemed,  indeed,  not 

1  Given  in  full  in  F.  Moore,  "  Songs  and  Ballads,"  etc.,  269-273. 
8  Ibid.,  263. 


LOYALIST    WRITERS.  73 

only  the  opportunity  but  the  necessity  both  for  serious 
argument  and  for  brotherly  and  even  pathetic  expostulation 
on  the  part  of  the  few  Loyalist  writers  who  were  then  avail- 
able for  the  purpose.  These  writers,  accordingly,  then 
came  forward  with  some  very  able  and  impressive  papers 
appealing  to  their  brethren  in  rebellion  to  stop  and  recon- 
sider the  whole  subject  of  their  duty  and  of  their  safety; 
especially,  trying  to  make  them  see  the  unnaturalness  of 
such  a  combination  with  France,  and  the  fatal  consequences 
which  must  ensue  whether  it  should  result  in  defeat  or  in 
victory. 

Perhaps  no  better  example  of  this  class  of  writings  can  be 
given  than  the  "  Letters  of  Papinian,"  addressed  severally 
to  John  Jay  and  to  the  people  of  North  America,  and  setting 
forth  "  the  conduct,  present  state,  and  prospects  of  the 
American  Congress."  The  writer  of  these  letters  is  com- 
monly supposed  to  have  been  the  Reverend  Charles  Inglis, 
then  rector  of  Trinity  Church,  New  York,  who  had  already 
taken  a  vigorous  part  in  the  literary  discussion  of  the  pro- 
posal for  American  Independence.  With  no  little  clever- 
ness, he  here  sets  forth  the  tremendous  assumptions  of 
power  made  by  the  Revolutionary  leaders,  the  gross  tyran- 
nies practised  by  them  upon  the  common  people,  the 
fallacious  hopes  with  which  they  had  fed  their  credulous 
followers,  and  the  delusions  which  they  had  spread  through 
the  land  respecting  the  character  and  purpose  of  the  so- 
called  movement  for  American  rights  and  liberties.  "  You 
find  these  pretended  enemies  of  oppression  the  most  un- 
relenting oppressors,  and  their  little  finger  heavier  than  the 
king's  loins."  '  "  There  is  more  liberty  in  Turkey  than  in 
the  dominions  of  the  Congress."  *  The  rebellion,  begun  by 
unprincipled  and  selfish  men,  has  been  without  justifica- 
tion in  any  public  necessity ;  it  is  therefore  wicked ;  it  is 
without  prospect  of  success ;  it  is  destined  to  bring  disaster 
upon  all  who  continue  to  support  it. 

1  "  Letters  of  Papinian,"  6.  *  Ibid.  21. 


74  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Another  of  the  grave  Loyalist  pamphlets  of  that  period 
bears  the  title  of  "  A  Letter  to  the  People  of  America." 
The  chief  force  of  this  paper  is  spent  upon  the  effort  to  call 
back  into  life  the  old  feeling  of  American  confidence  in  the 
essential  fairness  and  good  will  of  the  English,  and  the  old 
American  distrust  and  hatred  of  the  French ;  and  thus  to 
induce  the  mass  of  the  American  people,  fatally  misled  by 
Congress,  to  rise  in  their  might,  to  overthrow  that  body  ol 
usurpers,  and  to  restore  the  country  to  its  natural  and  safe 
relations  with  the  people  of  Great  Britain. 

IX. 

The  awful  possibilities  involved  in  the  French  alliance, 
as  seriously  portrayed  by  several  Loyalist  pamphleteers, 
were  also  exploited  in  livelier  or  more  lurid  colors  by  num- 
berless minor  writers  for  the  Tory  press.  "  Of  course," 
said  they,  in  substance,  to  their  hostile  brethren,  "  the 
determination  of  Great  Britain  to  put  down  this  rebellion  of 
yours  is  strengthened  a  thousandfold  by  the  interference  of 
France  in  the  quarrel.  Let  it  be  granted,  however,  for  the 
sake  of  the  argument,  that  by  the  help  of  France,  you  do 
succeed !  What  then  ?  You  will  be  worse  off  than  if  you 
had  failed !  Instead  of  England,  a  faithful  and  loving 
mother,  even  though  at  times  a  severe  one,  you  will  have 
France,  a  treacherous  and  cruel  stepmother;  instead  of  the 
usages  of  the  English  constitutional  monarchy,  you  will  be 
subject  to  the  simplicity  of  French  absolutism ;  instead  of  a 
ruling  power  kindred  to  you  in  blood,  in  language,  in  re- 
ligion, you  will  be  under  a  ruling  power  alien  from  you  in 
all  these  particulars ;  and  within  ten  years  from  the  time  that 
you  shall  have  gained,  by  the  aid  of  France,  your  release 
from  England,  you  will  be  wrapped  in  the  terrific  embrace 
of  a  despotism  that  will  know  no  limit  and  no  pity.  An 
absolute  dominion  over  you  will  be  set  up  by  your  late 
protectors;  an  American  Bastille  will  be  erected;  the 
Romish  religion  will  be  established ;  the  English  language 


LOYALIST    WRITERS. 


75 


will  be  forbidden;  the  French  language  will  be  made  the 
language  of  the  country;  and  the  maxims  and  proceedings 
of  the  French  monarchy,  of  the  French  civil  code,  and  of 
the  Romish  inquisition  will  be  your  reward  for  your  infinite 
ingratitude  and  folly  in  casting  off  the  enlightened,  humane, 
and  equitable  authority  of  you  rightful  sovereign." 

The  most  striking  elements  of  this  Loyalist  appeal  to 
race  sympathies,  to  religious  prejudices,  even  to  not  unrea- 
sonable fears,  may  now  be  seen  by  us  as  they  were  set 
forth  in  most  realistic  fashion,  in  1779,  in  the  form  of  a 
pretended  forecast  of  what  was  to  be  written  down  by  some 
literal  and  fact-loving  diarist  in  America  just  ten  years  after 
that  date : 

"  Boston,  November  10,  1789. — His  Excellency,  Count 
Tyran,  has  this  day  published,  by  authority  from  his 
majesty,  a  proclamation  for  the  suppression  of  heresy  and 
establishment  of  the  inquisition  in  this  town,  which  has 
already  begun  its  functions  in  many  other  places  of  the  con- 
tinent under  his  majesty's  dominion. 

"  The  use  of 'the  Bible  in  the  vulgar  tongue  is  strictly 
prohibited,  on  pain  of  being  punished  by  discretion  of  the 
inquisition. 

November  11. — The  Catholic  religion  is  not  only  out- 
wardly professed,  but  has  made  the  utmost  progress  among 
all  ranks  of  people  here,  owing,  in  a  great  measure,  to  the 
unwearied  labors  of  the  Dominican  and  Franciscan  friars, 
who  omit  no  opportunity  of  scattering  the  seeds  of  religion, 
and  converting  the  wives  and  daughters  of  heretics.  We 
hear  that  the  building  formerly  called  the  Old  South  Meet- 
ing, is  fitting  up  for  a  cathedral,  and  that  several  other  old 
meeting-houses  are  soon  to  be  repaired  for  converts. 

"  November  12. — This  day  being  Sunday,  the  famous 
Samuel  Adams  read  his  recantation  of  heresy,  after  which 
he  was  present  at  mass,  and  we  hear  he  will  soon  receive 
priest's  orders  to  qualify  him  for  a  member  of  the  American 
Sorbonne. 

"  The  king  has  been  pleased  to  order  that  five  thousand  of 


76  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

the  inhabitants  of  Massachusetts  Bay  should  be  drafted  to 
supply  his  garrisons  in  the  West  Indies;  the  officers  for 
them  are  already  arrived  from  France. 

"  New  York,  November  15. — The  edict  for  prohibiting 
the  use  of  the  English  language,  and  establishing  that  of 
the  French  in  all  law  proceedings,  will  take  place  on  the 
20th  instant.  At  the  same  time,  the  ordinance  for  abolish- 
ing trials  by  juries,  and  introducing  the  imperial  law,  will 
begin  to  take  effect. 

"  November  17. — A  criminal  of  importance,  who  has 
been  long  imprisoned  in  the  New  Bastille,  was  this  day  pri- 
vately beheaded.  He  commanded  the  American  forces 
against  Great  Britain  for  a  considerable  time,  but  was  con- 
fined by  order  of  government  on  suspicion  of  possessing  a 
dangerous  influence  in  a  country  newly  conquered,  and  not 
thoroughly  settled. 

"  The  king  has  been  pleased  to  parcel  out  a  great  part  of 
the  lands  in  America  to  noblemen  of  distinction,  who  will 
grant  them  again  to  the  peasantry  upon  leases  at  will,  with 
the  reservation  of  proper  rents  and  services. 

His  majesty  has  been  graciously  pleased  to  order  that 
none  of  the  natives  of  America  shall  keep  any  firearms  in 
their  possession,  upon  pain  of  being  sentenced  to  the 
galleys.  .  .  . 

"  November  22.— We  hear  from  Williamsburg,  in  Vir- 
ginia, that  some  commotions  took  place  there  when  the 
new  capitation  tax  was  first  executed.  But  the  regiment  of 
Bretagne,  being  stationed  in  that  neighborhood,  speedily 
suppressed  them  by  firing  upon  the  populace,  and  killing 
fifty  on  the  spot.  It  is  hoped  that  this  example  will  pre- 
vent any  future  insurrection  in  that  part  of  the  country. 

"  November  23. — His  majesty  has  directed  his  viceroy  to 
send  five  hundred  sons  of  the  principal  inhabitants  of 
America,  to  be  educated  in  France,  where  the  utmost  care 
will  be  taken  to  imbue  them  with  a  regard  for  the  Catholic 
faith,  and  a  due  sense  of  subordination  to  government. 


LOYALIST   WRITERS.  77 

"It  is  ordered  that  all  the  trade  of  America  shall  be  car- 
ried on  in  French  bottoms,  navigated  by  French  seamen. 

"  Such  is  the  glorious  specimen  of  happiness  to  be  enjoyed 
by  America,  in  case  the  interposition  of  France  shall  enable 
her  to  shake  off  her  dependence  on  Great  Britain.  '  Di  talem 
avertite  casum.'  ' 

Certainly,  it  is  not  easy  for  us  Americans,  more  than  a 
hundred  years  after  that  dreadful  prophecy  was  uttered,  and 
after  every  atom  of  its  dire  burden  has  been  falsified  by  the 
facts  of  actual  experience,  to  realize  how  awful,  in  1779, 
was  the  possibility  that  it  might  be  exactly  fulfilled,  and 
with  what  an  ineffable  anxiety,  with  what  a  sinking  of 
the  heart,  with  how  horrible  a  dread,  it  must  have  been 
read  by  many  thousands  of  Americans  at  a  time  when 
no  mortal  man  could  know  whether  or  not  it  would  come 
true.  Nevertheless,  it  is  through  such  a  writing  as  this, 
that  we  may  be  enabled  to  enter  more  truly  into  the  very 
history  of  our  Revolution — to  know  something  more  of  that 
history  than  what  lies  on  the  surface,  than  what  was  enacted 
in  physical  battles, — even  the  invisible,  the  spiritual,  battles 
of  the  men  and  women  who  favored  or  who  opposed  the 
Revolution,  the  agony  that  was  year  by  year  in  their  souls, 
the  grim  campaigns  they  had  to  wage  against  imposing 
arguments,  against  towering  scorn,  against  the  most  appall- 
ing threats,  and  the  chances  of  a  doom  that  carried  with  it 
almost  every  conceivable  calamity. 

X. 

The  impolicy  of  the  French  alliance  was  taken  up  in  the 
gravest  spirit,  in  1781,  by  an  eminent  American  politician 
who  has  never  been  classed  among  the  American  Loyalists. 
By  the  spring  of  that  year,  the  rec.ord  of  American  experi- 
ence under  the  French  alliance  had  remained  still  unbroken  by 
a  single  example  of  success,  on  land  or  sea,  in  any  way  due 

1  "  The  New  York  Gazette,"  March  17,  1779,  reprinted  in  F.  Moore,  "  Diary 
of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  ii.,  148-150. 


78  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

to  the  help  of  French  battalions  or  of  French  ships.  Then 
it  was  that  Silas  Deane,  a  graduate  of  Yale  College,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  first  and  of  the  second  Continental  Congress, 
and  from  1776  to  1778  employed  by  Congress  as  its  diplo- 
matic and  commercial  agent  in  France,  wrote  a  series  of 
nine  or  ten  letters  to  as  many  different  men  in  America, 
with  the  view  of  convincing  them  that  the  whole  project  for 
American  Independence  had  been  a  mistake,  that  the  alli- 
ance with  France  was  a  disaster,  and  that  a  speedy  recon- 
ciliation with  England  on  terms  acceptable  to  both  was  the 
only  means  left  by  which  America  could  escape  from  the 
doom  to  which  she  was  then  hurrying.  These  letters  are 
well-written,  plausible,  powerful ;  and  had  it  not  been  for 
the  favorable  turn  given  to  American  affairs  by  the  capture 
of  Cornwallis's  army  a  few  months  after  they  were  written, 
they  might  have  had  serious  effects.  They  were,  however, 
collected  and  published  in  1782  ';  but  as,  by  that  time,  the 
success  of  the  Revolution  was  assured,  their  prophecies  of  its 
failure,  and  their  lamentations  over  the  fatal  blunder  of  hav- 
ing ever  undertaken  it,  sounded  very  much  like  the  ravings 
of  a  madman  bewailing  calamities  which  existed  only  in  his 
own  diseased  brain. 

1  "  Paris  Papers,  or,  Mr.  Silas  Deane's  late  intercepted  Letters."  The  most 
important  of  the  private  papers  of  Deane,  edited  by  Mr.  Charles  Isham,  have 
been  published  by  the  N.  Y.  Historical  Society,  forming  three  volumes  of  its 
"Collections,"  for  1886,  1887,  and  1888. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

THE    LITERARY    WARFARE     OF    THE    LOYALISTS    AGAINST 

INDEPENDENCE:     JOSEPH    STANSBURY,    TORY 

SONG-WRITER  AND   SATIRIST. 

I. — The  special  difficulty  of  identifying  the  writers  of  Tory  productions,  whether 
serious  or  jocose — The  preeminence  of  Joseph  Stansbury  as  a  writer  of  polit- 
ical songs  and  of  playful  political  satires — His  personal  history — A  favorite 
in  the  society  of  Philadelphia. 

II. — Like  all  other  Loyalists,  he  disapproved  of  the  colonial  policy  of  the  home- 
government — His  verses,  about  1774,  "On  the  Present  Troubles  " — His 
effort  to  keep  alive  the  feeling  of  American  kinship  with»  England — His 
songs  for  the  banquet  of  the  Sons  of  St.  George,  1771,  and  1774. 

III. — Stansbury  draws  back  from  the  policy  of  carrying  resistance  to  the  point 
of  separation — His  epigram  on  a  fiery  Whig  preacher,  1776 — Takes  refuge 
with  the  British  army  in  New  York,  where  he  remains  from  1778  till  1783 — 
His  activity  as  a  writer  of  convivial  political  verse  during  those  years — His 
war  song,  "  The  Lords  of  the  Main,"  1780. 

IV. — His  "  New  Song,"  on  the  inconsistencies  of  the  champions  of  freedom  in 
America — His  song  for  "  A  Venison  Dinner,"  1781 — His  effort  to  keep  up 
confidence  in  the  suppression  of  the  rebellion — Loyalist  criticisms  on  the 
inactivity  of  the  British  generals — His  satire  on  Sir  Henry  Clinton. 

V. — Stansbury's  optimism  survives  all  the  misfortunes  of  the  war — "  A  Poetical 
Epistle  to  His  Wife,"  1780 — "  Liberty  " — "  Let  Us  be  Happy  as  Long  as 
We  Can,"  1782 — Loyalist  devotion  to  principle,  even  under  defeat  and 
ruin — Stansbury's  lines  in  1783,  "God  Save  the  King" — His  inability  to 
keep  up  the  resentments  of  the  war — His  poetic  irenicon — Homesick  in 
Nova  Scotia — His  return  to  his  old  home  as  a  reconstructed  American 
Loyalist. 

I. 

AMONG  writers  on  both  sides  of  the  Revolutionary  con- 
troversy, the  habit  of  anonymous  publication  was  the  pre- 
vailing one;  but  for  obvious  reasons  of  prudence,  this  habit 
was  adhered  to  with  peculiar  strictness  among  writers  on 
the  Loyalist  side — more  especially  among  writers  of  lam- 

79 


So  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

poons  and  of  other  humorous  and  caustic  pieces  against  the 
champions  of  the  Revolution.  The  mass  of  such  produc- 
tions, so  far" as  they  have  survived  to  our  time  in  broadsides, 
in  pamphlets,  and  in  the  files  of  a  few  newspapers,  still  defy 
all  attempts  to  assign  them  to  their  several  authors.  Indeed, 
it  is  chiefly  by  means  of  the  bitter  allusions  made  by  the 
Revolutionist  writers  to  some  of  these  facetious  Tory  pen- 
men, that  we  now  know  even  of  the  existence,  in  those 
days,  of  such  masters  of  political  sarcasm  as-  Will  Molineux, 
Dr.  Young,  Joseph  Greenleaf,  Sam  Waterhouse,  Vardell, 
and  Isaac  Hunt,  the  father  of  Leigh  Plunt. 

Of  all  the  Loyalist  verse-writers  whose  work  can  now  in 
some  measure  be  identified  are  two  of  chief  eminence, — 
Joseph  Stansbury  and  Jonathan  Odell.  As  a  satirist,  no 
one  on  that  side  of  the  controversy  approaches  Odell,  either 
in  passionate  energy  of  thought  or  in  pungency  and  polish 
of  style ;  wliile  Stansbury  is  equally  without  a  rival  among 
his  brethren  as  a  writer  of  festive  political  songs,  and  of 
satire  in  verse  characterized  by  playful  humor  rather  than 
by  hatred. 

Born  in  1740  in  London,  and  for  several  years  a  very 
brilliant  pupil  in  St.  Paul's  School,  Joseph  Stansbury '  was 
early  taken  from  the  career  of  letters — for  which  he  had 
quite  unusual  gifts — and  was  put  into  trade.  In  1767,  he 
came  to  America,  and  established  himself  in  business  in 
Philadelphia.  Into  the  life  of  that  cultivated  and  genial 
city  he  entered  with  instant  sympathy.  Being  a  young 
man  of  high  character  and  of  many  literary  and  social 
accomplishments,  he  had  not  long  to  wait  for  acquaintance. 
He  had  great  facility  in  the  writing  of  songs,  which  he  sang 
with  a  melodious  voice  and  with  much  vivacity  of  expres- 

1  For  materials  relating  to  Stansbury,  my  principal  sources  are,  the  rare  vol- 
ume, admirably  edited  by  Winthrop  Sargent,  and  entitled  "  The  Loyal  Verses 
of  Joseph  Stansbury  and  Dr.  Jonathan  Odell  "  ;  also  an  unpublished  biograph- 
ical sketch  of  Stansbury  written  by  his  son,  Arthur  Joseph  Stansbury,  and 
copied  "with  but  slight  alteration"  by  Mr.  Fied  H.  Wines  of  Springfield,  Illi- 
nois, a  grandson  of  the  poet.  For  this  manuscript  I  am  indebted  to  Mrs. 
Jeanne  Stansbury  Holden  of  Detroit,  who  is  one  of  the  poet's  granddaughters. 


JOSEPH  STANSBURY.  8 1 

sion ;  and  wherever  he  went,  he  was  welcomed  not  only  for 
his  intelligence  and  his  fine  manners,  but  for  the  -kindling 
zest  and  good  cheer  which  he  brought  with  him  into  all 
companies. 

II. 

Like  the  most  of  those  Americans  who  refused  to  join  in 
the  final  measures  of  opposition,  he  seems  to  have  regarded 
the  colonial  policy  of  the  home-government  as  very  im- 
politic— a  policy  which  was  persisted  in  just  long  enough  to 
spoil  the  old  good  humor  of  the  colonists,  and  to  ripen  irri- 
tation into  revolution.  For  example,  there  remains  among 
his  papers  the  fragment  of  a  serious  and  rather  stately  song, 
"  On  the  Present  Troubles,"  written  apparently  after  the 
ministry  had  pushed  their  colonial  policy  to  the  extremity 
of  blood-shedding,  but  before  the  colonists  had  pushed  their 
opposition  to  the  extremity  of  Independence.  Evidently, 
in  that  stage  of  the  business,  Stansbury's  sympathies  were 
strongly  with  the  colonists.  This  song  begins  with  a  picture 
of  Great  Britain  in  the  height  and  splendor  of  her  wide 
lordship  over  the  earth : 

"  On  crystal  throne,  uplifted  high, 

Imperial  Britain  sate  ; 
Her  lofty  forehead  reached  the  sky, 
Her  awful  nod  was  fate. 

Bright  science  made  her  name  adored  ; 

Her  robes  the  arts  impearled  ; 
Wide  in  her  lap  fair  commerce  poured 

The  riches  of  the  world." 

But  suddenly,  according  to  the  poet,  a  change  is  visible  in 
the  aspect  of  this  superb  creature, — a  change  due  to  the 
birth  in  her  heart,  first,  of  jealousy  toward  her  own  Ameri- 
can children,  and  then  of  the  dreadful  purpose  to  treat  them 
with  harshness  and  even  with  cruelty: 

VOL.    H.-6 


82  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  Her  cheeks  the  rose  in  haste  forsook, 

By  jealous  fears  pursued  ; 
Her  voice  the  earth's  firm  basement  shook, 

And  turned  the  air  to  blood. 
Her  vengeance  o'er  the  liquid  wave 

Explores  these  western  climes  : 
Just  Heaven  !  a  people  deign  to  save — 

Whose  wrongs  are  all  their  crimes." ' 

If,  indeed,  things  have  come  to  such  a  pass  with  the  colo- 
nists that  their  "  wrongs  are  all  their  crimes,"  what  shall 
hinder  this  poet  who  says  so  from  going  on  with  his  high- 
spirited  companions  who  will  presently  insist  that  for  these 
wrongs  the  only  remedy  is  in  Independence  ?  Only  this 
shall  hinder :  that  Stansbury  does  not  see  that  Independence 
is  the  only  remedy  for  those  wrongs,  or  even  the  best  remedy ! 
Another  remedy,  and  a  better  one,  as  he  thinks,  lies  in  firm 
but  constitutional  opposition,  that  is,  opposition  inside  the 
empire  and  not  outside  of  it:  in  opposition,  then,  and  not 
in  secession.  Therefore,  that  his  fellow-colonists  may  not 
forget  all  this,  nor  commit  the  irreparable  mistake,  he  would 
stir  in  their  hearts,  not  only  their  love  of  liberty,  but  like- 
wise their  old  sense  of  affectionate  kinship  to  the  mother 
land,  and  of  pride  in  the  splendid  historic  achievements  of 
their  race.  Thus,  it  is  not  hard  to  imagine  with  what  e"lan 
he  must  have  sung,  at  the  banquet  of  the  American  "  Sons 
of  St.  George  "  in  New  York,  in  April,  1771,  this  song  of 
his,  to  the  tune  of  the  "  Black  Sloven  "  : 

11  Though  placed  at  a  distance  from  Britain's  bold  shore, 
From  thence  either  we  or  our  fathers  came  o'er  ; 
And  in  will,  word,  and  deed  we  are  Englishmen  all, — 
Still  true  to  her  cause,  and  awake  to  her  call. 

"  Let  Cr£cy,  Poictiers,  and  let  Agincourt  show 
How  our  ancestors  acted  some  ages  ago  ; 

1  "  The  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  3. 


JOSEPH   STANSBURY.  8$ 

While  Minden's  red  field,  and  Quebec,  shall  proclaim 
That  their  sons  are  unchanged,  or  in  nature  or  name. 


"  Though  party  contentions  awhile  may  run  high, 
When  danger  advances,  they  '11  vanish  and  die  ; 
While  all  with  one  heart,  hand,  and  spirit  unite, 
Like  Englishmen  think,  and  like  Englishmen  fight. 

"  Then  here  's  to  our  king — and  oh,  long  may  he  reign, 
The  lord  of  those  men  who  are  lords  of  the  main  ! 
While  all  the  contention  among  us  shall  be, 
To  make  him  as  happy,  as  we  are  made  free."  ' 

This  song,  praying  as  it  does,  th^at  the  happiness  of  the 
king  may  be  proportioned  to  the  extent  of  his  willingness 
to  grant  true  British  freedom  to  his  American  colonists, 
contains  not  a  word  which,  in  that  year  1771,  could  not 
have  been  sung  with  all  heartiness  by  Jefferson  or  Frank- 
lin, by  John  Adams  or  John  Jay. 

Three  years  afterward,  in  the  midst  of  the  political  exas- 
peration connected  with  the  tea-business,  Stansbury  wrote 
another  song,  apparently  for  an  occasion  similar  to  the  one 
just  mentioned,  and  this  time  to  that  stirring  tune,  "  Hearts 
of  Oak,"  then  in  use  wherever  over  the  earth  the  English 
race  had  wandered.  Here,  also,  by  an  appeal  to  the  thrill- 
ing memories  of  race-kinship  and  of  race-glory,  he  tries  to 
sing  his  brother-colonists  out  of  the  slough  of  angry  conten- 
tion into  which  this  miserable  affair  has  plunged  them,  and 
to  induce  them,  if  possible,  to  deal  with  the  difficulty  in  the 
larger  and  happier  moods  of  patriotic  Englishmen,  especially 
in  those  robust  days  when  their  nourishment  was  beef  and 
beer,  and  not  such  effeminate  concoctions  as  are  in  his 
time  offered  to  them  for  food  and  drink.  If  we  care  to 
fancy  to  ourselves  this  manly  and  gracious  singer  as  he 


1  "  The  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  1-2,  where  the  entire  song  is  given. 


84  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

stood  up  among  the  "  Sons  of  St.  George  "  at  their  ban- 
quet in  17/4,  and  with  full-throated  voice  poured  out  the 
leading  lines  of  this  song,  it  will  not  be  hard  for'us,  also,  to 
hear  the  very  roar  of  old-fashioned  enthusiasm  with  which 
its  chorus  was  caught  up  and  repeated  by  his  fellow-patriots 
around  him : 

"  When  good  Queen  Elizabeth  governed  the  realm, 
And  Burleigh's  sage  counsels  directed  the  helm, 
In  vain  Spain  and  France  our  conquests  opposed,— 
For  valor  conducted  what  wisdom  proposed. 

Beef  and  beer  was  their  food  ; 

Love  and  truth  armed  their  band  ; 

Their  courage  was  ready — 

Steady,  boys,  steady — 
To  fight  and  to  conquer  by  sea  and  by  land. 

"But  since  tea  and  coffee,  so  much  to  our  grief, 
Have  taken  the  place  of  strong  beer  and  roast  beef, 
Our  laurels  have  withered,  our  trophies  been  torn, 
And  the  lions  of  England  French  triumphs  adorn. 

Tea  and  slops  are  their  food — 

Which  '  unnerve  every  hand  ; 

Their  courage  unsteady 

And  not  always  ready — 
They  often  are  conquered  by  sea  and  by  land. 

"  St.  George  views  with  transport  our  generous  flame  :— 
'  My  sons,  rise  to  glory,  and  rival  my  fame  ; 
Ancient  manners  again  in  my  sons  I  behold, 
And  this  age  must  eclipse  all  the  ages  of  gold.' 


While  thus  we  regale,  as  our  fathers  of  old,— 
Our  manners  as  simple,  our  courage  as  bold, — 
May  vigor  and  prudence  our  freedom  secure, 
Long  as  rivers,  or  ocean,  or  stars  shall  endure. 

1  The  text  reads  "  They." 


JOSEPH  STANSBURY.  8$ 

Beef  and  beer  are  our  food  ; 
Love  and  truth  arm  our  band  ; 
Our  courage  is  steady, 
And  always  is  ready 
To  fight  and  to  conquer  by  sea  and  by  land." ' 


III. 

Stansbury's  aspiration,  that  "  vigor  and  prudence  "  may 
*'  our  freedom  secure,"  is  one  which  could  have  been  uttered 
equally  well  by  both  parties  in  the  dispute;  but  for  him, 
throughout  the  entire  song,  the  note  of  race-unity  seems  to 
have  drowned  that  of  political  suspicion.  Accordingly,  we 
are  prepared  to  find  two  years  later,  when  the  plan  for  race- 
separation  becomes  the  master-purpose  of  American  politics, 
that  Stansbury  shrinks  back  from  a  project  so  shocking  both 
to  his  affections  and  to  his  judgment.  Even  then,  however, 
in  his  denunciations  of  this  ultimate  heresy  of  Independ- 
ence, he  is  true  to  the  mirthful  mood  which  was  habitual 
to  him ;  as  may  be  seen,  for  example,  in  an  epigram  written 
by  him  probably  in  May  or  June,  1776,  on  a  fierce  political 
sermon  preached  just  then  by  a  rebel  friend  of  his,  the 
Reverend  William  Piercy,  to  a  battalion  of  the  Philadelphia 
militia.  The  day,  as  it  happened,  was  excessively  hot ;  and 
while  the  preacher  was  delivering  his  discourse,  there  stood 
behind  him  in  the  pulpit  a  negro  servant,  remarkably  black 
and  remarkably  ugly,  who  fanned  the  preacher  with  a  vehe- 
mence well  proportioned  to  the  inflammatory  energy  of  the 
harangue.  Four  lines  were  enough  for  Stansbury's  com- 
ment upon  the  spectacle : 

"  To  preach  up,  friend  Piercy,  at  this  critical  season, 

Resistance  to  Britain,  is  not  very  civil  ; 
Yet  what  can  we  look  for  but  faction  and  treason, 
From  a  flaming  enthusiast — fanned  by  the  devil  ?"* 

1  "  The  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  4-5.  '  Ibid.  6. 


86  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Notwithstanding  the  sharp  discriminations  caused  by  the 
famous  procedure  of  July  4,  1776,  Stansbury  seems  to  have 
maintained  both  his  residence  and  his  business  in  Philadel- 
phia during  the  whole  of  that  year  and  of  the  year  follow- 
ing. Of  course,  upon  the  occupation  of  the  city  by  the 
British  army  in  the  autumn  of  1777,  he  was  in  high  favor. 
On  the  retirement  of  the  British  army  from  Philadelphia  in 
the  spring  of  1778,  Stansbury  prudently  went  with  it;  and 
thenceforward,  until  the  close  of  the  war,  his  quarters  were 
within  the  British  lines  at  New  York. 

Just  how  he  was  employed  during  those  years,  is  not  cer- 
tainly known.  At  any  rate,  whatever  else  he  may  have 
been  doing,  there  is  good  reason  for  the  statement  that  his 
clever  and  jovial  pen  was  constantly  at  the  service  of  the 
cause  to  which  he  had  given  himself  with  a  devotion  none 
the  less  sincere  because  altogether  free  from  bitterness.  It 
is  probable  that  much  of  his  printed  work  during  this  period 
is  now  quite  beyond  identification.  Moreover,  at 'the  close 
of  the  Revolution,  he  burned  a  large  number  of  his  private 
papers  relating  to  that  period,  and,  by  this  act,  put  it  out  of 
our  power  to  trace  more  perfectly  just  what  he  did  in  those 
days  as  a  satirist  and  a  song-writer.  Nevertheless,  enough 
remains  of  his  ascertained  work  to  enable  us  to  feel  sure  that 
few  aspects  of  the  ever-changing  situation  between  1776 
and  1783,  could  have  escaped  his  keen  and  humorous  atten- 
tion, or  could  have  failed  to  receive  treatment  at  his  hands 
either  in  some  stirring  lyric  of  patriotic  enthusiasm,  or  in 
some  form  of  bantering  verse.  Thus,  fair  examples  of  his 
range  may  be  seen  in  the  "  Welcome  to  Howe,"  '  June, 
1776;  in  the  "  Tradesmen's  Song,"  *  for  the  king's  birth- 
day, 1777;  in  the  "  Song  for  the  Times,"  *  and  in  "  The 
Church  and  King  Club,"4  in  1778;  in  the  rather  caustic 
ballad  of  "  The  Town  Meeting,"*  1779;  in  "  Liberty,"' 
and  "  A  Poetical  Epistle,"  T  in  1780;  in  "  A  Song  for  St. 

"  The  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  lo-Il.  *  Ibid.  13-14.  *  Ibid.  34-35. 

4  Ibid.  36.  *  Ibid.  39-44.  «  Ibid.  63-64.  »  Ibid.  69-70. 


JOSEPH  STANSBURY.  g/ 

George's  Day,"  '  and  in  "  The  Royal  Oak,"  *  1781  ;  and  in 
"  A  Christmas  Song,"  '  1782. 

Probably  the  strongest  example  of  Stansbury's  work  as  a 
writer  of  war-lyrics,  is  his  spirit-stirring  song  called  "  The 
Lords  of  the  Main,"  published  in  February,  1780,  and 
intended  for  the  use  of  the  British  sailors  then  engaged  in 
fighting  their  ancient  foes,  the  French  and  the  Spaniards,  at 
that  time  in  alliance  for  the  help  of  the  American  Congress 
—  here  alluded  to  under  its  derisive  nickname  of  "  Congo  "  : 

"  When  Faction,  in  league  with  the  treacherous  Gaul, 

Began  to  look  big,  and  paraded  in  state, 
A  meeting  was  held  at  Credulity  Hall,4 

And  Echo  proclaimed  their  ally  good  and  great 
By  sea  and  by  land 
Such  wonders  are  planned  — 
No  less  than  the  bold  British  lion  to  chain  ! 
'  Well  hove  !  '  says  Jack  Lanyard, 
'  French,  Congo,  and  Spaniard, 

Have  at  you  !  —  remember,  we  're  Lords  of  the  Main. 
Lords  of  the  Main,  aye,  Lords  of  the  Main  ; 
The  Tars  of  Old  England  are  Lords  of  the  Main.' 

"  Though  party-contention  awhile  may  perplex, 

And  lenity  hold  us  in  doubtful  suspense, 
If  perfidy  rouse,  or  ingratitude  vex, 

In  defiance  of  hell  we  '11  chastise  the  offense. 
When  danger  alarms, 
'T  is  then  that  in  arms 
United  we  rush  on  the  foe  with  disdain  ; 
And  when  the  storm  rages, 
It  only  presages 

Fresh  triumphs  to  Britons  as  Lords  of  the  Main  ! 
Lords  of  the  Main,  aye,  Lords  of  the  Main  — 
Let  thunder  proclaim  it,  we  're  Lords  of  the  Main  !  ' 


1  "  The  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  76-7?.  *  Ibid- 

»  ibid.  84-85.  *  Independence  Hall,  Philadelphia. 


88  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  Then,  Britons,  strike  home — make  sure  of  your  blow  : 

The  chase  is  in  view — never  mind  a  lea  shore. 
With  vengeance  o'ertake  the  confederate  foe  : 
'T  is  now  we  may  rival  our  heroes  of  yore  ! 
Brave  Anson,  and  Drake, 
Hawke,  Russell,  and  Blake, 

With  ardor  like  yours,  we  defy  France  and  Spain  ! 
Combining  with  treason, 
They  're  deaf  to  all  reason  ; 

Once  more  let  them  feel  we  are  Lords  of  the  Main. 
Lords  of  the  Main,  aye,  Lords  of  the  Main — 
The  first-born  of  Neptune  are  Lords  of  the  Main  ! " ' 

IV. 

A  frequent  taunt  of  the  Loyalists  had  reference  to  the 
arbitrary  and  even  despotic  measures  often  resorted  to  by 
the  Revolutionary  leaders  in  pushing  forward  their  cause — 
which  yet  called  itself  the  cause  of  freedom ;  and  in  some 
verses  which  he  entitled  a  "  New  Song,"  Stansbury  gave 
those  Americans  who  resented  such  inconsistency  the  words 
wherein  to  confess  the  political  disenchantment  through 
which  they  were  then  passing.  This  is  one  stanza  of  the 
song: 

"  We  fondly  imagined  that  all  future  story 
Should  tell  of  our  justice,  our  freedom,  and  glory  ; 
We  laughed  at  oppression — not  dreaming  or  fearing 
That  men  should  be  banished  without  charge  or  hearing. 
For  freedom,  indeed,  we  supposed  we  were  fighting — 
But  this  sort  of  freedom  's  not  very  inviting."  * 

Nothing  that  we  now  have  of  Stansbury's  verse,  presents 
him  to  us  in  a  vein  more  characteristic  or  more  attractive 
than  a  sparkling  convivial  song  which  he  wrote  for  "A 
Venison  Dinner  at  Mr.  Bunyan's,"  in  New  York,  in  1781, 

The  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  61-62,  where  is  given  a  fourth  stanza. 
"  The  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  16-17. 


JOSEPH  STANSBURY.  89 

at  a  time  of  the  year  when  Washington's  headquarters  were 
still  in  the  highlands  of  the  Hudson,  and  before  that  impeni- 
tent rebel  had  developed  to  the  enemy  his  purpose  of  march- 
ing toward  Virginia  for  an  interview  with  Cornwallis : 

"  Friends,  push  round  the  bottle,  and  let  us  be  drinking, 
While  Washington  up  in  his  mountains  is  slinking  : 
Good  faith,  if  he  's  wise  he  '11  not  leave  them  behind  him, 
For  he  knows  he  's  safe  nowheres  where  Britons  can  find  him. 
When  he  and  Fayette  talk  of  taking  this  city, 
Their  vaunting  moves  only  our  mirth  and  our  pity. 

"  But,  though  near  our  lines  they  're  too  cautious  to  tarry, 
What  courage  they  shew  when  a  hen-roost  they  harry  ! 
Who  can  wonder  that  poultry  and  oxen  and  swine 
Seek  shelter  in  York  from  such  valor  divine, — 
While  Washington's  jaws  and  the  Frenchman's  are  aching 
The  spoil  they  have  lost,  to  be  boiling  and  baking. 

"  Let  Clinton  and  Arnold  bring  both  to  subjection, 
And  send  us  more  geese  here  to  seek  our  protection. 
Their  flesh  and  their  feathers  shall  meet  a  kind  greeting ; 
A  fat  rebel  turkey  is  excellent  eating, 
A  lamb  fat  as  butter,  and  white  as  a  chicken — 
These  sorts  of  tame  rebels  are  excellent  pickin'. 

"  To-day  a  wild  rebel  has  smoked  on  the  table  ; 
You  've  cut  him  and  sliced  him  as  long  as  you  're  able. 
He  bounded  like  Congo,1  and  bade  you  defiance, 
And  placed  on  his  running  his  greatest  reliance  ; 
But  fate  overtook  him  and  brought  him  before  ye, 
To  shew  how  rebellion  will  wind  up  her  story. 

"  Then  cheer  up,  my  lads  !  if  the  prospect  grows  rougher, 
Remember  from  whence  and  for  whom  't  is  you  suffer  : — 

1  The  common  Tory  nickname  for  the  Continental  Congress,  whose  agility  in 
flight  at  the  approach  of  the  British  is  likened  to  that  of  this  deer  when  pursued 
by  the  hunters. 


90  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION, 

From  men  whom  mild  laws  and  too  happy  condition 
Have  puffed  up  with  pride  and  inflamed  with  sedition  ; 
For  George,  whose  reluctance  to  punish  offenders 
Has  strengthened  the  hands  of  these  upstart  pretenders."  ' 

This  confident  and  jubilant  tone  on  the  part  of  the  Loy- 
alists within  the  British  lines,  belonged  to  a  mood  which 
was  attained  by  them  now  and  then,  upon  casual  flashes  of 
good  fortune  in  the  field,  or  upon  occasions  of  special 
hilarity — as  a  venison  dinner  or  the  like ;  but  their  spirits 
were  not  commonly  or  without  effort  at  so  high  a  level. 
There  is  now  something  of  the  aspect  of  tragedy  upon  the 
words  which  they  kept  uttering  to  one  another,  in  so  many 
forms,  day  after  day,  and  from  year  to  year, — wherein  they 
tried  to  make  it  appear  to  themselves  that  their  affairs  were 
going  on  prosperously,  that  the  British  generals  were  mas- 
ters of  the  situation,  that  the  French  alliance  and  the  Span- 
ish conjunction  were  to  be  for  the  rebel  Congress  but  futile 
copartnerships,  and  that  soon — yes,  very  soon — this  enor- 
mous and  ghastly  farce  of  American  Independence  would 
dissolve  into  its  natural  nothingness.  Thus,  in  1778,  after 
the  French  had  become  avowed  participants  in  the  fight, 
Joseph  Stansbury  exclaims, — 

"  What  though  the  Frenchman  crowns  the  scene, 

And  we  miscall  him  '  mankind's  friend/ 
Not  all  his  power  can  rebels  screen — 

Rebellion  's  drawing  near  her  end. 
Shot  like  a  meteor  through  the  skies, 

It  spread  awhile  a  baleful  train  ; 
But  now,  by  Jove's  command,  it  dies, 

And  melts  to  common  air  again."* 

Nevertheless,  as  we  have  now  the  means  of  knowing,  these 
people  were  not  really  at  ease.  As  the  war  dragged  on,  as 
one  campaign  of  military  shiftlessness  and  blundering  suc- 
ceeded to  another,  as  the  rebellion  of  their  late  brethren 
remained  still  uncrushed,  and  the  end  they  hoped  for  kept 
"  The  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  79-80.  2  Ibid.  34-35. 


JOSEPH  STANSBURY.  91 

receding  further  and  still  further  into  the  distance,  the 
unhappy  Loyalists  became  but  too  well  acquainted  with 
that  form  of  heart-sickness  which  is  born  of  hope  deferred. 
For  the  immediate  and  complete  suppression  of  the  rebel- 
lion, no  British  general  had  a  zeal  that  could  match  with 
their  fiery  impatience,  or  that  did  not  seem  listless  by 
comparison  with  the  flame  and  the  wrath  and  the  rancor 
of  their  devotion  to  it.  In  their  demand  for  prompt  and 
conclusive  action,  in  their  eagerness  to  have  something 
done — to  have  the  day  seized,  the  occasion  used,  to  have 
the  rebels  pushed  and  routed  and  crushed — they  often 
turned  in  bitterness  even  upon  the  British  generals  them- 
selves, muttering  sullenly  and  helplessly  at  their  procrasti- 
nation, their  self-indulgence,  their  lack  of  enterprise,  their 
spiritless  and  fruitless  methods.  To  the  Loyalists,  the  war, 
as  thus  conducted,  seemed  to  be  not  a  war,  but  only  a 
hypocritical  and  distressing  pretense  of  one. 

It  is  not  likely  that  Joseph  Stansbury,  who  was  himself 
within  the  lines  at  New  York  and  a  member  of  the  inner- 
most circle  of  Loyalist  counselors,  failed  to  see  and  to  feel 
all  these  defects  in  British  military  leadership;  and  yet,  in 
giving  vent  to  his  criticism  thereupon,  he  but  obeyed  the 
law  of  his  own  mind  by  doing  so  with  good  humor  and 
with  the  light  play  of  badinage  rather  than  the  fury  of  rail- 
ing accusations.  A  capital  instance  of  his  way  of  applying 
sarcasms  to  the  delinquencies  of  his  own  chiefs,  is  furnished 
by  an  occurrence  of  the  year  1780.  Just  then,  the  rebels 
in  the  vicinity  f>i  New  York  seem  to  have  become  so  per- 
fectly assured  of  the  preference  of  the  British  army  for  the 
contemplative  over  the  active  life,  that  they  sometimes 
pushed  their  foraging  expeditions  even  within  the  British 
lines,  on  one  occasion  carrrying  off  sundry  quantities  of  hay 
from  the  very  outskirts  of  the  city  and  setting  fire  to  some 
houses  which  were  so  near  that  the  flames  could  be  seen 
from  Sir  Henry  Clinton's  quarters.  Of  course,  such  exploits 
of  brilliant  and  unwhipt  audacity,  and  Sir  Henry's  apparent 
indifference  to  them,  were  inexpressibly  galling  to  the  Loy- 


92  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

alists  who  stood  looking  on.  Of  course,  each  one  gave  vent 
to  his  disgust  in  his  own  way;  and  Joseph  Stansbury's  way 
was  to  write  and  post  up  in  the  streets  of  the  town  this  pas- 
quinade : 

"  '  Has  the  Marquis  La  Fayette 

Taken  off  all  our  hay  yet  ?' 
Says  Clinton  to  the  wise  heads  around  him : 

'  Yes,  faith,  Sir  Harry, 

Each  stack  he  did  carry, 
And  likewise  the  cattle — confound  him  ! 

' '  Besides,  he  now  goes, 

Just  under  your  nose, 
To  burn  all  the  houses  to  cinder.' 

'  If  that  be  his  project, 

It  is  not  an  object 
Worth  a  great  man's  attempting  to  hinder. 

For  forage  and  house 

I  care  not  a  louse  ; 
For  revenge,  let  the  Loyalists  bellow : 

I  swear  I  '11  not  do  more 

To  keep  them  in  humor, 
Than  play  on  my  violoncello. 

"  '  Since  Charleston  is  taken, 

'T  will  sure  save  my  bacon, — 
I  can  live  a  whole  year  on  that  same,  sir ; 

Ride  about  all  the  day, 

At  night,  concert  or  play  ; 
So  a  fig  for  the  men  that  dare  blame,  sir ; 

' '  If  growlers  complain, 

I  inactive  remain — 
Will  do  nothing,  nor  let  any  others  ! 
'T  is  sure  no  new  thing 
To  serve  thus  our  king — 
_          "Witness  Burgoyne,  and  two  famous  Brothers  ! ' "  • 

1  "  The  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  67-68. 


JOSEPH  STANSBURY.  93 

V. 

The  optimism  of  Stansbury  seems  to  have  been  more 
than  equal  to  the  disasters  which  thickened  about  him  and 
about  the  doomed  political  party  with  whose  fortunes  he 
had  allied  his  own ;  and  it  was  perhaps  not  the  least  of  the 
services  to  which  his  life  was  put  during  those  years,  that  he 
could  be  a  messenger  of  indomitable  hope  and  cheerfulness 
to  many  noble-minded  and  sensitive  people  who  were  asso- 
ciated with  him  in  misfortune,  but  who  lacked  his  genius  for 
confronting  it.  Thus,  late  in  the  year  1780,  in  "  A  Poetical 
Epistle  .  .  .  to  His  Wife,"  he  compresses  into  five 
lines  of  verse  a  large  part  of  his  secret  for  meeting  the  ills 
of  this  mortal  state : 

"  But  prudence  suggests  we  should  never  despair  ; 
And  reason  points  out  that  good  humor  and  patience 
Are  better  companions  than  half  our  relations, — 
Take  off  the  rough  edge  of  ill-nature  and  malice, 
And  make  our  dark  prison  as  gay  as  a  palace."  ' 

Somewhat  more  of  his  secret  he  had  also  revealed,  a  few 
months  earlier,  in  a  little  poem  called  "  Liberty,"  wherein 
he  thus  gives  us  to  understand  what,  in  his  opinion,  were 
the  things  in  this  world  worth  living  for : 

"  Splendid  honors  I  disdain  ; 
Crowns  of  kings  are  lined  with  pain ; 
Friendship  only  gives  to  me 
Social  joys  and  liberty. 
Let  me  in  my  humble  sphere, 
Free  from  envy,  free  from  care, 
Spend  the  days  allotted  me 
Blest  with  peace  and  liberty."  * 

Of  course  all  his  fortitude  was  brought  to  the  supreme 
test  by  the  surrender  of  Cornwallis  in  1781,  whereby  it  was 

1  "  The  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  69.  *  Ibid.  64. 


94 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


made  apparent  to  the  rest  of  the  world  that  the  stake  for 
which  he  and  his  friends  had  been  playing  was  lost, — that 
nothing  was  in  store  for  them  but  to  be  banished  from  the 
land  and  the  homes  they  loved  as  dearly  as  did  the  men 
who  were  victorious  over  them.  It  was  amid  such  calami- 
ties that  Stansbury  wrote,  apparently  for  some  assemblage 
of  Loyalists  in  New  York,  this  song,  in  which  his  optimism, 
driven  to  its  last  refuge,  still  refuses  to  yield : 

"  I  Ve  heard  in  old  times  that  a  sage  used  to  say, 
The  seasons  were  nothing,  December,  or  May  ; 
The  heat,  or  the  cold  never  entered  his  plan — 
That  all  should  be  happy  whenever  they  can. 

"  No  matter  what  power  directed  the  state, 
He  looked  upon  such  things  as  ordered  by  fate  : 
Whether  governed  by  many,  or  ruled  by  one  man, 
His  rule  was— be  happy  whenever  you  can. 

"  He  happened  to  enter  this  world  the  same  day 
With  the  supple,  complying,  famed  Vicar  of  Bray : 
Through  both  of  their  lives  the  same  principle  ran—- 
My boys,  we  '11  be  happy  as  long  as  we  can. 

"  Time-serving  I  hate,  yet  I  see  no  good  reason 
A  leaf  from  their  book  should  be  thought  out  of  season  : 
When  kicked  like  a  football  from  Sheba  to  Dan — 
Egad,  let  's  be  happy  as  long  as  we  can. 

"  Since  no  man  can  tell  what  to-morrow  may  bring, 
Or  which  side  shall  triumph,  the  Congress  or  King, 
Since  fate  must  o'errule  us  and  carry  her  plan — 
Why,  let  us  be  happy  as  long  as  we  can. 

"  To-night,  let  's  enjoy  this  good  wine  and  a  song, 
And  relish  the  hour  which  we  cannot  prolong  : 
If  evil  will  come,  we  '11  adhere  to  our  plan — 
And  baffle  misfortune  as  long  as  we  can."  ' 

1  "  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  86-87. 


JOSEPH  STANSBURY.  95 

And  when  at  last  the  English  ministry,  to  the  bitter  grief 
of  the  king,  made  peace  with  the  victorious  rebels — conced- 
ing to  them  all  that  they  had  ever  demanded — even  then 
Stansbury  and  his  fellow-Loyalists,  having  lost  everything 
in  the  world  but  their  loyalty,  seemed  to  cling  with  a  stern 
and  a  proud  happiness  to  that  ultimate  and  inextinguishable 
possession  : 

"  Though  ruined  so  deeply  no  angel  can  save, 
The  empire  dismembered,  our  king  made  a  slave, 
Still  lovirrg,  revering,  we  shout  forth  honestly — 

God  save  the  king  ! 

Though  fated  to  banishment,  poverty,  death, 
Our  hearts  are  unaltered,  and  with  our  last  breath 
Loyal  to  George,  we  '11  pray  most  fervently — 
Glory  and  joy  crown  the  king  !  "  ' 

After  the  war  was  really  ended,  however,  the  party  of  the 
Loyalists  gradually  fell  into  two  groups, — those  who  were 
willing  to  become  reconciled  to  the  result  of  the  war,  and 
those  who  forever  refused.  It  was  inevitable  that  Stansbury 
should  take  his  place  in  the  former  group.  In  his  heart  was 
no  lodging-place  for  the  resentments  of  the  old  controversy. 
Upon  the  back  of  the  very  sheet  on  which  he  had  written 
his  "  God  Save  the  King,"  he  wrote  these  lines  of  his 
irenicon : 

"  Now  this  war  at  length  is  o'er, 
Let  us  think  of  it  no  more  ; 
Every  party  lie  or  name, 
Cancel  as  our  mutual  shame  ; 
Bid  each  wound  of  faction  close — 
Blushing  we  were  ever  foes."  a 

Then  it  was,  that  whatever  of  his  political  verses  he  could 
lay  his  hands  upon,  he  destroyed.  ".  He  even  seemed  to 
forget  who  had  hated,  and  who  had  injured  him."  Sup- 

1  "  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  89.  2  Ibid.  89.  8  Ibid.  102. 


96  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION, 

posing  that  as  between  himself  and  his  former  political 
antagonists,  this  forgetfulness  would  be  mutual,  he  removed 
with  his  family  to  a  small  village  in  New  Jersey,  a  few  miles 
to  the  east  of  Philadelphia;  but  before  he  had  been  there  a 
week,  he  was  seized  and  thrown  into  Burlington  jail.  From 
this  he  was  soon  released  on  giving  his  promise  to  leave  the 
State  within  nine  days.1  Accordingly,  in  August,  1783,  he 
set  sail  from  New  York  for  Nova  Scotia,  where  thousands 
of  his  exiled  political  brethren  were  then  beginning  to  make 
for  themselves  a  new  home  and  a  new  country.  But  Stans- 
bury  was  not  happy  there.  To  his  wife  he  wrote : 

"  Believe  me,  love,  this  vagrant  life, 

O'er  Nova  Scotia's  wilds  to  roam, 
While  far  from  children,  friends,  or  wife, 

Or  place  that  I  can  call  a  home, 
Delights  not  me  ; — another  way 
My  treasures,  pleasures,  wishes  lay."  * 

In  the  autumn  of  1785,  he  returned  once  more  to  Phila- 
delphia, intending  to  resume  his  old  business  there;  but 
into  a  house  where  he  was  supposed  to  lodge  was  thrown  a 
letter,  intimating  that  it  would  not  be  possible  for  him  to  live 
in  Philadelphia,  although,  as  was  also  hinted,  it  might  be 
possible  for  him  to  die  there.'  After  some  years  of  inse- 
curity, he  found  at  last  in  1793,*  in  the  cosmopolitan  large- 
ness of  New  York,  the  home  he  had  longed  for ;  and  there 
in  serenity,  and  amid  hosts  of  friends,  he  passed  the  remain- 
der of  his  days,  an  altogether  pleasant  specimen  of  a  recon- 
structed American  Loyalist. 

1  MS.  sketch  by  Arthur  Joseph  Stansbury.  *  "  The  Loyal  Verses,"  90. 

3  Ibid.  101.  »  4  MS.  sketch  by  A.  J.  Stansbury. 


CHAPTER   XXIX. 

THE    LITERARY    WARFARE    OF     THE    LOYALISTS    AGAINST 

AMERICAN   INDEPENDENCE:     JONATHAN   ODELL, 

THEIR   CHIEF   SATIRIST. 

I. — Odell's  position  among  the  Loyalist  writers — His  relentless  spirit  in  satire 
described  by  himself — His  New  England  ancestry — Surgeon  in  the  British 
army  before  the  Revolution — In  1767,  he  takes  holy  orders  in  London — 
His  settlement  as  rector  of  Burlington,  New  Jersey. 

II. — Odell  disapproves  of  the  American  policy  of  the  ministry,  but  would  meet 
it  by  constitutional  opposition  only — Takes  no  public  part  in  the  contro- 
versy till  after  the  beginning  of  hostilities  —  Outrage  upon  his  private 
correspondence — His  ode  for  the  king's  birthday,  June  4,  1776 — His 
parole  to  remain  within  his  parish — Having  given  fresh  offense,  he  is  hunted 
from  his  hiding-places — His  flight  within  the  British  lines,  late  in  Decem- 
ber, 1776. 

III. — Odell  received  into  confidence  at  the  British  headquarters — Remains  in 
New  York  till  the  close  of  the  war — Chaplain  to  a  corps  of  Loyalist  troops 
— His  conception  of  the  proper  use  of  satire  in  controversy.,  after  serious 
argument  has  been  exhausted — His  chief  satires,  "  The  Word  of  Congress," 
September,  1779;  "The  Congratulation,"  and  "The  Feu  de  Joie,"  No- 
vember, 1779  ;  and  "  The  American  Times,"  1780. 

IV. — Odell  follows  the  models  of  English  classical  satire — He  is  the  great  expo- 
nent of  Loyalist  conscience  and  emotion  in  the  last  years  of  the  war — The 
basis  of  their  political  system  of  politics  and  of  patriotic  duty — Odell 
denounces  both  the  ministerial  policy  and  American  violence  in  resisting  it 
— The  Revolution  not  a  case  of  justifiable  rebellion — A  popular  phrensy 
produced  by  political  sorcery — The  sorcerers  discovered  by  the  poet  in 
the  very  act  of  compounding  the  hell-broth  of  rebellion — Its  ingredients. 

V.— The  futile  efforts  of  sane  men  to  stop  the  spread  of  Revolutionary  madness 
— The  perpetual  renewal  of  error,  even  when  discomfited — The  inex- 
haustible supply  of  rebel  chiefs — American  society  given  over  to  the  rule 
of  the  worst — Description  of  the  Continental  Congress — That  body  the 
centre  of  all  political  mischief,  a  nest  of  robbers  and  tyrants. 

VI. — His  arraignment  of  Congress  for  its  duplicity — It  is  a  political  Proteus — 
He  satirizes  its  servants,  as  Thomas  Paine,  and  General  John  Sullivan — He 
arraigns  the  chiefs  of  the  rebellion,  as  William  Livingston,  John  Jay, 
Samuel  Chase,  Robert  Morris,  and  Gouverneur  Morris. 

VOL.    II. — 7 

97 


98  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

VII. — His  attacks  on  Lord  Sterling,  Pulaski,  and  President  Witherspoon — 
Comprehensiveness  of  his  attacks — A  partial  relenting  toward  Henry  Lau- 
rens — His  solemn  indictment  of  Washington. 

VIII. — Odell's  perfect  confidence  in  the  ultimate  defeat  of  the  rebellion — His 
song  for  the  king's  birthday,  1777 — His  prediction,  in  the  autumn  of  1778, 
of  the  speedy  discomfiture  of  the  rebels  and  of  their  French  allies — "  The 
Old  Year  and  the  New — a  Prophecy  " — The  two  sections  of  the  Loyalist 
party  at  the  close  of  the  Revolution — The  implacable  section  represented 
by  Odell — His  later  career  in  Nova  Scotia. 


I. 

WE  now  come  to  the  most  powerful  and  most  unrelenting 
of  the  Tory  satirists, — to  Jonathan  Odell,  who,  though 
closely  allied  to  Joseph  Stansbury  in  the  objects  for  which 
he  wrote,  yet  greatly  differed  from  his  associate  both  in  the 
spirit  and  in  the  method  of  his  writing.  Being  of  a  nature 
far  deeper,  sterner,  and  more  virile  than  Stansbury's,  less 
lovable,  less  mobile,  less  capable  of  any  sort  of  moral  con- 
cession for  the  sake  of  amenity,  Odell  reprobated  so  pro- 
foundly the  later  movement  of  the  Revolution  that  it  was 
seldom  possible  for  him  to  relax  into  any  sort  of  playfulness 
in  speaking  of  it,  or  to  admit  it  to  the  honors  of  even  a 
semi-sarcastic  dalliance,  or  to  attack  it  with  any  species  of 
satire  other  than  that  which  was  grim,  scathing,  absolutely 
implacable.  He  was  faithful  to  his  own  ideal,  when  to  a 
brother  writer  he  said  : 

"  Thou,  to  the  bottom,  probe  the  dangerous  sore, 
And  in  the  wound  the  friendly  balsam  pour  ; 
Enough  for  me  the  caustic  to  apply, 
Twinge  the  proud  flesh,  and  draw  the  face  awry."  l 

And  when  he  had  occasion  to  implore  the  goddess  of  satire 
to  aid  him  in  his  chosen  task,  it  was  with  a  true  conscious- 
ness of  his  peculiar  function  as  a  satirist,  that  he  prayed  this 
prayer : 

"  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  24. 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  99 

"  then  grant  me  for  a  time 
Some  deleterious  powers  of  acrid  rhyme  ; 
Some  ars'nic  verse,  to  poison  with  the  pen 
These  rats,  who  nestle  in  the  lion's  den."  ' 

In  short,  Odell's  place  among  the  Tory  satirists  corresponds 
pretty  closely  to  that  of  Philip  Freneau  among  the  satirists 
on  the  side  of  the  Whigs.  Certainly,  to  him,  of  all  the 
American  verse-writers  who  opposed  the  Revolution,  may 
best  be  applied  the  title  which  Sir  Walter  Scott  invented  for 
the  purpose  of  doing  honor  to  a  certain  Bishop  of  Llandaff 
— that  of  Toryissimus.* 

Odell  was  born  at  Newark,  New  Jersey,  on  the  25th  of 
September,  1737.  His  earliest  American  ancestor,  William 
Odell,  was  among  the  founders  of  the  colony  of  Massachu- 
setts, and  was  living  at  Concord  in  1639.  Thus,  the  most 
inappeasable  satirist  of  the  American  Revolution  —  the 
stanchest  and  fiercest  champion  of  the  principle  of  authority 
in  church  and  state — came  of  the  stock  of  the  primal  puri- 
tans of  New  England, — an  ancestry  rejoicing  in  a  somewhat 
pronounced  record  of  insubordination  in  both  spheres  of 
activity.  After  his  graduation  at  the  College  of  New 
Jersey8  in  1754,  he  was  educated  for  the  medical  profession, 

1  "  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  55. 

*  "  The  Journal  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,"  ii.,  181. 

3  S.  D.  Alexander,  "  Princeton  College  During  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  31. 
This  book,  which  was  published  in  1872,  gives  Odell's  name  in  the  list  of  the 
class  of  1754,  but  has  only  this  to  say  of  him  :  "A  grandson  of  President  Dick- 
inson ;  was  from  Connecticut  Farms,  New  Jersey.  After  graduating,  he  en- 
tered the  ministry,  but  I  can  discover  no  facts  as  to  his  place  of  settlement,  or 
of  his  after  life."  This  amazing  statement  was  published  fifteen  years  after  the 
sketch  of  Odell  by  Wintrop  Sargent  in  his  "  Loyalist  Poetry,"  and  eight  years 
after  the  similar  sketch  by  Sabine  in  his  "  Loyalists  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion ";  and  when,  also,  references  to  Odell  had  long  been  lying  about  in  such 
familiar  works  as  Force's  "  American  Archives,"  in  Sparks's  edition  of  the 
"  Writings  of  Washington,"  and  in  William  B.  Reed's  "  Life  and  Correspond- 
ence of  Joseph  Reed."  Can  it  be  that  Odell's  career  was  thus  blotted  out.  and 
refused  remembrance,  by  his  Alma  Mater,  as  a  tribute  of  satisfaction  t-.  good 
old  President  Witherspoon.  whose  mortal  plumes  were  so  mercilessly  ruffled  by 
this  satirist  in  the  later  years  of  the  Revolution  ? 


TOO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

becoming  a  surgeon  in  the  British  army,  and  serving  with 
his  regiment  in  the  West  Indies.  From  this  employment 
he  withdrew  after  a  few  years,  and,  proceeding  to  England, 
prepared  himself  for  the  sacred  ministry.  On  the  4th  of 
January,  1767,  at  the  Chapel  Royal,  St.  James's,  he  received 
priest's  orders  at  the  hands  of  the  Bishop  of  Norwich ;  and 
fifteen  days  afterward  he  received  from  the  Bishop  of  Lon- 
don his  license  as  a  minister  of  the  Church  in  New  Jersey. 
On  his  arrival  in  that  province,  he  was  inducted  by  Gover- 
nor William  Franklin  into  the  rectorship  of  St.  Mary's  par- 
ish, Burlington;  and  thenceforward,  until  his  labors  were 
stopped  by  the  war,  he  gave  himself  with  the  utmost  devo- 
tion to  his  duties  as  parish  priest,  as  missionary,  and  as 
physician. 

II. 

Thus,  Jonathan  Odell  began  his  career  as  a  clergyman  in 
America  in  the  very  year  in  which  the  English  ministry,  by 
the  renewal  of  its  project  for  colonial  taxation,  called  back 
into  life  that  ill-boding  controversy  that  had  seemed  to  die 
a  happy  death  on  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  only  a  twelve- 
month before.  This  action  of  the  ministry  was  deeply 
lamented  by  Odell,  who  clearly  saw  the  need  of  a  fresh  con- 
sideration of  the  whole  subject  of  the  rights  of  the  colonies 
within  the  empire,  together  with  a  clearer  definition  and  a 
more  stable  defense  of  those  rights.  All  this,  however,  he 
was  confident,  could  be  obtained  in  due  time,  and  in  the 
usual  English  way  of  robust  political  agitation — without 
sedition,  privy  conspiracy,  or  rebellion.  It  was  a  part  of 
his  temperament,  as  it  also  was  of  his  profession,  to  look 
with  utter  disapproval  upon  every  project  for  violent  resist- 
ance to  constituted  authority — still  more  so  upon  every 
project  tending  toward  a  dismemberment  of  the  empire. 
Moreover,  during  the  eight  years  of  passionate  debate,  from 
the  Townshend  Act  in  June,  1767,  until  after  the  battle  of 
Bunker  Hill  in  June,  1775,  he  abstained  from  all  public  par- 
ticipation  in  political  affairs,  feeling  it  to  be  his  duty  as  a 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  IOI 

clergyman  to  promote  "  a  spirit  of  peace  and  good  order," 
and  amid  all  those  "  perplexing  and  alarming  troubles  "  to 
assist  "  by  prudence  and  integrity  of  conduct  "  in  the  per- 
manent establishment  "  of  that  harmony  and  peace,  upon 
just  and  practicable  grounds,  which  is  essential  to  the  hap- 
piness and  glory  of  the  whole  empire. ' '  : 

But  after  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  the  dispute  reached  a 
stage  at  which  such  reserve  was  no  longer  possible  on  either 
side  of  the  question.  Nevertheless,  even  after  that  event, 
Odell  still  hoped  to  be  permitted  to  pursue  his  calling  in 
peace.  "  I  told  them,"  he  said  respecting  the  local  com- 
mitteemen  who,  in  October,  1775,  had  arrested  him  for 
expressions  used  in  two  private  letters  which  they  had  seized 
and  broken  open,  "  that  I  did  not  mean  to  dissemble  my 
sentiments  concerning  the  measures  of  Congress,  but  that  I 
had  made  it  a  rule  to  myself  from  the  beginning  of  our 
troubles,  not  to  interfere  directly  or  indirectly  in  public 
affairs;  and  though  I  neither  could  nor  would  make  any 
sacrifice  of  my  principles  or  duty,  either  as  a  loyal  subject 
or  a  minister  of  the  Church  of  England,  yet  my  political 
conduct  should  be  inoffensive,  if  they  would  allow  a  passive 
conduct  to  be  so ;  and  in  short,  that  I  presumed  it  reason- 
able in  me  to  expect  I  should  be  indulged  in  the  unmolested 
enjoyment  of  my  private  sentiments  so  long  as  I  did  not 
attempt  to  influence  the  sentiments  or  conduct  of  other 
men,  and  that  private  sentiments  ought  not  to  be  made 
matter  of  public  notice,  much  less  of  public  censure."  2 

But  with  every  month  that  passed,  the  flame  of  excite- 
ment kept  rising;  the  year  of  the  great  decision  soon  came; 
and,  of  course,  Odell's  position  was  too  conspicuous  and 
his  character  too  outspoken  for  him  to  remain  unmolested 
in  such  an  emergency.  On  the  4th  of  June,  I77^»  *ne 
birthday  of  King  George,  a  number  of  British  officers,  who 
had  been  captured  by  General  Montgomery  in  Canada  sev- 

1  Odell's  letter  to  the  secretary  of  the  S.  P.  G.,  July  7,  i?75,  given  in  Hills, 
44  Hist,  of  the  Ch.  in  Burlington,"  307-308. 
*  Letter  of  Odell,  Ibid.  314. 


IO2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

eral  months  before  and  were  then  held  as  prisoners  at  Bur- 
lington, celebrated  the  day  by  a  dinner  under  the  trees  on  a 
little  island  in  the  Delaware.  It  was  but  a  few  miles  above 
the  spot  where  the  Continental  Congress  was  in  session.  It 
was  but  three  days  before  the  resolution  for  Independence 
was  presented  to  Congress  by  Richard  Henry  Lee.  It  was 
but  one  month  before  Independence  itself  was  declared. 
Although  at  that  very  moment  the  air  was  all  ablaze  with 
the  fiery  demand  for  a  total  and  final  rejection  of  the 
authority  of  the  king,  Jonathan  Odell  wrote  on  behalf  of 
these  captive  friends  of  his,  a  glowing  ode  for  the  royal 
birthday,1  in  which  he  sets  forth,  first,  the  enthusiasm  with 
which  throughout  all  other  portions  of  the  British  empire 
the  day  was  then  being  celebrated;  next,  the  deplorable 
lack  of  enthusiasm  for  the  king's  birthday  characterizing,  at 
that  time,  a  considerable  party  among  his  American  sub- 
jects; and  finally,  their  own  undying  devotion  to  the  glori- 
ous monarch  whose  throne,  it  is  here  recorded,  was  to  stand 
as  long  as  the  sun  and  the  moon  shall  endure. 

No  doubt  the  gallant  young  fellows — young  John  Andre 
being  one  of  them — who  to  the  clashing  accompaniment  of 
their  regimental  music  roared  forth  that  proud  and  defiant 
song,  felt  an  honest  pity  for  the  small  provincial  politicians 
who,  just  below  them  in  Philadelphia,  were  even  then  chat- 
tering about  Independence,  and  were  dreaming  their  absurd 
dream  of  resistance  to  the  invincible  might  of  Britain. 
Meantime,  the  noise  of  their  loyal  merry-making,  and  par- 
ticularly of  Odell's  song,  made  itself  heard  beyond  the  rim 
of  the  little  island  where,  they  had  held  their-  celebration ; 
and  on  the  2Oth  of  the  following  month,  the  provincial 
convention  of  New  Jersey  ordered  that  Jonathan  Odell,  as 
"  a  person  suspected  of  being  inimical  to  American  liberty," 
be  required  to  give  his  parole,  pledging  himself  to  remain 
"  on  the  east  side  of  Delaware  river,  within  a  circle  of 
eight  miles  from  the  court-house  of  the  city  of  Burling- 

1  "  The  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  7-9. 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  103 

ton."  The  course  of  Odell's  life  during  the  remainder  of 
that  year  of  mighty  commotion,  and  until  his  final  flight 
within  the  British  lines,  is  best  described  in  his  own  words, 
written  in  New  York  early  in  January,  1777:  "  After  giving 
this  parole,  I  remained  unmolested  at  home  till  about  the 
middle  of  last  month,  when  a  body  of  Hessians  under  the 
command  of  Count  Donop  came  to  Burlington  intending  to 
take  post  with  us  for  the  winter.  Some  of  my  neighbors 
thought  it  advisable  to  meet  the  commandant  on  his  ap- 
proach to  the  town,  and  to  request  him  to  spare  the  inhab- 
itants from  insult  anfd  their  property  from  pillage.  They 
requested  me  to  go  with  them  and  assist  in  this  charitable 
address,  as  an  interpreter.  I  did  so,  and  had  the  pleasure 
to  find  that  I  had  a  pretty  good  prospect  of  being  of  real 
service  to  my  peaceable  neighbors.  But  five  gondolas, 
lying  in  the  river,  began  to  cannonade  the  town  in  order  to 
prevent  the  troops  taking  quarter  with  us.  Many  houses 
were  damaged  but  nobody  hurt.  The  Hessian  comman- 
dant, however,  having  with  him  no  heavy  cannon,  thought 
proper  to  retire  that  night  to  Bordentown,  intending  to 
return  with  artillery  sufficient  to  make  good  his  quarters. 
In  the  meantime  ...  as  soon  as  it  was  known 'on 
board  the  gondolas  that  the  troops  had  left  Us,  the  town 
was  cruelly  insulted  and  from  day  to  day  kept  in  alarm  by 
those  river  tyrants.  Mr.  Lawrence,  young  Mr.  Hawlings, 
and  myself  were  in  particular  pursued  by  two  captains  and 
a  number  of  armed  men.  We  made  our  escapes,  and  were 
under  the  necessity  of  taking  refuge  among  the  king's 
troops.  ...  I  have  been  obliged  to  leave  my  wife  and 
three  children  (the  youngest  not  five  weeks  old)  and  to  ram- 
ble as  a  refugee — God  knows  when  to  return."  During 
those  days  and  nights  of  peril,  in  which  the  rector  of  Bur- 
lington was  hunted  like  a  felon  from  one  hiding-place  to 
another,  he  received  most  important  aid  from  a  shrewd  and 
merry  Quakeress,  Margaret  Morris,  who  then  owned  the 

"  American  Archives,"  4  Ser.,  vol.  vi.  1651. 
8  The  whole  letter  is  given  in  Hills,  "  Hist,  of  the  Ch.  in  Burlington,"  315. 


IO4  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

great  house  upon  the  river  bank,  near  Burlington,  which 
had  formerly  belonged  to  Governor  Franklin.  Within  this 
house  was  a  secret  chamber,  of  the  greatest  convenience  in 
those  troubled  days,  and  named  by  its  facetious  proprietor 
the  "  augur  hole."  It  was  "  a  dark  but  quite  roomy  apart- 
ment, which  had  no  window  or  aperture  for  light";  was 
just  under  the  roof  of  one  wing  of  the  house,  and  could  be 
reached  only  by  entering  a  linen  closet  in  the  adjoining 
room,  "  drawing  out  the  shelves,"  "  prying  up  the  movable 
back,"  '  and  then  stooping  low  and  creeping  in  through  the 
opening  which  would  thus  be  revealed.  It  was  to  the  shelter 
of  this  Quaker  mansion,  and  especially  of  that  very  secluded 
portion  of  it,  that  Odell  had  fled ;  and  a  part  of  what  hap- 
pened to  him  then  and  shortly  afterward,  is  thus  told  by 
the  lively  Quakeress,  in  her  diary  for  December,  1776: 
"  From  the  I3th  to  the  i6th,  .  .  .  parties  of  armed 
men  rudely  entered  the  town,  and  diligent  search  was  made 
for  Tories.  ...  A  loud  knocking  at  my  door  brought 
me  to  it.  I  was  a  little  fluttered,  and  kept  locking  and 
unlocking  that  I  might  get  my  ruffled  face  a  little  com- 
posed ;  at  last  I  opened  it,  and  half  a  dozen  men,  all  armed, 
demanded  the  key  of  the  empty  house.2  I  asked  what  they 
wanted  there ;  they  said,  to  search  for  a  Tory.  The  name 
of  a  Tory,  so  near  my  own  door,  seriously  alarmed  me ;  for 
a  poor  refugee  .  .  .  was  at  that  very  time  concealed, 
like  a  thief,  in  an  augur  hole.  I  rung  the  bell  violently, — 
the  signal  agreed  on  if  they  came  to  search ;  and  when  I 
thought  he  had  crept  into  the  hole,  I  put  on  a  very  simple 
look,  and  cried  out,  '  Bless  me,  I  hope  you  are  not  Hes- 
sians .  .  .  but  I  '11  go  with  you  into.  Colonel  Cox's 
house  ...  So  I  marched  at  the  head  of  them,  opened 
the  door,  and  searched  every  place,  but  we  could  not  find 
the  Tory.  Strange  where  he  could  be!  We  returned — they 
greatly  disappointed — I,  pleased  to  think  my  house  was  not 

1  "  Hist,  of  the  Ch.  in  Burlington,"  321  n. 

s  A  neighboring  house,  belonging  to  a  Colonel  Cox.     The  key  had  been  left 
with  her. 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  105 

suspected.  .  .  .  They  left  us,  and  searched  J.  V.'s  and 
the  two  next  houses,  but  no  Tory  could  they  find.  .  „  :v, 
In  the  evening,  I  went  to  town  with  my  refugee,  and  placed 
him  in  other  lodgings.  .  .  .  Dec.  i8th.  .  .  .  Our 
refugee  gone  off  to-day  out  of  the  reach  of  gondolas  and 
Tory-hunters."  On  the  I2th  of  January,  1777,  after  this 
capable  lady  had  heard  of  Odell's  safe  arrival  in  New  York, 
she  thus  records  her  ideas  as  to  his  possible  destiny:  "  We 
have  some  hopes  that  our  refugee  will  be  presented  with  a 
pair  of  lawn  sleeves,  when  dignities  become  cheap;  and 
suppose  he  will  then  think  himself  too  big  to  creep  into  his 
old  augur  hole ;  but  I  shall  remind  him  of  the  place,  if  I  live 
to  see  him  created  first  bishop  of  Burlington. ' '  ' 

III. 

Upon  his  arrival  in  New  York,  Odell  was  received  into 
high  favor,  which  was  increased  rather  than  diminished 
under  the  test  of  time  and  trial.  Being  himself  an  old  army 
man,  he  found  among  the  officers  about  headquarters  some 
ancient  comrades  and  acquaintances ;  and  into  the  habits 
and  moods  of  military  life  he  could,  of  course,  enter  with 
quick  sympathy  and  adaptation.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
was  an  American,  of  solid  character  and  unusual  intelli- 
gence :  he  knew  the  country,  its  people,  its  chief  men,  the 
currents  and  eddies  of  its  agitated  life.  Moreover,  he  was  a 
clergyman,  a  physician,  a  gentleman,  cultivated  by  travel, 
by  society,  and  by  books.  He  was  a  fluent  and  keen  prose 
writer,  a  poet,  and  a  wit.  With  all  these  resources  for 
effective  service  in  many  directions,  and  with  every  reason 
for  self-restraint  at  last  removed,  he  threw  himself  into 
the  contest  with  the  whole  strength  of  his  strong  nature; 
he  stood  ready  to  lend  a  hand  for  any  good  measure  that 
was  in  progress.  He  was  "  active  in  every  way.'*  He 
served  as  chaplain  of  a  corps  of  Loyalist  American  troops.8 

1  Hills,  "  Hist,  of  Ch.  in  Burlington,"  321  n. 

8  W.  B.  Reed,  "  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Joseph  Reed,"  ii.  170  n. 

3  Sabine,  "  Loyalists  of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  ii.  122. 


106  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

From  the  first,  he  seems  to  have  been  confided  in  by  men 
high  in  authority  in  the  army,  and  to  have  been  the  recip- 
ient of  some  delicate  trusts;  and  at  least  one  sinister 
reminiscence  attaches  to  him,  namely,  as  an  organ  of  com- 
munication  between  Major  Andr£  and  the  traitor  Arnold. 
A  most  criminal  letter  of  Arnold's  is  still  in  existence, 
addressed  to  Andre  under  the  name  of  "  Mr.  John  Ander- 
son," and  "  to  be  left  at  the  Rev.  Mr.  Odell's,  New  York."1 
But  by  far  the  most  memorable  work  wrought  by  Jonathan 
Odell  during  the  Revolution,  was  what  he  did  in  his  capacity 
as  satirist. 

A  man  of  so  much  earnestness  and  forbearance  as  he,  and 
so  competent,  likewise,  to  deal  seriously  with  the  issues 
around  which  the  controversy  was  waged,  would  not  be 
likely  to  resort  to  satire  as  a  principal  weapon  of  conflict, 
until  all  other  methods  of  intellectual  warfare  had  been 
tried.  At  least  this  conception  of  the  place  and  function  of 
satire  appears  to  have  been  held  by  him ;  for  in  the  preface 
to  the  most  elaborate  of  his  satirical  poems,  he  says:  "  The 
masters  of  reason  have  decided,  that  when  doctrines  and 
practices  have  been  fairly  examined,  and  proved  to  be  con- 
trary to  truth,  and  injurious  to  society,  then  and  not  before 
may  ridicule  be  lawfully  employed  in  the  service  of  virtue. 
This  is  exactly  the  case  of  the  grand  American  rebellion: 
it  has  been  weighed  in  the  balance,  and  found  wanting; 
able  writers  have  exposed  its  principles,  its  conduct,  and  its 
final  aim.  Reason  has  done  her  part,  and  therefore  this  is 
the  legitimate  moment  for  satire."  ' 

This  may,  in  a  measure,  explain  the  fact  that  although 
Odell  was  within  the  British  lines  from  about  the  beginning 
of  the  year  1777,  and  was  an  alert  and  impassioned  observer 
of  the  struggle,  he  seems  not  to  have  entered  the  field  as  a 
satirist 'until  so  late  as  the  year  1778.  Moreover,  all  his 
work  in  that  field,  so  far  as  can  now  be  ascertained,  is  em- 
braced  in  these  four  poems:  "  The  Word  of  Congress,"* 

1  "Writings  of  Washington,"  Sparks's  ed.,  vii.  521. 
"The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  151-152.  3  Ibid.  38-55. 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  IO/ 

published  September  18,  1779;  "  The  Congratulation,"  ' 
published  November  6,  1779;  "  The  Feu  de  Joie,"*  pub- 
lished November  24,  1779;  and  "  The  American  Times,"* 
written  in  1779,  and  first  published,  perhaps,  early  in  1780. 


IV. 


All  of  these  poems  are  framed  after  the  models  of  English 
classical  satire  as  presented  by  Dryden,  Pope,  and  Churchill. 
Each  has  some  slight  plot  by  which  the  several  topics  are 
bound  together;  and  each,  plunging  abruptly  into  its 
theme,  dashes  forward  with  fearless  step,  and  a  bitter, 
mocking,  trenchant  energy.  Prefixed  to  the  last  of  these 
poems  is  a  motto  from  Juvenal,4 — 

"  Facit  indignatio  versum  " — 

a  motto  that  might  with  equal  propriety  be  placed  before 
them  all.  Throbbing  along  these  verses  is  an  indignation 
hot  enough  for  the  needs  of  any  satirist ;  while  the  verses 
themselves,  though  tremulous  and  heaving  with  wrath,  yet 
seem  to  leap  toward  their  victims  with  a  fury  that  is  self- 
controlled,  and  to  wield  a  blade  polished  and  edged  for. 
the  most  scientific  emotional  surgery.  Certainly,  no  stu- 
dent of  the  American  Revolution  who  would  now  qualify 
himself  to  enter  into  the  very  thought  and  passion  of  those 
Americans  who  honestly  opposed  that  great  procedure,  can 
refuse  to  himself  a  careful  reading  of  these  four  satires  of 
Jonathan  Odell. 

From  these  poems,  to  begin   with,  may  one  gather  the 

1  "  The  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  45-50.  From  internal  evidence  this  poem 
appears  to  have  been  written  late  in  the  year  1778;  and  though  published  in 
Rivington's  "  Gazette  "  at  the  date  above  named,  it  had  probably  been  in  print 
in  some  form  before  that  time. 

»  Ibid.  51-58.  3  "  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  1-37. 

4  Sat.  I.  79.  His  motto  would  have  been  more  effective,  had  he  quoted  the 
•whole  line  :  "  Si  natura  negat,  facit  indignatio  versum." 


108  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

principal  ideas  which  formed  the  basis  of  the  political  system 
of  the  American  Loyalists :  first,  that  the  colonial  policy  of 
the  English  ministry,  in  the  matter  of  taxation,  was  a  blun- 
der; secondly,  that  in  view  of  the  political  sympathies  and 
tendencies  of  the  English  people,  and  especially  of  the  great 
liberal  leaders  in  parliament,  the  colonies  could  without 
doubt  defeat  this  policy  simply  by  persevering  in  their 
opposition  within  constitutional  limits ;  and,  thirdly,  that 
the  act  of  the  radical  chiefs  in  America  in  pushing  their 
opposition  beyond  those  limits,  into  open  rebellion,  into 
treason,  into  the  attempt  at  national  dismemberment,  was 
not  at  all  necessary  to  the  political  safety  of  America,  and 
was  therefore  both  a  blunder  and  a  crime, — the  awful  conse- 
quences of -which  must  surely  come  in  ruin  and  in  suffering, 
not  only  to  themselves  who  were  guilty,  but  to  millions  of 
men  and  women  who  were  not  guilty.  Thus,  in  his  latest 
satire,  reviewing  the  whole  contest,  Odell  passes  this  delib- 
erate judgment  upon  the  causes  of  it : 

"  Stand  forth,  Taxation  !    kindler  of  the  flame- 
Inexplicable  question,  doubtful  claim  : 
Suppose  the  right  in  Britain  to  be  clear, 
Britain  was  mad  to  exercise  it  here. 
Call  it  unjust,  or,  if  you  please,  unwise, 
The  colonists  were  mad  in  arms  to  rise. 

"  Impolitic,  and  open  to  abuse,1 
How  could  it  answer  ?  what  could  it  produce? 
No  need  for  furious  demagogues  to  chafe, 
America  was  jealous,  and  was  safe  ; 
Secure  she  stood  in  national  alarms, 
And  Madness  only  would  have  flown  to  arms. 
Arms  could  not  help  the  tribute,  nor  confound  : 
Self-slain  it  must  have  tumbled  to  the  ground."* 

Here,  then,  is  a  vast  enterprise  of  folly  and  crime  into 
which  a  multitude  of  worthy  people  have  been  seduced,  to 

1  This  obviously  refers  to  "  Taxation." 
3  "  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  30. 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  109 

their  ineffable  injury  and  sorrow,  by  the  arts  of  a  few  ambi- 
tious chiefs.  Without  at  all  denying  that  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  justifiable  rebellion,  here,  certainly,  as  the  satirist 
holds,  is  rebellion  which  is  not  justifiable.  That  a  people 
so  sound  and  orderly  as  the  American  people,  should  have 
been  drawn,  in  such  vast  numbers,  into  a  rebellion  of  this 
character,  can  be  explained,  he  thinks,  only  upon  the 
theory  of  a  widespread  delusion  or  phrensy  produced  by 
some  powerful  potion — some  maddening  cup  of  sorcery — 
some  horrid 

".     .     .     draught  designed 
To  cheat  the  crowd,  and  fascinate  mankind." 

And  the  satirist  is  so  fortunate  as  to  have  surprised  the 
makers  of  this  fatal  draught  while  in  the  very  act  of  com- 
pounding it: 

"  What  group  of  wizards  next  salutes  my  eyes — 
United  comrades,  quadruple  allies  ? 
Bostonian  Cooper,  with  his  Hancock  joined, 
Adams  with  Adams,  one  in  heart  and  mind. 
Sprung  from  the  soil  where  witches  swarmed  of  yore, 
They  come  well  skilled  in  necromantic  lore  ; 
Intent  on  mischief,  busily  they  toil, 
The  magic  caldron  to  prepare  and  boil  ; 
Arrayed  in  sable  vests,  and  caps  of  fur, 
With  wands  of  ebony  the  mess  they  stir  ; 
See  !  the  smoke  rises  from  the  cursed  drench, 
And  poisons  all  the  air  with  horrid  stench. 

"  Celestial  muse,  I  fear  't  will  make  thee  hot 
To  count  the  vile  ingredients  of  the  pot  : 
Dire  incantations,  words  of  death,  they  mix 
With  noxious  plants,  and  water  from  the  Styx  ; 
Treason's  rank  flowers,  Ambition's  swelling  fruits, 
Hypocrisy  in  seeds,  and  Fraud  in  roots, 
Bundles  of  Lies  fresh  gathered  in  their  prime, 


HO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

And  stalks  of  Calumny  grown  stale  with  time  ; 

Handfuls  of  Zeal's  intoxicating  leaves, 

Riot  in  bunches,  Cruelty  in  sheaves, 

Slices  of  Cunning  cut  exceeding  thin, 

Kernels  of  Malice,  rotten  cores  of  Sin, 

Branches  of  Persecution,  boughs  of  Thrall, 

And  sprigs  of  Superstition,  dipt  in  gall, 

Opium  to  lull  or  madden  all  the  throng, 

And  assafcetida  profusely  strong, 

Milk  from  Tisiphone's  infernal  breast, 

Herbs  of  all  venom,  drugs  of  every  pest, 

With  min'rals  from  the  centre  brought  by  Gnomes, — 

All  seethe  together  till  the  furnace  foams. 

"  Was  this  the  potion,  this  the  draught  designed 
To  cheat  the  crowd,  and  fascinate  mankind  ? 
O  void  of  reason  they,  who  thus  were  caught  : 
O  lost  to  virtue,  who  so  cheap  were  bought ; 
O  folly,  which  all  folly  sure  transcends, 
Such  bungling  sorc'rers  to  account  as  friends. 

"  Yet  though  the  frantic  populace  applaud, 
'T  is  Satire's  part  to  stigmatize  the  fraud. 
Exult,  ye  jugglers,  in  your  lucky  tricks, 
Yet  on  your  fame  the  lasting  brand  we  '11  fix. 
Cheat  male  and  female,  poison  age  and  youth, 
Still  we  '11  pursue  you  with  the  goad  of  truth. 
Whilst  in  mid-heaven  shines  forth  the  golden  flame, 
Hancock  and  Adams  shall  be  words  of  shame  ; 
Whilst  silver  beams  the  face  of  night  adorn, 
Cooper  of  Boston  shall  be  held  in  scorn."  ' 

V. 

The  great  American  rebellion,  then,  is  the  result  of  a 
sort  of  insane  phrensy  produced  by  the  wicked  few  in 
administering  to  their  victims  this  potion  of  political  necro- 
mancy— this  hideous  hell-broth  made  up  of  lies,  sophistries. 

1  "  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  7-9. 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  Ill 

ambitions,  hatreds,  hallucinations.  Moreover,  that  the  gen- 
eral madness  has  already  made  such  frightful  headway  and 
havoc  among  the  American  people,  has  been  due  not  to  any 
lack  of  honest  attempts  on  the  part  of  honest  men  to  stop 
it;  for, 

"  When  civil  madness  first  from  man  to  man 
In  these  devoted  climes  like  wildfire  ran, 
There  were  who  gave  the  moderating  hint, 
In  conversation  some,  and  some  in  print ; 
Wisely  they  spake — and  what  was  their  reward  ?— 
The  tar,  the  rail,  the  prison,  and  the  cord  ! 
Ev'n  now  there  are,  who  bright  in  Reason's  dress 
Watch  the  polluted  Continental  press  ; 
Confront  the  lies  that  Congress  sends  abroad, 
Expose  the  sophistry,  detect  the  fraud." ' 

Changing,  then,  the  image,  it  may  be  said  that  in  this 
hand-to-hand  battle  with  Error,  the  champions  of  Truth 
have  been  somewhat  in  the  position  of  those  brave  knights 
of  old  who  wandered  through  the  world  in  order  to  fight 
and  slay  giants,  enchanters,  and  fiery  dragons, — yet  with 
this  difference,  that  when  they  had  once  slain  the  monster, 
slain  he  was,  and  that  was  the  end  of  him : 

"  But  Error  may  not  with  such  ease  be  quelled — 
She  rallies  fresh  her  force,  though  oft  repelled  ; 
Cut,  hacked,  and  mangled,  she  denies  to  yield, 
And  straight  returns  with  vigor  to  the  field. 
Champions  of  Truth,  our  efforts  are  in  vain  ; 
^ast  as  we  slay,  the  foe  revives  again. 
Vainly  the  enchanted  castle  we  surprise, 
New  monsters  hiss,  and  new  enchantments  rise."* 

Moreover,  the  peculiar  allies  and  agents  of  Error — the  plot- 
ters and  perpetrators  of  this  stupendous  rebellion — seem  to 

1  "  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  26-27.  *  Ibid-    2/-28. 


1 1 2  THE  A  ME  RICA  N  RE  VOL  U  TION. 

be  a  race  of  men  whose  talent  for  mischief  is  inexhaustible, 
and  who  are  able  to  provide  a  substitute  and  successor  for 
any  chieftain,  however  gifted^  however  unscrupulous,  who 
may  chance  to  fall : 

"  Was  Samuel  Adams  to  become  a  ghost, 
Another  Adams  would  assume  his  post  ; 
Was  bustling  Hancock  numbered  with  the  dead, 
Another  full  as  wise  might  raise  his  head. 
What  if  the  sands  of  Laurens  now  were  run, 
How  should  we  miss  him — has  he  not  a  son  ? 
Or  what  if  Washington  should  close  his  scene, 
Could  none  succeed  him? — Is  there  not  a  Greene? 
Knave  after  knave  as  easy  we  could  join, 
As  new  emissions  of  the  paper  coin. 
When  it  became  the  high  United  States 
To  send  their  envoys  to  Versailles'  proud  gates, 
Were  not  three  ministers  produced  at  once  ? — 
Delicious  group,  fanatic,  deist,  dunce  ! 
And  what  if  Lee,  and  what  if  Silas  fell, 
Or  what  if  Franklin  should  go  down  to  hell, 
Why  should  we  grieve  ? — the  land,  't  is  understood, 
Can  furnish  hundreds  equally  as  good."  * 

Then,  again,  so  soon  as  American  society  had  thrown  off 
its  ancient  and  rightful  allegiance,  it  began  to  suffer  the 
most  horrid  form  of  misgovernment — the  rule  of  the  worst: 

"  From  the  back  woods  half  savages  came  down, 
And  awkward  troops  paraded  every  town. 
Committees  and  conventions  met  by  scores  ;     • 
Justice  was  banished,  Law  turned  out  of  doors  ; 
Disorder  seemed  to  overset  the  land  ; 
They  who  appeared  to  rule,  the  tumult  fanned  ; 
But  Cunning  stood  behind  with  sure  control, 
And  in  one  centre  caused  to  meet  the  whole."  a 

1  "  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  28.  «  Ibid.  53. 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  113 

Of  course,  by  that  "  one  centre  "  where  Cunning  stood 
behind  the  scene,  and  gave  direction  and  method  to  the 
universal  madness,  the  poet  means  the  Continental  Con- 
gress. Congress  it  is  which,  in  the  name  of  liberty,  has 
brought  in  this  many-headed  tyranny — the  instant  product 
of  which  is  a  vast  social  jumble  of  ignorance,  violence, 
folly,  and  wretchedness : 

"  Here  Anarchy  before  the  gaping  crowd 
Proclaims  the  people's  majesty  aloud  ; 
There  Folly  runs  with  eagerness  about, 
And  prompts  the  cheated  populace  to  shout ; 
Here  paper-dollars  meagre  Famine  holds, 
There  votes  of  Congress  Tyranny  unfolds  ; 
With  doctrines  strange  in  matter  and  in  dress, 
Here  sounds  the  pulpit,  and  there  groans  the  press ; 
Confusion  blows  her  trump — and  far  and  wide 
The  noise  is  heard — the  plough  is  laid  aside  ; 
The  awl,  the  needle,  and  the  shuttle  drops  ; 
Tools  change  to  swords,  and  camps  succeed  to  shops ; 
The  doctor's  glister-pipe,  the  lawyer's  quill, 
Transformed  to  guns,  retain  their  power  to  kill  ; 
From  garrets,  cellars,  rushing  through  the  street, 
The  new-born  statesmen  in  committees  meet ; 
Legions  of  senators  infest  the  land, 
And  mushroom  generals  thick  as  mushrooms  stand." ' 

So  often  as  the  satirist  looks  abroad  over  the  land,  searching 
to  find  out  who,  beyond  all  question,  are  responsible  for 
these  appalling  miseries,  he  comes  back  again  and  again  and 
fastens  his  gaze  upon  Congress.  That  body  it  is  which,  in 
his  opinion,  is  the  one  effective  organ  and  operator  of  all 
this  public  profligacy  and  ruin.  Therefore,  with  eyes  flash- 
ing anger,  with  step  and  gesture  expressive  of  uttermost 
contempt  and  loathing  for  these  men  who,  in  the  name  of 
patriotism  and  freedom,  have  committed  treason,  have 
organized  despotism,  have  slain  the  happiness  of  the  people, 

1  "  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  2. 


I  1 4  THE  A  M ERIC  A  N  RE  VOL  U  TION. 

he  demands  whether  it  is  not  at  last  quite  time  to  tear  the 
masks  from  their  faces  and  to  expose  them  for  the  robbers 
and  the  tyrants  that  they  are : 

"  We  will,  we  must — though  mighty  Laurens  frown, 
Or  Hancock  with  his  rabble  hunt  us  down  ; 
Champions  of  virtue,  we  '11  alike  disdain 
The  guards  of  Washington,  the  lies  of  Paine, 
And  greatly  bear,  without  one  anxious  throb, 
The  wrath  of  Congress,  or  its  lords  the  mob."  * 

VI. 

Upon  Congress,  accordingly,  he  wreaks  his  satiric  ven- 
geance, unwinding  over  its  devoted  head  the  voluminous 
folds  of  his  own  copious  and  fructifying  vocabulary  of 
curses.  In  his  opinion,  nothing  can  be  plainer  than  that 
the  history  of  the  Continental  Congress  is  but  a  history  of 
political  duplicity  and  deceit ;  and  for  all  its  brilliant  versa- 
tility in  deception,  that  renowned  body  deserves  to  be 
named  the  very  Proteus  of  modern  politics : 

"  Oh  !  't  is  a  word  of  power,  of  prime  account : 
I  've  seen  it  like  the  daring  Osprey  mount ; 
I  've  seen  it  like  a  dirty  reptile  creep, 
Rush  into  flame,  or  plunge  into  the  deep  ; 
I  've  heard  it  like  a  hungry  lion  roar, 
Who  tears  the  prey,  and  bathes  himself  in  gore; 
I  've  seen  it  softer  than  the  vernal  rain, 
Mildly  descending  on  the  grassy  plain  ; 
I  've  heard  it  pious,  as  a  saint  in  prayer — 
I  've  heard  it  like  an  angry  trooper  swear ; 
I  've  known  it  suit  itself  to  every  plan — 
I  've  known  it  lie  to  God,  and  lie  to  man. 

Whoe'er  the  word  of  Congress  shall  peruse, 
In  every  piece  will  see  it  change  its  views  ; 


"  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc     1-2. 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  IIJ 

Now  swell  with  duty  to  the  king  elate, 

Now  melt  with  kindness  to  the  parent  state, 

Then  back  to  .treason  suddenly  revolve, 

And  join  in  Suffolk's  infamous  resolve. 

Trace  it  through  all  the  windings  of  the  press, 

Vote  or  appeal,  petition  or  address, 

Trace  it  in  every  act,  in  every  speech, 

Too  sure  you  '11  find  duplicity  in  each. 

Mark  now  its  soothing,  now  its  threat'ning  strain  ; 

Mark  its  hypocrisy,  deceit,  chicane  ; 

From  the  soft  breathings  of  the  new-formed  board, 

To  that  fell  hour  when  Independence  roared, 

Forced,  you  '11  acknowledge,  since  creation's  dawn 

Earth  never  yet  produced  so  vile  a  spawn."  ' 

But  the  satirist  is  by  no  means  satisfied  when  he  has 
poured  his  execration  upon  Congress  as  a  collective  body  of 
criminals:  he  needs  to  single  out  by  name,  and  to  blast 
individually,  the  men  who  compose  it,  and  the  men,  also, 
who  outside  its  walls  are  its  conspicuous  servants, — 

"  The  blust'rer,  the  poltroon,  the  vile,  the  weak, 
Who  fight  for  Congress,  or  in  Congress  speak."1 

One  of  those  clearly  entitled  to  this  distinction  at  Odell's 
hands  is  Thomas  Paine,  whose  service  of  Congress  as  a 
writer  was  most  memorable : 

"  Swarms  of  deceivers,  practised  in  the  trade, 
Were  sent  abroad  to  gull,  cajole,  persuade ; 

Others  apart  in  some  obscure  recess, 
The  studied  lie  for  publication  dress  : 
Prepare  the  vague  report,  fallacious  tale, 
Invent  fresh  calumnies,  revive  the  stale, 
Pervert  all  records  sacred  and  profane, — 


The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  39  ;  49-50.  *  Ibid.  44. 


Il6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

And  chief  among  them  stands  the  villain  Paine. 
This  scribbling  imp,  't  is  said,  from  London  came, 
That  seat  of  glory  intermixed  with  shame. 


Our  hireling  author  having  changed  his  soil, 
True  son  of  Grub  Street,  here  renewed  his  toil. 
What  cannot  ceaseless  impudence  produce? 
Old  Franklin  '  knows  its  value,  and  its  use  : 
He  caught  at  Paine,  relieved  his  wretched  plight, 
And  gave  him  notes,  and  set  him  down  to  write. 
Fire  from  the  Doctor's  hints  the  miscreant  took. 
Discarded  truth,  and  soon  produced  a  book, — 
A  pamphlet  which,  without  the  least  pretence 
To  reason,  bore  the  name  of  '  Common  Sense.' 


The  work,  like  wildfke,  through  the  country  ran, 
And  Folly  bowed  the  knee  to  Franklin's  plan. 
Sense,  reason,  judgment  were  abashed  and  fled, 
And  Congress  reigned  triumphant  in  their  stead."  * 

Another  personage  upon  whom  this  stern  limner  bestows 
his  skill,  is  General  John  Sullivan,  first  a  member  of  Con- 
gress, and  afterward  its  military  servant, — his  most  noted 
exploit  being  as  leader  of  the  famous  expedition  into  the 
Indian  country  beyond  the  Susquehanna : 

"  Amidst  ten  thousand  eminently  base, 
Thou,  Sullivan,  assume  the  highest  place  ! 
Sailor,  and  farmer,  barrister  of  vogue, 
Each  state  was  thine,  and  thou  in  each  a  rogue. 
Ambition  came,  and  swallowed  in  a  trice, 
Like  Aaron's  rod,  the  reptile  fry  of  vice. 
One-giant  passion  then  his  soul  possessed, 
And  dreams  of  lawless  sway  disturbed  his  rest. 
He  gave  each  wild  imagination  scope, 

1  In  the  text,  this  name  is  not  given. 
"  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  51-52. 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  \\y 

And  flew  to  Congress  on  the  wings  of  hope. 
Behold  him  there,  but  still  behold  him  curst — 
He  sate  in  Congress,  but  he  sate  not  first. 
What  could  the  fever  of  his  mind  compose  ? 
Make  him  a  general :  general  straight  he  grows. 
Head  of  a  shirtless,  shoeless  gang  he  strides — 
While  Wisdom  stares  and  Folly  shakes  her  sides. 

"  And  must  I  sing  the  wonders  of  his  might  ? 
What  are  they  ?     Rout,  captivity,  and  flight ! 
Rhode  Island  saw  him  to  her  forts  advance, 
Assisted  by  the  ships  of  faithless  France  : 
Rhode  Island  saw  him  shamefully  retreat, 
In  imitation  of  the  Gallic  fleet. 
His  banners  last  on  Susquehanna  waved, 
Where,  lucky  to  excess,  his  scalp  he  saved."  * 

Thus,  the  portraits  of  distinguished  writers  and  generals  are 
dashed  off  by  Odell  in  bold,  ferocious,  and  sometimes  witty 
caricature,  and  are  hung  up  by  him  against  the  panels  of  his 
rogues'  gallery.  Besides,  not  even  the  pettiness,  not  even 
the  obscurity,  of  any  miscreant  can  protect  him  from  the 
attentions  of  this  artist : 

"  Not  always  generals  offer  to  our  aim, — 
By  turns  we  must  advert  t'  inferior  game. 
Yet  hard  to  rescue  from  oblivion's  grasp 
The  worthless  beetle  and  the  noxious  asp  ; 
And  full  as  hard  to  save  from  after-times 
The  names  of  men  known  only  for  their  crimes. 
Left  to  themselves  they  soon  would  be  forgot ; 
But  yet  't  is  right  that  rogues  should  hang  and  rot."  * 

While,  however,  there  is  such  catholicity  in  the  range  of  his 
hatred,  and  a  mob  of  minor  malefactors  do  receive  the  pain- 
ful honor  of  his  notice,  it  is  upon  the  supreme  political 
criminals — the  splendid  and  now  immortal  chiefs  of  the 

'"The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  46-47-  8  Ibid-  J3- 


Ilg  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Revolution — that  he  bestows  his  most  studied  skill  in  exe- 
cration. In  "  The  American  Times,"  the  most  polished 
and  the  most  powerful  of  his  satires,  he  contrives  to  bring 
these  great  criminals  before  him  by  means  of  a  poetic  device 
for  which  he  is  evidently  indebted  to  the  idea  of  Milton, 
namely,  that  the  fallen  angels,  using  their  temporary  privi- 
lege of  absence  from  Pandemonium,  are  accustomed  to  take 
human  forms  and  to  enact  renowned  and  malefic  careers  on 
the  field  of  human  history.  In  the  development  of  this 
conception,  Odell  enacts  a  tremendous  scene.  Amid  all  this 
babel  of  clattering  impudence  in  America, — standing  indig- 
nant but  unappalled  in  the  very  heart  of  this  tumult  where- 
in a  mob  of  political  jugglers  are  plotting  crime  and  sorrow 
for  their  victims, — he  summons  into  his  presence  from  Pan- 
demonium those  mighty  demons  who,  masquerading  in  this 
part  of  the  earth  under  the  shapes  and  names  of  mortal 
men,  have  really  wrought  here  the  chief  infamy  and  wretch- 
edness of  the  American  rebellion  : 

"  O  !   for  some  magic  voice,  some  powerful  spell, 
To  call  the  Furies  from  profoundest  hell  ! 
Arise,  ye  Fiends,  from  dark  Cocytus's  brink  ; 
Soot  all  my  paper,  sulphurize  my  ink  ; 
So  with  my  theme  the  colors  shall  agree, 
Brimstone  and  black — the  livery  of  Lee."  ' 

Instantly,  in  response  to  his  potent  call,  they  rise  and 
swarm  around  him,  a  flock  of  malignant  monsters  from  the 
nethermost  pit,  and  receive  from  him  their  sentence:  first, 
William  Livingston  of  New  Jersey,  against  whom  Odell  had 
very  special  grounds  for  abhorrence;  then  the  serene  and 
wise  John  Jay ;  then  Samuel  Chase,  the  robust  lawyer  and 
statesman  of  Maryland ;. then  Robert  Morris,  the  financier; 
then  his  coadjutor  in  finance,  the  brilliant  and  exuberant 
Gouverneur  Morris: 

"The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  3.  Of  course,  the  "Lee"  here  named  is 
General  Charles  Lee,  who,  as  is  now  known,  was  a  greater  scoundrel  than  even 
Odell  thought  him. 


JONATHAN  ODELL. 

"  Whence  and  what  art  thou,  execrable  form, 
Rough  as  a  bear,  and  roaring  as  a  storm  ? 
Ay,  now  I  know  thee — Livingston  art  thou — 
Gall  in  thy  heart,  and  malice  on  thy  brow  ; 
Coward,  yet  cruel — zealous,  yet  profane  ; 
Havoc,  and  spoil,  and  ruin  are  thy  gain. 
Go,  glut  like  Death  thy  vast  unhide-bound  maw  ; 
Remorseless  swallow  liberty  and  law  ; 
At  one  enormous  stroke  a  nation  slay — 
But  thou  thyself  shall  perish  with  thy  prey. 

,**  What  Fiend  is  this,  of  countenance  acute, 

More  of  the  knave  who  seems,  and  less  of  brute J 
Whose  words  are  cutting  like  a  shower  of  hail, 
And  blasting  as  the  mildew  in  the  vale? 
'T  is  Jay — to  him  these  characters  belong  : 
Sure  sense  of  right,  with  fixed  pursuit  of  wrong ; 
An  outside  keen,  where  malice  makes  abode  ; 
Voice  of  a  lark,  and  venom  of  a  toad  ; 
Semblance  of  worth,  not  substance,  he  puts  on, 
And  Satan  owns  him  for  his  darling  son. 

"  Flit  not  around  me  thus,  pernicious  elf, 
Whose  love  of  country  terminates  in  self ; 
Back  to  the  gloomy  shades,  detested  sprite, 
Mangier  of  rhetoric,  enemy  of  right : 
Cursed  of  thy  father,  sum  of  all  that  's  base, 
Thy  sight  is  odious  and  thy  name  is  Chase. 

*'  What  spectre  's  that,  with  eyes  on  earth  intent, 
Whose  god  is  gold,  whose  glory  cent,  per  cent. ; 
Whose  soul,  devoted  to  the  love  of  gain, 
Revolts  from  feelings  noble  or  humane? 
Let  friends,  let  family,  let  country  groan, 
Despairing  widows  shriek,  and  orphans  moan ; 
Turned  to  the  centre  where  his  riches  grow, 
His  eye  regards  not  spectacles  of  woe. 
Morris,  look  up — for  so  thy  name  we  spell — 
On  earth,  Bob  Morris,  Mammon  't  is  in  hell. 


I2O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Wretch,  who  hast  meanly  sold  thy  native  land, 
Tremble,  thou  wretch,  for  vengeance  is  at  hand  ; 
Soon  shall  thy  treasures  fly  on  eagle's  wings, 
And  conscience  goad  thee  with  her  thousand  stings. 

"  Of  head  erect,  and  self-sufficient  mien, 
Another  Morris  presses  to  be  seen. 
Demons  of  vanity,  you  know  him  sure  ; 
This  is  your  pupil,  this  is  Gouverneur. 
Some  little  knowledge,  and  some  little  sense, 
More  affectation  far,  and  more  pretense  ; 
Such  is  the  man — his  tongue  he  never  balks, 
On  all  things  talkable  he  boldly  talks  ; 
A  specious  orator,  of  law  he  prates  ; 
A  pompous  nothing,  mingles  in  debates  ; 
Consummate  impudence,  sheer  brass  of  soul, 
Crowns  every  sentence,  and  completes  the  whole ; 
In  other  times,  unnoticed  he  might  drop — 
Confusion  makes  a  statesman  of  a  fop."  1 

VII. 

With  characters  so  powerful  or  so  interesting  as  these, 
the  poet  is  not  always  occupied, — as  when  he  condescends 
to  bestow  four  lines  of  contempt  on  that  blundering  and 
bibulous  American  officer,  the  titular  Lord  Stirling: 

"  What  matters  what  of  Stirling  may  become  ? 
The  quintessence  of  whiskey,  soul  of  rum  ; 
Fractious  at  nine,  quite  gay  at  twelve  o'clock  ; 
From  thence  till  bed-time  stupid  as  a  block."  ' 

For  a  fresh  assortment  of  villains  to  choose  from,  the  satirist 
has  but  to  repeat  his  invocation,  and  up  come  another  gang 
of  them,  among  whom  happens  to  be  conspicuous  the  Polish 
revolutionist  and  outlaw,  Pulaski,  who  was  accused  of  plan- 

"  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  4-6. 
1  "  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  14. 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  121 

ning  the  abduction  of  his  king,  and  who  was  actually  killed 
on  an  American  battle-field  a  few  months  after  that  very 
fate  was  predicted  for  him  in  these  lines : 

"  Turn  out,  black  monsters — let  us  take  our  choice  ! 
What  devilish  figure  's  this,  with  devilish  voice? 
Oh  !  't  is  Pulaski — 't  is  a  foreign  chief ; 
On  him  we  '11  comment — be  our  comment  brief. 
What  are  his  merits,  judges  may  dispute  ; 
We  '11  solve  the  doubt,  and  praise  him — for  a  brute. 
'  No  quarter  '  is  his  motto — sweet  and  short : 
Good  Britons,  give  him  a  severe  retort. 
As  yet  he  'scapes  the  shot  deserved  so  well — 
His  nobler  horse  in  Carolina  fell ; 
He  fears  not,  in  the  field  where  heroes  bleed, 
He  starts  at  nothing — but  a  generous  deed. 
Escaped  from  Poland,  where  his  murd'rous  knife, 
'T  is  said,  was  raised  against  his  sovereign's  life, 
Perhaps  he  scoffs,  with  fashionable  mirth, 
The  notion  of  a  God  who  rules  the  earth. 
Fool !  not  to  see  that  something  more  than  lot 
Conducts  the  traitor  to  this  destined  spot, — 
Rank  with  congenial  crimes  that  call  for  blood, 
Where  justice  soon  must  pour  the  purple  flood, 
A  parricide,  with  parricides  to  die, 
And  vindicate  the  Power  that  reigns  on  high."  ' 

With  even  a  keener  zest  for  bestowing  deserved  punish- 
ment, the  poet  also  recognizes  among  the  rabble  of  fiends 
that  he  has  called  up  from  the  pit,  one  whose  earth-name 
is  Witherspoon : 

"  Known  in  the  pulpit  by  seditious  toils, 
Grown  into  consequence  by  civil  broils, 
Three  times  he  tried,  and  miserably  failed, 

,.  To  overset  the  laws — the  fourth  prevailed. 
Whether  as  tool  he  acted,  or  as  guide, 
Is  yet  a  doubt — his  conscience  must  decide. 

1  "  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  14-15. 


122  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Meanwhile  unhappy  Jersey  mourns  her  thrall, 

Ordained  by  vilest  of  the  vile  to  fall ; 

To  fall  by  Witherspoon  ! — O  name,  the  curse 

Of  sound  religion,  and  disgrace  of  verse. 

Member  of  Congress,  we  must  hail  him  next : 

'  Come  out  of  Babylon,'  was  now  his  text. 

Fierce  as  the  fiercest,  foremost  of  the  first, 

He  'd  rail  at  kings,  with  venom  well-nigh  burst. 

Not  uniformly  grand— for  some  bye-end, 

To  dirtiest  acts  of  treason  he  'd  descend  : 

I  've  known  him  seek  the  dungeon  dark  as  night, 

Imprisoned  Tories  to  convert,  or  fright  ; 

Whilst  to  myself  I  've  hummed,  in  dismal  tune, 

I  'd  rather  be  a  dog  than  Witherspoon. 

Be  patient,  reader — for  the  issue  trust ; 

His  day  will  come — remember,  Heaven  is  just  I"1 


Thus,  one  by  one,  these  monsters  of  political  crime,  as 
they  flutter  about  the  poet,  are  described  and  damned, — 
members  of  Congress,  generals  of  the  army,  governors  of 
States,  subordinate  officers  of  government,  and  even,  its 
hired  scribblers : 

"  Wretches,  whose  acts  the  very  French  abhor  ; 
Commissioners  of  loans,  and  boards  of  war, 
Marine  committees,  commissaries,  scribes, 
Assemblies,  councils,  senatorial  tribes. 

Ask  you  the  names  of  these  egregious  wights? 
I  could  as  soon  recount  Glendower's  sprites. 
Thick  as  mosquitoes,  venomously  keen, 
Thicker  than  locusts,  spoilers  of  the  green  ; 
Swarming  like  maggots  who  the  carcass  scour 
Of  some  poor  ox,  and  as  they  crawl,  devour, — 
They  'd  mock  the  labors  of  a  hundred  pens — 
'  Back,  owly-headed  monsters,  to  your  dens.'  "* 

1  "The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  17-18.  *  Ibid.  2O. 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  123 

Scarcely  any  man  of  prominence  in  the  Revolutionary 
cause  has  the  felicity  to  be  overlooked  by  this  terrible 
judge;  and  no  one,  once  looked  upon  by  him,  escapes  with- 
out a  sentence  which  seems  to  make  soul  and  body  writhe 
in  torment.  To  one  character  only — and  he  a  civilian,  even 
a  member  of  Congress,  even  the  president  of  Congress — is 
the  satirist  willing  to  concede  one  solitary  trait  of  goodness. 
That  character  is  Henry  Laurens,  the  noble  South  Caro- 
linian. Having  ordered  back  to  the  pit  from  which  they 
came,  all  these  clamorous  monsters,  the  poet  turns  with  a 
sort  of  sad  respect  to  Laurens : 

"  At  length,  they  're  silenced  !     Laurens,  thou  draw  near ; 
What  I  shall  utter,  thou  attentive  hear  ! 
I  loathe  all  conference  with  thy  boisterous  clan, 
But  now  with  thee  I  '11  argue  as  a  man. 

"  What  could  incite  thee,  Laurens,  to  rebel  ? — 

Thy  soul  thou  wouldst  not  for  a  trifle  sell. 

'T  was  not  of  power  the  wild,  insatiate  lust  j 

Mistaken  as  thou  art,  I  deem  thee  just. 

Saw'st  thou  thy  king  tyrannically  rule? 

Thou  could'st  not  think  it — thou  art  not  a  fool 
»    Thou  wast  no  bankrupt,  no  enthusiast  thou  ; 

The  clearness  of  thy  fame  e'en  foes  allow. 

For  months  I  watched  thee  with  a  jealous  eye, 

Yet  could  no  turpitude  of  mind  espy. 

In  private  life  I  hold  thee  far  from  base — 

Thy  public  conduct  wears  another  face. 

In  thee  a  stern  republican  I  view  ; 

This  of  thy  actions  is  the  only  clew. 

Admit  thy  principles — could  these  demand, 

Could  these  give  right,  to  desolate  a  land  ? 

Could  it  be  right,  with  arbitrary  will, 

To  fine,  imprison,  plunder,  torture,  kill  ? 

Impose  new  oaths,  make  stubborn  conscience  yield, 

And  force  out  thousands  to  the  bloody  field  ? 

Could  it  be  right  to  do  these  monstrous  things — 

Because  thy  nature  was  averse  to  kings  ? 


124  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Well,  but  a  stern  republican  thou  art ; 
Heaven  send  thee  soon  to  meet  with  thy  desert ! 
Thee,  Laurens,  foe  to  monarchy  we  call, 
And  thou,  or  legal  government,  must  fall. 
Who  wept  for  Cato,  was  not  Cato's  friend  ; 
Who  pitied  Brutus,  Brutus  would  offend. 
So,  Laurens,  to  conclude  my  grave  harangue, 
I  would  not  pity,  though  I  saw  thee  hang."  * 

But  in  all  this  bustling  throng  of  political  criminals  upon 
whom  the  poet  has  bestowed  his  imprecation,  right  hearty 
and  blistering,  where  is  Washington  ?  And  did  the  Ameri- 
can Loyalists  of  1779 — did  even  Jonathan  Odell,  the  most 
implacable  of  them  all — dare  to  assault  him,  to  dispute  his 
integrity,  to  deny  to  him  that  purity  of  character,  those 
stately  virtues,  for  which  he  is  now  canonized  by  the  human 
race  ?  Let  us  for  a  moment  hearken ! 

"  Strike  up,  hell's  music  !  roar,  infernal  drums  ! 
Discharge  the  cannon  !     Lo,  the  warrior  comes  ! 
He  comes,  not  tame  as  on  Ohio's  banks 
But  rampant  at  the  head  of  ragged  ranks. 
Hunger  and  itch  are  with  him — Gates  and  Wayne ! 
And  all  the  lice  of  Egypt  in  his  train. 
Sure  these  are  Falstaff's  soldiers,  poor  and  bare, 
Or  else  the  rotten  reg'ments  of  Rag-Fair. 

Wilt  thou,  great  chief  of  Freedom's  lawless  sons, 
Great  captain  of  the  western  Goths  and  Huns, 
Wilt  thou  for  once  permit  a  private  man 
To  parley  with  thee,  and  thy  conduct  scan  ? 
At  Reason's  bar  has  Catiline  been  heard  : 
At  Reason's  bar  e'en  Cromwell  has  appeared. 


Hear  thy  indictment,  Washington,  at  large  ; 
Attend  and  listen  to  the  solemn  charge  : 

1  "  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  21-22. 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  125 

Thou  hast  supported  an  atrocious  cause 

Against  thy  king,  thy  country,  and  the  laws ; 

Committed  perjury,  encouraged  lies, 

Forced  conscience,  broken  the  most  sacred  ties ; 

Myriads  of  wives  and  fathers  at  thy  hand 

Their  slaughtered  husbands,  slaughtered  sons,  demand ; 

That  pastures  hear  no  more  the  lowing  kine, 

That  towns  are  desolate,  all — all  is  thine  ; 

The  frequent  sacrilege  that  pained  my  sight, 

The  blasphemies  my  pen  abhors  to  write, 

Innumerable  crimes  on  thee  must  fall — 

For  thou  maintainest,  thou  defendest  all. 

What  could,  when  half-way  up  the  hill  to  fame, 

Induce  thee  to  go  back,  and  link  with  shame  ? 

Was  it  ambition,  vanity,  or  spite 

That  prompted  thee  with  Congress  to  unite  ; 

Or  did  all  three  within  thy  bosom  roll, 

'  Thou  heart  of  hero  with  a  traitor's  soul '  ? 

Go,  wretched  author  of  thy  country's  grief, 

Patron  of  villainy,  of  villains  chief  ; 

Seek  with  thy  cursed  crew  the  central  gloom, 

Ere  Truth's  avenging  sword  begin  thy  doom  ; 

Or  sudden  vengeance  of  celestial  dart 

Precipitate  thee  with  augmented  smart."  l 

VIII. 

Through  all  the  songs  and  satires  of  Jonathan  Odell  there 
runs  one  thread  of  passionate  sentiment  which  has  to  be 
recognized  as  something  profoundly  characteristic  of  him 
and  of  the  great  Loyalist  party  of  which  he  was  a  leader, 
namely,  an  absolute,  a  cloudless,  confidence  in  the  ultimate 
and  perfect  triumph  of  their  party  through  the  ultimate 
and  perfect  triumph  of  the  British  arms  in  America.  How 
could  it  be  otherwise  ?  Who  that  had  mastered  the  first 
four  rules  of  arithmetic,  could  doubt  that  Great  Britain 

'"  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  9-12. 


126  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

would  put  down  and  stamp  out  this  American  rebellion  ? 
Accordingly,  from  that  June  afternoon  in  1776,  when  the 
captive  British  officers,  on  an  island  in  the  Delaware,  sang 
the  rousing  ode  in  which  Odell  had  put  into  lyric  form  his 
assurance  of  the  speedy  discomfiture  of  the  rebels,  down  to 
the  year  1783,  when  the  impossible  came  to  pass,  in  the 
acknowledgment  by  England  of  the  complete  success  of  the 
American  rebellion,  it  is  apparent  that  Jonathan  Odell  held 
firmly  to  his  faith  that  the  arms  of  England  must,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course,  shatter  and  annihilate  all  organized  opposition 
in  the  colonies. 

"  Though  faction  by  falsehood  awhile  may  prevail, 
And  Loyalty  suffers,  a  captive  in  jail, 
Britain  is  roused,  rebellion  is  falling  : 

God  save  the  king  ! 

The  captive  shall  soon  be  released  from  his  chain, 
And  conquest  restore  us  to  Britain  again, 
Ever  to  join  in  chanting  merrily 

Glory  and  joy  crown  the  king  !  " 

Such  was  a  part  of  Odell's  song  for  the  king's  birthday  in 
the  year  1777.  Nevertheless,  that  year  and  the  year  follow- 
ing passed  away,  and  the  power  of  armed  rebellion  in 
America  did  not  pass  away.  In  spite  of  this  strange  delay, 
Odell  doubted  not  that  the  rebellion  was  doomed,  and  that 
its  doom  was  very  near.  Nay,  in  the  autumn  of  1778,  after 
the  grotesque  failure  of  the  French  squadron  in  their  first 
campaign  of  alliance  with  the  Americans,  Odell  flung  into  a 
tumult  of  jeering  verse  his  exultation  over  the  proofs  then 
so  plentiful,  that  the  rebel  cause  had  not  another  leg  to 
stand  on : 

"  The  farce  of  empire  will  be  finished  soon, 
And  each  mock  monarch  dwindle  to  a  loon  ; 
Mock-money  and  mock-States  shall  melt  away, 
And  the  mock-troops  disband  for  want  of  pay. 


1  "  The  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  12. 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  \2f 

Now  War,  suspended  by  the  scorching  heat, 
Springs  from  his  tent,  and  shines  in  arms  complete  ; 
Now  Sickness,  that  of  late  made  heroes  pale, 
Flies  from  the  keenness  of  the  northern  gale  ; 
Firmness  and  Enterprise,  united,  wait 
The  last  command  to  strike  the  stroke  of  Fate  ; 
Now  Boston  trembles,  Philadelphia  quakes, 
And  Carolina  to  the  centre  shakes  ! 

What  now  is  left  of  Continental  brags  ? — 
Taxes  unpaid,  though  payable  in  rags. 
What  now  remains  of  Continental  force  ? — 
Battalions  mould'ring,  waste  without  resource. 
What  rests  there  yet  of  Continental  sway  ? — 
A  ruined  people — ripe  to  disobey. 
Hate  now  of  men,  and  soon  to  be  the  jest  ! 
Such  is  your  fate,  ye  Monsters  of  the  West !  " ' 

Indeed,  so  plain  was  it  to  Odell  that  the  last  flicker  of  light 
was  now  to  be  seen  in  the  dying  embers  of  the  rebellion, 
that  he  was  able,  near  the  close  of  the  year  1778,  to  fix  the 
exact  date  for  its  final  extinction,  namely,  the  year  1779. 
Therefore,  for  a  company  of  Loyalists  who,  with  convivial 
rites,  were  watching  the  old  year  out  and  the  new  year  in, 
he  conveyed  this  prediction  in  the  form  of  a  capital  song, 
entitled  "  The  Old  Year  and  the  New:  a  Prophecy  "  : 

"  What  though  last  year  be  past  and  gone, 

Why  should  we  grieve  or  mourn  about  it  ? 
As  good  a  year  is  now  begun, 

And  better,  too, — let  no  one  doubt  it. 

'T  is  New  Year's  morn  ;  why  should  we  part  ? 

Why  not  enjoy  what  heaven  has  sent  us  ? 
Let  wine  expand  the  social  heart, 

Let  friends,  and  mirth,  and  wine  content  us. 

"  War's  rude  alarms  disturbed  last  year  ; 
Our  country  bled  and  wept  around  us  ; 


"  The  Loyal  Verses,"  etc.,  48-50. 


128  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

But  this  each  honest  heart  shall  cheer, 
And  peace  and  plenty  shall  surround  us. 

"  Last  year  '  King  Congo,'  through  the  land, 

Displayed  his  thirteen  stripes  to  fright  us  ; 
But  George's  power,  in  Clinton's  hand, 
In  this  New  Year  shall  surely  right  us. 

"  Last  year  saw  many  honest  men 

Torn  from  each  dear  and  sweet  connection  ; 
But  this  shall  see  them  home  again, 
And  happy  in  their  king's  protection. 

"  Last  year  vain  Frenchmen  braved  our  coasts, 

And  baffled  Howe,  and  'scaped  from  Byron ; 
But  this  shall  bring  their  vanquished  hosts 

To  crouch  beneath  the  British  lion. 

• 

*'  Last  year  rebellion  proudly  stood, 

Elate,  in  her  meridian  glory  ; 
But  this  shall  quench  her  pride  in  blood, — 
George  will  avenge  each  martyred  Tory. 

**  Then  bring  us  wine,  full  bumpers  bring  : 
Hail  this  New  Year  in  joyful  chorus  ; 
God  bless  great  George  our  gracious  king, 
And  crush  rebellion  down  before  us. 

'T  is  New  Year's  morn  ;  why  should  we  part  ? 

Why  not  enjoy  what  heaven  has  sent  us  ? 
Let  wine  expand  the  social  heart, 

Let  friends,  and  mirth,  and  wine  content  us."  * 

"The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.,  99-101.  Though  I  have  nowhere  seen  this 
song  mentioned  as  Odell's,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  ascribe  it  to  him.  It  is  exactly 
in  his  best  manner.  Moreover,  from  a  contemporary  reference,  we  know  that 
the  song  was  written  by  a  clergyman  ;  and  it  is  impossible  to  name  any  other 
Loyalist  clergyman  then  in  the  country,  who  is  known  to  have  produced  verse  of 
the  quality  of  this.  I  am  confident,  also,  that  a  considerable  part  of  Odell's 
work  as  a  song-writer  and  satirist  during  the  Revolution  has  thus  far  escaped 
recognition  as  his. 


JONATHAN  ODELL.  129 

As  one  comes  to  the  end  of  the  American  Revolution — 
an  end  that  brought  with  it  to  the  American  Loyalists  a 
shock  of  sickening  disappointment  and  of  irreparable  disas- 
ter— we  find  them  presently  breaking  up  into  two  sections: 
first,  those  who  after  a  time  relented,  sought  reconciliation 
with  the  victors,  or  were  glad,  at  any  rate,  to  come  back 
and  dwell  in  peace  in  the  young  republic  v/hose  existence 
had  been  won  in  spite  of  them ;  and,  secondly,  those  who 
never  relented,  who  never  sought  reconciliation,  and  who, 
in  England,  in  Nova  Scotia,  in  Upper  Canada,  or  in  some 
other  portion  of  the  British  empire,  found  a  shelter  and 
finally  a  grave  for  a  political  hostility  which  no  lapse  of  time 
could  quench  or  even  soften.  To  the  first  section,  Joseph 
Stansbury  belonged:  to  the  second,  belonged  Jonathan 
Odell.  His  principle  as  an  American  Loyalist  had  in  it  an 
invincible  tenacity,  a  deathless  love,  a  deathless  hate.  Even 
after  the  surrender  of  Cornwallis  in  1781,  and  so  long  as 
England  kept  a  solitary  soldier  in  America,  Odell  continued 
to  talk  of  aggression — of  renewing  the  struggle, — of  getting 
vengeance  and  victory  even  yet.  When,  finally,  the  con- 
temptuous wrath  of  England  gave  way,  and  she  forced  her 
reluctant  king  to  make  terms  with  the  late  American  rebels, 
Odell  would  not  make  terms  with  them ;  he  still  denounced 
and  defied  them;  and  with  other  inappeasable  opponents 
of  American  Independence,  he  abandoned  the  land  of  his 
birth  and  of  his  ancestry,  and  settled  himself  in  Nova 
Scotia,  where  he  sustained  a  distinguished  civil  career,  and 
where  at  last,  in  extreme  old  age,  he  died,  without  ever 
taking  back  a  word,  or  uttering  an  apology,  or  flinching 
from  an  opinion, — a  proud,  gritty  member  of  a  political 
party  that  had  been  defeated,  but  never  conquered  or 
convinced. 

VOL.  II.— g 


CHAPTER   XXX. 

FRANCIS  HOPKINSON   AS   HUMOROUS  CHAMPION  OF 
AMERICAN   INDEPENDENCE:      1776-1/81. 

I. — Hopkinson  chosen  to  represent  New  Jersey  in  Congress,  then  discussing 
the  resolution  for  Independence — His  serious  work  in  legislation,  in  execu- 
tive business — Becomes  Judge  of  the  Court  of  Admiralty  in  Pennsylvania — 
Finds  relief  from  official  labors  in  his  sprightly  contributions  to  Revolu- 
tionary literature. 

II. — Obstacles  to  American  Independence  presented  by  certain  mental  and 
sentimental  habits  of  the  Americans — The  survival  among  them  of  the 
colonial  attitude  toward  the  mother  country — For  political  free-mindedness, 
a  critical  disposition  is  needed — To  this  Hopkinson  contributes  in  Decem- 
ber, 1776,  by  his  "  Letter  Written  by  a  Foreigner  on  the  Character  of  the 
English  Nation  " — Facetious  description  of  the  typical  Englishman — Play- 
ful account  of  the  origin  of  the  English  quarrel  with  America — The  intel- 
lectual capacity  of  the  British  voters  who  sustain  the  ministry  in  their  war 
against  America. 

III. — General  account  of  Hopkinson's  contributions  to  Revolutionary  literature 
— His  revision  of  them  in  his  "  Miscellaneous  Essays  and  Occasional  Writ- 
ings " — After  July  4,  1776,  the  chief  objects  of  attack  for  a  Whig  satirist 
are  the  military  invaders  of  the  country,  and  their  American  allies — Hop- 
kinson's tone  toward  both  these  enemies  of  Independence. 

IV.— Hopkinson's  "Letter  to  Lord  Howe,"  December,  1776— His  "Political 
Catechism,"  and  his  "  Camp  Ballad,"  early  in  1777 — His  ridicule  of  the 
two  great  British  invasions  of  1777— The  terror  inspired  by  that  under 
General  Burgoyne — Hopkinson's  burlesque  of  Burgoyne's  grandiloquent 
proclamation — Britannia's  humiliation  through  Burgoyne's  failure,  set  forth 
in  the  ballad, ."  Date  Obolum  Belisario." 

V. — Hopkinson's  ridicule  of  Howe's  invasion  of  Pennsylvania — Circumstances 
which  suggested  "The  Battle  of  the  Kegs" — The  effectiveness  of  that 
ballad — Its  inferior  literary  quality. 

VI. — Hopkinson's  ridicule  of  the  Loyalists — Their  social  prepossessions — Their 
alleged  snobbishness — His  "Two  Letters"  as  by  Loyalists  avowing  their 
most  offensive  opinions  and  purposes — His  last  work  as  a  Revolutionary 
humorist,  an  "  Advertisement,"  November,  1781,  in  ridicule  of  the  Tory 
printer  and  bookseller,  James  Rivington. 
130 


FR A N 'CIS  HOPKINSON.  131 

I. 

THE  prominent  part  taken  by  Francis  Hopkinson,  in 
April,  1776,  in  the  literary  debate  over  the  question  of  Inde- 
pendence,1 made  it  natural  that  the  political  party  in  New 
Jersey  which  favored  that  measure  should  a  few  weeks  after- 
ward choose  him  as  their  representative  in  Congress,  then 
engaged,  as  it  was,  in  the  final  consideration  of  the  same 
tremendous  topic. 

Upon  taking  his  seat  there,  he  was  at  once  made  a  mem- 
ber of  the  committee  for  framing  the  articles  of  confedera- 
tion." In  the  following  September,  he  was  designated  by 
the  governor  of  New  Jersey  as  one  of  the  justices  of  the 
superior  court  of  that  State — a  position  which  he  seems  to 
have  declined.3  In  November  of  the  same  year,  his  associ- 
ates in  Congress  laid  upon  him  the  sole  responsibility  of 
executing  "  the  business  of  the  navy,"  under  the  direction 
of  the  marine  committee.4  At  a  later  period,  he  served 
Congress  as  treasurer  of  the  continental  loan  office/ 
Finally,  in  July,  1779,  ne  received  from  the  president  of 
Pennyslvania  the  high  place  of  judge  of  the  court  of  admi- 
ralty in  that  State," — a  position  which  he  filled  for  the  sub- 
sequent ten  years. 

It  does  not  appear  that  the  assumption  by  Hopkinson  of 
these  high  and  grave  tasks  had  any  effect  in  diminishing  his 
facility  or  sprightliness  as  a  humorous  political  writer.  On 
the  contrary,  he  seems  to  have  found  relief  from  the  fatigue 
and  the  solemn  stiffness  of  public  business,  in  such  esca- 
pades of  fancy  and  mirth — always  made,  of  course,  under 
an  incognito.  At  any  rate,  the  most  frolicsome  of  his  writ- 
ings were  precisely  those  which  were  thrown  off,  as  mere 
sports  of  the  mind,  in  the  midst  of  the  gravity  and  high 
dignity  of  his  labors  as  a  legislator  and  a  judge.  He  was  a 

1  This  subject  is  dealt  with  in  chapter  xxii.  of  the  present  work. 

s  "  Journals  of  Congress,"  i.  390-391. 

8  Hildeburn,  in  "  Pa.  Mag.  of  Hist,  and  Biog.,"  ii.  321-322. 

4  "  Journalsrf)f  Congress,"  i.  551. 

•  Hildeburn,  in  "  Pa.  Mag.  of  Hist,  and  Biog.,"  ii.  323.  •  Ibid.  322. 


132  THE  AMERICA*?  REVOLUTION. 

devotee  to  the  law,  who  never  took  farewell  of  the  muses. 
And  thus  it  came  about  that,  from  the  autumn  of  1774  on 
until  the  very  close  of  the  long  struggle,  the  cause  of  the 
Revolution,  at  nearly  every  stage  and  emergency  of  it,  was 
rescued  from  depression,  was  quickened,  was  cheered  for- 
ward, was  given  strength,  by  the  vivacity  of  this  delightful 
writer. 

II. 

Even  after  Congress  had  pronounced  the  terrific  word 
Independence, — thus  rending  and  trampling  under  foot  the 
most  solemn  protestations  made  by  the  American  people 
during,  the  preceding  ten  yearst — there  still  remained  in 
their  imaginations  and  in  their  hearts  a  prodigious  obstacle 
to  the  full  adoption  and  support  of  that  audacious  political 
heresy.  There,  to  begin  with,  was  the  ancient  and  most 
passionate  love  of  the  American  colonists  for  England  itself, 
— for  England,  the  cradle  of  their  race,  the  one  spot  in  all 
the  world  which,  during  nearly  two  hundred  years  of  ab- 
sence from  it,  they  had  continued  to  speak  of  as  Home. 
There,  also,  was  their  deep,  even  if  very  provincial,  regard 
for  everything  English,  in  opinion,  in  costume,  in  manner, 
in  speech,  in  precedent.  There,  likewise,  was  American 
reverence  for  the  king — a  reverence  perhaps  always  in- 
creasing in  the  ratio  of  distance  from  him;  reverence  for 
the  king,  and  his  chief  ministers,  his  parliament,  his  gen- 
erals, his  troops.  There,  too,  was  American  unconscious- 
ness of  their  own  real  power  in  resistance  and  in  attack — of 
their  latent  resources  in  civil  and  military  organization  and 
self-control.  There,  again,  was  the  social  prestige  of  the 
royal  cause  in  America.  There  were  the  chances  for  pro- 
motion in  rank  and  in  office,  by  remaining  on  the  king's 
side, — all  the  lures  of  hope,  ambition,  ease,  wealth,  respect- 
ability, held  out  by  that  side.  And  besides  all  these,  there 
was  the  appeal  to  fear, — an  appeal  never  very  far  from  any 
man  in  those  days, — the  vision  presented  to  the  eye  with 
awful  distinctness  as  a  thing  not  at  all  unlikely  to  become 


FRANCIS  HOP  KIN  SON.  133 

real  some  day, — the  vision  of  a  long  cloudy  vista,  stretching 
far  down  across  red  battle-fields,  and  over  mangled  corpses 
piled  up  in  heaps,  and  finally,  at  the  further  end  of  it,  a 
row  of  scaffolds,  and  on  each  scaffold  a  vanquished  rebel 
pendent.  In  very  truth,  all  these  were  considerations 
which,  even  with  honest  and  high-spirited  people,  sadly 
weighed,  in  those  days,  against  the  resolution  to  go  over  to 
this  plucky  but  sudden  and  dubious  project  for  Independ- 
ence. Who  couldgrapple  with  all  these  intimidating  forces  ? 
Certainly,  no  one  did  so  more  effectually  than  the  men  who 
wielded  the  printing-press, — particularly  the  wits  and  satirists 
and  pamphleteers  on  the  venturesome  side ! 

The  doctrine  of  Independence,  then,  was  a  proposition 
quickly  to  alienate  a  whole  people  from  an  object  which  for 
ages  had  seemed  to  them  to  be  very  great  and  venerable, 
toward  which  they  were  still  drawn  by  a  something  that 
throbbed  in  every  drop  of  their  blood, — by  the  instincts  of 
race,  by  ancient  traditions,  by  hereditary  habits,  by  senti- 
ments of  ineffable  depth  and  tenderness,  by  a  set  of  spiritual 
forces  among  the  strongest  that  can  kindle  and  sway  the 
human  heart.  Furthermore,  any  attempt  to  disturb  and  to 
reverse  these  deep-seated  tendencies  on  the  part  of  a  whole 
people,  had  to  encounter  at  the  beginning,  a  serious  diffi- 
culty springing  from  the  very  nature  of  the  colonial  mind — 
the  undeveloped  state  of  its  critical  faculty  as  regards  the 
personal  traits,  the  provoking  limitations,  the  less  pleasing 
idiosyncracies,  of  the  mother  race  from  which  the  colonists 
have  themselves  sprung,  and  with  which  until  then  they  had 
always  been  eager  and  proud  to  be  identified.  For,  always, 
the  colonial  mind  in  its  normal  condition  does  not  judge 
keenly,  much  less  does  it  ridicule,  the  faults  and  foibles  of  the 
parent  nation.  The  colony  that  has  begun  to  ridicule  its 
national  parent  is  not  far  from  Independence.  Accordingly, 
for  the  development  among  the  Americans  in  i/7^  °f  *ne 
robust  political  courage  invoked  by  their  new  doctrine  of 
national  separation,  it  was  necessary  that  this  amiable  note 
of  provincialism — this  filial  obtuseness  of  the  colonial  mind 


134  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

— should  be  broken  up,  and  that  the  Englishmen  who  lived 
in  America  should  begin  to  find  food  for  mirth  and  even  for 
derision  in  the  peculiarities  of  the  Englishmen  who  lived  in 
England. 

Toward  this  important  political  result,  Hopkinson  made 
some  contribution  in  his  so-called  "  Letter  written  by  a 
Foreigner  on  the  Character  of  the  English  Nation."1 
Under  an  old  device  for  securing  disinterested  judgments 
on  national  peculiarities,  Hopkinson  here  represents  a  cul- 
tivated foreigner  as  spending  some  time  in  England  in  the 
latter  part  of  1776,  and  as  giving  to  a  friend  in  his  own 
country  a  cool  but  very  satirical  analysis  of  the  alleged 
vices,  foibles,  and  absurdities  of  the  English  people,  and  of 
the  weak  and  wrong  things  in  their  treatment  of  their  late 
colonists  in  America.  "  The  general  character  of  the  Eng- 
lish," says  this  philosophical  observer,  "is  certainly  the 
most  fantastic  and  absurd  that  ever  fell  to  the  lot  of  any 
known  nation.  As  they  are  made  up  of  contradictions,  it 
would  be  unjust  to  give  them  any  uniform  designation. 
There  is  scarce  a  virtue  that  adorns  the  mind,  or  a  vice  that 
disgraces  human  nature,  but  may  be  ascribed  to  them  as 
part  of  their  national  character.  But  the  former  are  often 
rendered  ineffectual  by  misapplication,  and  the  latter  quali- 
fied by  a  levity  of  manners,  which  shews  them  not  to  be 
constitutionally  prevalent.  An  Englishman  will  treat  his 
enemy  with  great  generosity,  and  his  friend  with  ingratitude 
and  inhumanity.  He  will  be  lavish  of  his  wealth  when  he 
has  but  little  of  it,  and  become  a  miserly  wretch  when  for- 
tune pours,  her  favors  into  his  purse.  He  will  brave  the 
utmost  hardships,  and  encounter  the  severest  trials  with 
heroic  fortitude;  and  will  drown  or  hang  himself  because 
the  wind  is  in  the  east.  He  will  lend  large  sums  to  a 
stranger  on  the  slightest  security,  and  refuse  his  nearest  rela- 
tion the  means  of  subsistence.  To-day  his  heart  expands 

1  This  is  the  title  given  in  the  Contents  to  vol.  i.  of  "The  Miscellaneous 
Essays."  Over  the  text  of  the  letter  itself  is  this  title  :  "  Translation  of  a  Let- 
ter Written  by  a  Foreigner  on  his  Travels,"  i.  98. 


FRANCIS  HOPKINSON.  135 

with  social  benevolence ;  to-morrow  he  is  cold,  sullen,  and 
morose.  To-day  he  possesses  the  wealth  of  a  nabob ;  to- 
morrow he  refuses  a  sixpence  to  a  beggar,  lest  he  should 
himself  be  reduced  to  the  want  of  that  sixpence.  In  a 
word,  contradiction  and  absurdity  make  an  Englishman."  ' 

In  the  course  of  this  supposed  letter  from  London,  the 
disinterested  foreign  gentleman  who  is  represented  as  writ- 
ing it,  very  naturally  refers  to  the  quarrel  then  going  on 
between  the  king  and  his  American  subjects ;  and  he  is  thus 
led  to  give  to  his  correspondent  an  explanation — a  very 
luminous  and  amusing  explanation  it  is — of  the  origin  of  the 
quarrel,  only  substituting  for  the  constitutional  formula, 

No  taxation  without  representation,"  the  arithmetical 
formula,  "  Two  and  two  make  four," — the  one  formula 
being,  according  to  the  satirist,  quite  as  obvious  as  the 
other.  "  This  best  of  all  kings,"  he  writes,  "  has  now 
turned  his  attention  to  America.  There  he  had  three 
millions  of  subjects,  who  loved,  honored,  and  obeyed  him. 
He  governed  them  by  officers'  of  his  own  appointment;  he 
had  the  whole  regulation  of  their  commerce ;  and  the  over- 
flowings of  their  wealth  were  conducted,  by  easy  channels, 
into  his  coffers,  and  into  the  purses  of  the  merchants  and 
manufacturers  of  his  kingdom.  But  he  has  quarreled  with 
these  loyal  and  beneficial  subjects,  because  they  are  so  ob- 
stinate that  they  will  not  acknowledge  that  two  ami  two 
make  five.  Whole  volumes  have  been  written  on  this  sub- 
ject, and  all  the  force  of  reason  and  eloquence  exerted  to 
convince  this  wise  king  that  he  is  in  an  error.  The  Ameri- 
cans have  most  emphatically  beseeched  him  to  accept  oi  the 
undissembled  loyalty  of  their  hearts;  declaring  that  they  are 

1  "  The  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  etc.,  i.  98-99.  If  we  would  now  do  justice 
to  the  skill  and  the  success  with  which  England,  by  the  deft  hands  of  her  king 
and  parliament,  then  conducted  that  fine  motherly  process  of  race-weaning 
which  history  embodies  under  the  name  of  the  American  Revolution,  we  should 
here  note  that  the  genial  American  writer  who,  in  1776,  thus  defined  an  Eng- 
lishman as  a  person  made  up  of  "contradiction  and  absurdity,"  was  the  same 
one  .who,  just  ten  years  before,  had  been  anxious  to  have  it  understood  that 
"  we  of  America  are  in  all  respects  Englishmen." 


136  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

satisfied  that  the  fruits  of  their  industry  should  center  with 
him  and  his  people  as  heretofore,  to  enrich  and  aggrandize 
them ;  but  humbly  pray  that  they  may  not  be  compelled  to 
acknowledge  that  two  and  two  make  five,  which  would  be 
to  them  a  most  dangerous  and  distressing  violation  of  truth. 
But  this  wise  and  humane  monarch  is  far  from  being  dis- 
posed to  give  up  the  point.  He  has  rejected  their  petitions 
with  scorn,  and  spurned  at  their  offers  of  affection  and 
fidelity;  and  declares,  that  he  will  even  risk  the  crown  of 
his  ancestors,  but  he  will  make  the  obstinate  Americans 
subscribe  to  his  new  dogma. 

"  To  this  end  he  hath  sent  over  not  only  his  own  fleets  and 
armies,  but  has  hired  a  banditti  of  foreign  mercenaries  from 
a  petty  prince  who  supports  the  splendor  of  his  court  by 
selling  the  blood  of  his  subjects;  and  he  has  also  employed 
negroes  and  wild  Indians  to  persecute  the  poor  Americans 
without  mercy,  until  they  shall  acknowledge  that  two  and 
two  make  five. 

"  America  is  at  this  time  a  Scene  of  desolation  and  distress 
— a  theatre  whereon  is  acted  a  real  tragedy,  exhibiting  every 
species  of  cruelty  and  injustice.  The  royal  army  of  this 
most  enlightened  of  all  nations  are  ravishing  the  women, 
murdering  the  men,  and  laying  waste  that  fertile  and  beauti- 
ful country,  under  the  conduct  of  Lord  and  General  Howe ; 
who  are  executing  their  bloody  mandate,  with  all  the  com- 
posure in  the  world.  His  most  gracious  majesty  receives, 
from  time  to  time,  such  accounts  of  their  proceedings  as 
they  please  to  give  him,  and  is  as  happy  as  such  a  monarch 
can  be. 

"Who  would  have  thought  that  the  peaceful  plains  of 
America  would  be  desolated  because  the  inhabitants  will  not 
believe  that  two  and  two  make  five,  when  their  good  king 
and  his  wise  parliament  require  them  to  do  so? 

"On  the  contrary,  the  Americans,  highly  resenting  this 
treatment,  have  declared  that  they  will  no  longer  be  pen- 
sioners of  the  smiles  of  such  a  king,  or  submit  to  a  govern- 
ment in  which  they  have  no  share,  and  over  which  they 


FRANCIS  HOPKINSON.  137 

have  no  control,  and  which  is,  therefore,  with  respect  to 
them,  a  government  of  mere  will  and  pleasure.  They  have 
determined  to  be  henceforth  a  free  people ;  and  have  pub- 
licly avowed  that  they  will  enjoy  the  inestimable  privileges 
of  believing,  and  saying,  that  two  and  two  make  only  four, 
according  to  the  common  sense  of  mankind."  ' 

Such,  according  to  this  philosophic  observer,  late  in  the 
year  1776,  is  the  origin  of  the  American  war.  And  how 
must  such  a  war  terminate  ?  Is  not  the  king's  claim  too 
preposterous  to  be  long  supported,  even  by  his  own  subjects 
in  England  ?  At  a  distance,  one  might  think  so.  "  But 
the  truth  is  that  the  king,  by  means  of  his  ministers,  hath 
gained  such  an  ascendancy  over  the  parliament,  which  is 
the  constitutional  voice  of  the  people,  that  he  can  obtain 
their  sanction  for  any  project  in  which  their  rights  are  not 
openly  and  directly  attacked.  As  to  the  people  at  large, 
they  do  not  trouble  themselves  about  the  right  or  wrong  of 
the  matter  in  contest.  America  is  a  great  way  off,  and  they 
have  no  feelings  for  what  is  passing  there.  They  grumble, 
indeed,  about  the  diminution  of  their  trade,  in  consequence 
of  this  war,  but  leave  the  discussion  of  national  politics  to 
their  parliament."  a 

To  make  quite  clear  to  his  correspondent  just  how  all  this 
could  be,  the  imaginary  letter-writer  then  goes  on  to  sketch 
with  a  free  hand  the  limited  lives  and  the  petty  mental 
range  of  the  common  people  of  England,  their  patriotic 
incredulity  as  to  the  existence  of  anything  great  or  good 
outside  of  their  little  island,  and  especially  the  very  limited 
knowledge  and  the  quite  unlimited  self-conceit  and  stupidity 
of  the  ordinary  English  shopkeeper  and  mechanic:  "  The 
extreme  ignorance  of  the  common  people  of  this  civilized 
country  can  scarce  be  credited.  In  general,  they  know 
nothing  beyond  the  particular  branch  of  business  which 
their  parents  or  the  parish  happened  to  choose  for  them. 
This,  indeed,  they  practise  with  unremitting  diligence;  but 
never  think  of  extending  their  knowledge  farther. 

1  "The  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  etc.,  i.  101-104.  s  Ibid.  104. 


138  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  A  manufacturer1  has  been  brought  up  a  maker  of  pin- 
heads.  He  has  been  at  this  business  forty  years,  and  of 
course  makes  pin-heads  with  great  dexterity ;  but  he  cannot 
make  a  whole  pin  for  his  life.  He  thinks  it  is  the  perfec- 
tion of  human  nature  to  make  pin-heads.  He  leaves  other 
matters  to  inferior  abilities.  It  is  enough  for  him,  that  he 
believes  in  the  Athanasian  creed,  reverences  the  splendor 
of  the  court,  and  makes  pin-heads.  This  he  conceives  to 
be  the  sum-total  of  religion,  politics,  and  trade.  He  is  sure 
that  London  is  the  finest  city  in  the  world ;  Blackfriars 
bridge,  the  most  superb  of  all  possible  bridges ;  and  the  river 
Thames,  the  largest  river  in  the 2  universe.  It  is  in  vain  to 
tell  him  that  there  are  many  rivers  in  America,  in  com- 
parison of  which  the  Thames  is  but  a  ditch ;  that  there  are 
single  provinces  there  larger  than  all  England ;  and  that  the 
colonies,  formerly  belonging  to  Great  Britain,  now  Inde- 
pendent States,  are  vastly  more  extensive  than  England, 
Wales,  Scotland,  and  Ireland,  taken  all  together.  He  can- 
not conceive  this.  He  goes  into  his  best  parlor,  and  looks 
on  a  map  of  England,  four  feet  square ;  on  the  other  side  of 
the  room,  he  sees  a  map  of  North  and  South  America,  not 
more  than  two  feet  square;  and  exclaims — '  How  can  these 
things  be! — it  is  altogether  impossible!  '  He  has  read  the 
Arabian  Nights'  Entertainments,  and  he  hears  this  wonder- 
ful account  of  America;  he  believes  the  one  as  much  as  the 
other.  That  a  giant  should  rise  out  of  the  sea,  or  that  the 
Delaware  should  be  larger  than  the  Thames,  are  equally 
\  incredible  to  him.  Talk  to  him  of  the  British  constitution, 
he  will  tell  you — '  it  is  a  glorious  constitution.'  Ask  him 
what  it  is,  and  he  is  ignorant  of  its  first  principles ;  but  he  is 
sure  that  he  can  make  and  sell  pin-heads  under  it.  Mention 
the  freedom  of  elections,  and  he  will  tell  you  that  '  he  does 
not  meddle  in  these  matters;  that  he  lives  in  a  borough; 
and  that  it  is  impossible  but  that  Squire  Goose-Cap  must 
represent  that  borough  in  parliament  —  because  Squire 

1  Grandiose  for  artisan  or  mechanic. 
8  The  text  omits  the  definite  article. 


FRANCIS  HOPKINSON. 


139 


Goose-Cap  is  acquainted  with  the  prime  minister,  and  his 
lady  comes  every  Sunday  to  the  parish  church  in  a  bro- 
caded gown;  and  sits  in  a  pew  lined  with  green  cloth. 
How,  then,  can  it  be  otherwise,  but  these  are  things  in 
which  he  is  not  concerned  ? '  He  believes  in  the  Atha- 
nasian  creed,  honours  the  king,  and  makes  pin-heads — and 
what  more  can  be  expected  of  man."  l 

From  these  character-sketches  by  the  supposed  foreigner 
in  London  in  the  year  1776 — themselves  by  no  means 
despicable  for  neat  workmanship  and  for  humorous  power — 
it  is  not  difficult  to  make  out  just  how  Hopkinson's  playful 
writings  were  adapted  to  the  achievement  of  serious  political 
results,  as  ridding  colonial-minded  Americans  of  the  intel- 
lectual restraint  imposed  almost  unconsciously  by  their  old 
provincial  awe  of  England,  and  helping  them  to  subject  the 
metropolitan  race  to  caustic  and  even  contemptuous  hand- 
ling, as  a  necessary  condition  of  national  free-mindedness 
and  of  bold  dissent  on  questions  of  political  authority  and 
control. 

III. 

It  was  in  this  spirit  and  with  such  skill,  that  Francis  Hop- 
kinson,  legislator  and  judge,  wrought  and  fought  for  his 
country,  year  by  year,  in  his  special  capacity  as  man  of 
letters  and  particularly  as  satirist.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  very  many  of  his  writings,  having  been  dashed  off  upon 
occasion  and  printed  without  his  name,  still  remain  unrecog- 
nized in  the  newspapers  to  which  he  originally  sent  them ; 
for  it  is  chiefly  to  his  own  act,  in  selecting  those  writings 
which  make  up  the  three  volumes  of  his  "  Miscellaneous 
Essays  and  Occasional  Writings,"  that  we  are  indebted  for 
our  knowledge  of  his  authorship  of  the  larger  portion  of  the 
productions  which  now  go  under  his  name.  Moreover,  in 
his  later  years  and  especially  after  the  outbreak  of  the 
French  Revolution,  he  became  more  than  willing  to  forget 
the  asperities  of  the  old  controversy  with  England — then 

1  "  The  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  etc.,  i.  106-108. 


I40  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

taking  her  undaunted  stand  as  champion  of  the  social  order 
of  the  world.  When,  therefore,  in  this  mood,  he  came  to 
cull  out  and  to  revise  such  of  his  humorous  and  satirical  writ- 
ings produced  during  the  American  Revolution  as  he  then 
chose  to  avow,  it  was  but  natural  that  he  should  be  inclined 
to  tone  down  their  partisan  vivacity,  and  to  blunt  somewhat 
the  edge  of  their  sarcasms.1 

We  need  to  have  constantly  in  mind  the  great  sequences 
of  thought  and  of  passion  which  made  up  the  long  word- 
battle  of  the  American  Revolution ;  and  we  should  note,  in 
general,  that  after  the  colossal  debate  which  began  in  1764 
had  reached,  just  twelve  years  afterward,  its  tragic  culmina- 
tion, and  an  apparent  majority  of  the  American  people  had 
passed  the  crisis  of  final  decision,  and  had  solemnly  cast  in 
their  lot  to  live  or  die  in  the  effort  to  gain  their  Inde- 
pendence,— from  that  time  onward  to  the  very  end,  a  Whig 
satirist,  like  Hopkinson,  would  be  likely  to  conclude  that  it 
was  his  business,  with  that  fine-edged  weapon  which  it  was 
given  him  to  wield,  to  fight  just  two  sorts  of  enemies,  first, 
the  British  generals  and  their  troops — the  armed  invaders 
and  desolators  of  his  country,  and,  secondly,  his  own  hostile 
fellow-countrymen,  the  American  Loyalists. 

The  first  class  of  enemies,  it  is  now  obvious,  were  hated 
by  the  champions  of  the  Revolution  far  less  vehemently 
than  the  second  class.  Of  course,  the  former — the  armed 
invaders  and  desolators  of  America — were  hated  vigorously 
enough ;  but,  in  reality,  human  language  was  altogether  too 
feeble  to  give  utterance  to  the  loathing,  the  scorn,  the  bot- 
tomless and  .boundless  detestation  with  which  the  American 
Whigs  regarded  the  men  of  their  own  households  and 
neighborhoods  who  did  not  join  them  in  their  great  agony 

1  Noble  as  was  this  mood  in  its  origin  and  purpose,  its  result  could  not  fail  to 
be  a  hindrance  to  the  historic  method  in  dealing  with  any  portion  of  any  litera- 
ture. No  modern  student  of  the  Revolutionary  writings  of  Hopkinson  can  be 
sure  that  he  is  handling  the  original  document,  or  that  he  is  getting  the  full 
impression  which  it  was  written  to  produce,,  if  he  reads  any  production  of  Hop- 
kinson only  in  the  form  in  which  Hopkinson  himself  finally  left  it  in  his  col- 
lected works. 


FRANCIS  HOPKINSON.  141 

of  patriotic  effort,  but  who,  as  they  believed,  were  secretly 
plotting  against  them,  were  giving  help  and  comfort  to  the 
invaders,  were  working,  often  by  tortuous  ways  and  along 
secret  and  underground  passages,  to  compass  the  defeat  of 
this  reluctant  but  most  necessary  and  most  perilous  move- 
ment for  national  deliverance.  In  this  feeling  toward  both 
classes  of  enemies,  Francis  Hopkinson,  no  doubt,  had  his 
full  share ;  and  yet  it  was  in  accordance  with  his  intellectual 
quality,  to  express  it  less  grimly  than  did  his  two  chief 
associates  in  political  satire.  As  their  treatment  of  the 
enemy  constantly  tended  toward  sheer  invective,  so  his  as 
constantly  inclined  toward  a  use  of  ridicule  which,  while  it 
was  keen  and  tingling,  and  at  times  even  tormenting,  gener- 
ally had  a  facetious  note,  almost  never  an  angry  one. 

IV. 

Before  the  close  of  the  year  1776, — the  fatal  year  in  which 
those  Americans  who  stood  for  their  rights  were  persuaded 
to  cast  behind  them  in  great  sorrow  the  last  hope  of  recon- 
ciliation with  England, — Hopkinson  began  that  long  series 
of  his  writings  which  deal,  either  seriously  or  humorously, 
with  the  persons  and  the  issues  of  a  controversy  that  had 
finally  taken  to  itself  every  dark  hue  of  fierceness  and  des- 
peration. One  of  the  first  efforts  of  his  pen  under  these 
altered  conditions,  was  peculiarly  characteristic  of  him,  and 
of  his  ability  to  be  severe  without  being  either  violent  or 
uncivil:  it  was  "  A  Letter  to  Lord  Howe  "  ' — a  letter  at 
once  eloquent,  grave,  pathetic,  and  stinging — written  in 
December,  1776,  in  the  midst  of  the  havoc  and  horror  occa- 
sioned by  Sir  William  Howe's  advance  across  New  Jersey 
in  pursuit  of  the  flying  troops  of  Washington. 

The  year  1777,  which  was  to  contain  such  appalling  events 
as  the  invasion  of  New  York  by  General  Burgoyne,  and  the 
invasion  of  Pennsylvania  by  Sir  William  Howe,  was  ushered 
in  with  a  solitary  gleam  of  light  cast  upon  the  desperate 

1  "  The  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  etc.,  i.  121-126. 


142  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

situation  in  consequence  of  Washington's  brilliant  strokes 
against  the  enemy  at  Trenton  and  at  Princeton.  Very 
shortly  after  these  exploits,  and  while  the  royal  army  was  still 
"  lying  in  Brunswick  mortified  and  crestfallen,"  '  Hopkinson 
sent  out  to  his  fellow-countrymen  "  A  Political  Cate- 
chism," "  in  which  the  questions  and  answers,  being  framed 
after  the  familiar  model  of  a  religious  catechism,  and  in  lan- 
guage level  to  the  minds  of  the  unlearned  and  even  of  chil- 
dren, give  a  most  lucid,  terse,  and  pungent  presentation  of 
the  history  of  the  war  down  to  that  moment,  of  its  two 
great  antithetic  personages,  George  the  Third  and  George 
Washington,  and  finally  of  the  rightfulness  of  the  cause  on 
behalf  of  which  the  manliest  of  Americans,  as  Hopkinson 
believed,  were  then  putting  their  lives  at  stake. 

It  was,  also,  early  in  this  year  1777, — a  year  for  whose 
vast  menace  to  the  American  cause  the  most  heroic  prepara- 
tion would  be  needed, — that  Hopkinson  stirred  and  lifted 
the  hearts  of  his  fellow-countrymen  by  his  "  Camp  Ballad  "  : 

"  Make  room,  oh  !  ye  kingdoms  in  hist'ry  renowned, — 
Whose  arms  have  in  battle  with  glory  been  crowned, — 
Make  room  for  America, — another  great  nation 
Arising '  to  claim  in  your  council  a  station. 


With  glory  immortal  she  here  sits  enthroned, 
Nor  fears  the  vain  vengeance  of  Britain  disowned  ; 
Whilst  Washington  guards  her,  with  heroes  surrounded, 
Her  foes  shall  with  shameful  defeat  be  confounded. 

To  arms,  then,  to  arms  ! — 't  is  fair  freedom  invites  us ; 
The  trumpet,  shrill  sounding,  to  battle  excites  us  ; 
The  banners  of  virtue  unfurled  shall  wave  o'er  us, 
Our  heroes  lead  on,  and  the  foe  fly  before  us. 

"  The  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  etc.,  i.  118.  *  Ibid.  111-120. 

3  The  text  reads,  Arises. 


HOPKINSON.  14  3 

"  On  Heaven  and  Washington  placing  reliance, 
We  '11  meet  the  bold  Briton,  and  bid  him  defiance ; 
Our  cause  we  '11  support,  for  't  is  just  and  't  is  glorious — 
When  men  fight  for  freedom,  they  must  be  victorious."  ' 

As,  however,  this  year  1777  wore  on  from  spring  into 
summer,  and  while  it  remained  still  doubtful  just  where  Sir 
William  Howe,  from  his  headquarters  in  the  city  of  New 
York,  intended  to  deliver  the  great  blow  which  was  expected 
of  him,  the  eyes  of  men  were  turned  with  unspeakable 
anxiety  toward  the  further  north — toward  Lake  George — 
whence  General  Burgoyne,  with  a  most  formidable  army, 
was  about  to  advance  upon  the  lower  Hudson,  with  the 
purpose  of  cutting  in  two,  by  that  single  stroke,  the  insur- 
rectionary colonies,  and  then  of  suppressing  all  further 
resistance  in  each  of  the  two  territorial  sections  thus  dis- 
abled from  helping  each  other. 

If  we  would  in  any  just  measure  appreciate  the  quality 
and  the  effectiveness  of  the  bit  of  work  wrought  by  the 
humor  of  Hopkinson  in  this  dire  emergency,  we  must  realize 
the  exact  situation  of  affairs,  particularly  the  awful  gravity 
of  the  danger,  in  that  early  summer  of  1777,  when  Bur- 
goyne and  his  army  hung  like  some  frightful  storm-cloud 
along  the  northern  sky.  Indeed,  our  own  memories  of  Bur- 
goyne are  apt  to  concentrate  themselves  upon  the  fact  that 
he  was  defeated  and  captured,  with  all  his  mighty  host : 
perhaps  we  have  never  sufficiently  considered  how  very  near 
he  came  to  defeating  us,  and  how  fatal  to  the  cause  of 
American  Independence  his  victory  over  us  might  have 
been.  It  was  not,  however,  until  October,  1777,  that  Bur- 
goyne was  defeated  and  made  prisoner.  It  is  natural  for  us. 
to  think  of  him  simply  in  the  light  of  that  final  event — an 
event  which  extinguished  him  forever  as  a  serious  incident 
in  American  affairs;  but  during  all  of  the  summer  and  early 
autumn  preceding  that  event,  those  of  our  ancestors  who 
were  to  meet  him  and  to  fight  him  and  who  were  by  no 

1  "  Poems  on  Several  Subjects,"  174-175. 


144  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

means  confident  of  the  result  of  their  expected  interview 
with  him,  could  think  of  Burgoyne  and  his  army  only  as  a 
dreadful  menace,  only  as  a  very  actual  and  a  very  terrific 
danger.  All  this  needs  to  be  taken  into  the  account  by  us, 
when  we  turn  to  some  record  of  the  official  documents  of 
that  time,  and  read  for  ourselves  the  gusty  and  pot-valiant 
proclamation  '  which  Burgoyne  issued  from  his  camp  at 
Ticonderoga,  on  the  second  of  July,  1777, — breathing  out 
threatenings  and  slaughter,  nay,  "  devastation,  famine,  and 
every  concomitant  horror  "  against  "  the  hardened  enemies 
of  Britain  and  America."3  Undoubtedly,  Burgoyne's 
proclamation,  which  opened  with  a  magnificent  list  of  his 
own  titles,  offices,  and  honors,  and  which  was  apparently 
composed  throughout  on  the  theory  that  the  wretched 
Americans  were  somehow  to  be  overwhelmed  and  brought 
to  their  senses  by  the  mere  reverberation  of  his  huge- 
sounding  threats,  remains  for  all  time  a  masterpiece  of  mili- 
tary gasconading  and  of  thunder-dealing  rhetoric.  As  such 
its  absurdity  is  obvious  enough  to  us  who  are  aware  of 
the  ridiculous  anti-climax  to  which  it  was  destined  on  the 
field  of  Stillwater,  some  three  months  after  it  was  pub- 
lished ;  but  to  those  Americans  who  .first  read  it,  while  it 
was  a  grandiloquent  threat  indeed,  it  was  also  a  grandilo- 
quent threat  with  a  great  army  behind  it.  It  was,  there- 
fore, even  from  a  military  point  of  view,  no  slight  service 
that  Hopkinson  rendered  to  the  cause  of  the  Revolution, 
when  he  sent  out  broadcast  over  the  land  a  counter-procla- 
mation, addressed,  according  to  the  noble  style  assumed  by 
the  great  general  himself,  to  "  John  Burgoyne,  Esquire, 
Lieutenant-General  of  his  Majesty's  Armies  in  America, 
Colonel  of  the  Queen's  Regiment  of  Light  Dragoons, 
Governor  of  Fort  William  in  North  Britain,  one  of  the 

1  It  may  be  found  in  Niles,  "  Principles  and  Acts  of  the  Rev.,"  262-264, 
where  it  is  followed  by  Hopkinson's  burlesque,  which  Niles  has  printed  without 
Hopkinson's  name.  It  is  also  given  by  W.  L.  Stone,  in  "  Ballads  and  Poems 
relating  to  the  Birrgoyne  Campaign,"  Appendix  III. 

5  These  words  are  part  of  the  proclamation.     Niles,  "  Prin.  and  Acts,"  263. 


FRANCIS  HO  PK IN  SON.  145 

Representatives  of  the  Commons  of  Great  Britain,  and 
commanding  an  Army  and  Fleet  employed  on  an  Expe- 
dition from  Canada,  etc.,  etc.,  etc."  This  counter- 
pro<  lamation,  which  was  from  first  to  last  a  most  delicious 
burlesque  on  Burgoyne's  manifesto,  fitted  exactly  the  mood 
and  the  need  of  the  moment :  it  was  everywhere  read  amid 
roais  of  laughter  over  a  situation  in  which,  truly,  there  was 
much  to  give  alarm,  but  with  respect  to  which  mere  laugh- 
ter was  an  antidote  to  a  popular  panic.  So  long  as  men  can 
be  made  to  laugh,  sonorously  and  convulsively,  over  the 
ridiculous  aspects  of  a  dangerous  situation,  they  are  not 
likely  to  be  stampeded  by  it  in  a  paroxysm  of  fright.  Pre- 
cisely this  contribution  toward  the  defeat  and  capture  of 
Burgoyne  was  rendered,  in  the  summer  of  1777,  by  the 
humor  of  Francis  Hopkinson." 

1  n  the  midst  of  the  humiliation  which,  both  in  America 
and  in  Europe,  Burgoyne's  surrender  brought  upon  the 
British  cause,  Hopkinson  produced  a  ballad  bearing  the 
suggestive  title,  "  Date  Obolum  Belisario."  In  this  ballad, 
Britannia  is  depicted  as  a  wretched  woman — 

"  All  seated  on  the  ground, 

With  oaken  staff  and  hat  of  straw, 

And  tatters  hanging  round." 

As  the  poet  approaches  her,  she  asks  an  alms : 

"  A  wretch  forlorn,  kind  sir,  you  see, 

That  begs  from  door  to  door  ; 
Oh  !  stop  and  give  for  charity, 
A  penny  to  the  poor  !  " 

With  the  usual  promtitude  of  beggars  in  autobiographic 
recitals,  she  then  proceeds  to  lavish  upon  him  her  story, 

1  "  The  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  etc.,  i.  146-150. 

*  Burgoyne's  Proclamation  was  travestied  in  verse  by  Governor  William  Liv- 
ingston. This  is  given  by  W.  L.  Stone,  in  "  Burgoyne  Ballads,"  7-15. 

VOL.    II.— 10 


146  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

telling  him  of  the  better  days  she  had  seen,  of  her  former 
wealth  and  power  and  splendor,  of  her  children  and  her 
friends,  and  especially  of  the  way  in  which  she  had  been 
brought  to  poverty  and  misery  through  the  misconduct  of 
her  youngest  son,  whose  name,  she  intimates,  was  George ; 
nor  does  she  forget,  in  conclusion,  the  little  matter  apper- 
taining to  the  much-desired  obolus: 

"  A  magic  wand  I  once  possessed, 

A  cap  aloft  it  bore  ; 
Of  all  my  treasures  this  the  best, 
And  none  I  valued  more. 


"  A  shield  and  lance  once  graced  these  hands, 

Perhaps  you  've  heard  my  fame  ; 
For  I  was  known  in  distant  lands — 
Britannia  is  my  name. 

"  Britannia  now  in  rags  you  see — 

I  beg  from  door  to  door  ; 
Oh  !  give,  kind  sir,  for  charity, 
A  penny  to  the  poor."  ! 


V. 


Such  was  the  relation  of  Francis  Hopkinson  as  a  humor- 
ist to  the  first  of  the  great  British  expeditions  of  the  year 
1777 — that  of  Burgoyne.  The  second  expedition,  under 
the  command  of  Sir  William  Howe,  resulted  in  considerable 
temporary  disaster  to  the  American  cause,  namely,  the 
defeat  of  Washington  both  at  Brandywine  and  at  German- 
town,  and  the  British  occupation  of  Philadelphia.  Never- 

1  "  Poems  on  Several  Subjects,"  164-168. 


FRANCIS  HOP  KIN  SON.  147 

theless,  it  was  this  very  expedition,  so  full  of  prosperity  for 
the  British,  which  in  its  sequel  gave  to  Hopkinson  the 
occasion  for  his  most  successful  stroke  as  a  humorous 
writer.  It  is  well  known  that  Sir  William  Howe,  having  in 
his  rather  tardy  campaign  for  that  year  gained,  almost  in 
spite  of  himself,  a  brief  succession  of  victories  over  the 
American  rebels,  then  forbore  to  take  advantage  of  people 
thus  fallen,  through  his  agency,  into  depressed  circum- 
stances; and,  finding  Philadelphia  an  extremely  agreeable 
place  of  repose  for  a  warrior  who  had  already  had  enough  of 
war  for  that  particular  season,  he  concluded  to  settle  him- 
self down  in  that  gracious  city,  there  to  await  with  his  offi- 
cers and  men  the  arrival  of  the  next  summer's  campaign. 
Thenceforward,  during  all  the  autumn  and  the  winter. and 
the  spring,  he  refrained  as  much  as  possible  from  aggressive 
military  enterprises,  which,  besides  being  likely  to  prove 
disagreeable  to  the  Americans,  would  have  brought,  of 
course,  some  inconvenience  upon  himself.  This  mighty 
general  had,  indeed,  a  truly  martial  fondness  for  the  smiles 
of  pretty  women,  for  balls  and  routs,  for  dinners,  theatri- 
cals, heavy  gaming,  and  heavy  drinking;  and  he  chose  to 
dedicate  those  flying  hours  which  were  given  to  him  in 
Philadelphia,  to  that  mode  of  existence  which  the  moralists 
have  been  wont  to  describe  as  riotous  living. 

With  a  military  sybarite  like  this  in  Philadelphia,  the  sur- 
rounding inhabitants,  who  had  at  first  regarded  him  and  his 
army  with  no  little  terror,  soon  came  to  regard  both  with 
some  derision,  and  to  conceive  the  idea  of  practising  upon 
both  certain  experiments  which  had  in  them  an  element  of 
covert  mirthf  ulness  as  it  were.  One  of  these  semi-jocose  ex- 
periments seems  to  have  been  prepared  near  the  little  village 
where  Hopkinson  lived, — the  village  of  Bordentown  on  the 
Delaware,  a  few  miles  above  Philadelphia  ' ;  and  it  was  by  a 

1  It  is  by  no  means  certain  that  Bordentown  was  the  place  where  the  ma- 
chines were  prepared  ;  but  it  is  certain  that  they  were  the  invention  of  David 
Kushnell  of  Connecticut,  much  devoted  to  improvements  in  submarine  warfare. 
In  this  undertaking  he  was  accompanied  by  a  person  who  knew  the  Delaware 


I48  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

very  imaginative  and  a  very  rollicking  expansion  of  the 
actual  facts  of  this  small  affair,  that  Hopkinson  was  enabled 
to  compose  his  celebrated  ballad,  "The  Battle  of  the 
Kegs."1 

The  actual  facts  of  the  case  are  as  follows,  according  to 
Hopkinson's  own  later  testimony  in  prose:  "  Certain  ma- 
chines, in  the  form  of  kegs,  charged  with  gunpowder,  were 
sent  down  the  river  to  annoy  the  British  shipping  at  Phila- 
delphia. The  danger  of  these  machines  being  discovered, 
the  British  manned  the  wharfs  and  shipping,  and  discharged 
their  small  arms  and  cannons  at  everything  they  saw  float- 
ing in  the  river  during  the  ebb  tide."  * 

Certainly,  in  the  hands  of  a  poet  with  uncommon  facility 
at  humorous  invention,  here  was  ample  material  for  a  comic 
ballad ;  and  Hopkinson  failed  not  to  make  proper  use  of  his 
opportunity.  In  the  first  place,  he  contrived  with  no  little 
art  to  prepare  the  public  for  his  ballad,  by  publishing  in 
"  The  New  Jersey  Gazette  "  3  an  amusing  prose  description 
of  the  alleged  panic  into  which  the  mysterious  kegs  had 
thrown  the  British  sailors  and  soldiers  in  Philadelphia,  and 
of  their  excited  and  most  redoubtable  onslaught,  with  fire 
and  sword  and  battle  cry,  upon  these  same  kegs,  which,  as 
some  of  the  brave  Britons  declared,  "  were  filled  with  armed 
rebels,  who  were  to  issue  forth  in  the  dead  of  night,  as  the 
Grecians  did  of  old  from  their  wooden  horse  at  the  siege  of 

River,  but  in  the  darkness  mistook  the  situation  and  occasioned  the  error 
of  placing  the  kegs  too  far  from  the  British  shipping.  Bushnell's  own 
account  of  the  affair  is  in  "  Transactions  of  the  American  Philosophical  Society," 
iv.  312. 

'"  Poems  on  Several  Subjects,"  169-173.  *  Ibid.  173  n. 

3  For  January  21,  1778.  Though  no  one  else,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  has 
called  attention  to  it,  I  do  not  hesitate,  both  from  internal  and  from  collateral 
evidence,  to  speak  of  this  prose  narrative  of  the  "  Battle  of  the  Kegs"  as  one 
of  Hopkinson's  many  unacknowledged  writings.  A  reprint  of  it  may  be  seen 
in  Frank  Moore,  "  Diary  of  the  American  Revolution,"  ii.  5-6  :  and  it  is  from 
this  that  I  here  quote.  On  the  other  hand,  "  The  Pennsylvania  Ledger,"  for 
February  11,  1778,  takes  the  trouble  to  deny  that  anybody  was  frightened  by 
the  mysterious  kegs,  declaring  that  they  were  merely  fired  at,  in  passing,  from 
some  of  the  transport  vessels  in  the  river.  "  Mag.  Am.  Hist.,"  viii.  296. 


FRANCIS  HOPKINSON.  149 

Troy,  and  take  the  city  by  surprise, — asserting  that  they 
had  seen  the  points  of  their  bayonets  through  the  bung- 
holes  of  the  kegs."  This  prose  story,  printed  as  the  sober 
testimony  of  an  eye-witness  in  Philadelphia,  and  recounting 
in  seeming  sincerity  one  of  the  most  ludicrous  battles  ever 
fought  since  wars  began,  put  the  people  everywhere,  as  it 
was  intended  to  do,  into  a  frame  of  mind  appreciative  of  the 
same  story  when  laid  before  them,  as  it  was  soon  afterward, 
in  the  form  of  a  jocose  street-ballad.  It  is  mere  matter  of 
history  to  add,  that  this  jingling  little  story  of  "  The  Battle 
of  the  Kegs  ' ' — mere  doggerel  though  it  is — flew  from  col- 
ony to  colony,  in  those  grim  early  months  of  the  year  1778, 
like  some  merry  messenger  of  gay  tidings;  and  that,  in 
many  a  camp,  and  along  a  thousand  highroads,  and  by  ten 
thousand  patriot  firesides,  it  gave  the  weary  and  anxious 
people  the  luxury  of  genuine  and  hearty  laughter  in  very 
scorn  of  the  enemy.  To  the  cause  of  the  Revolution,  it 
was  perhaps  worth  as  much,  just  then,  by  way  of  emotional 
tonic  and  of  military  inspiration,  as  the  winning  of  a  con- 
siderable battle  would  have  been. 

From  a  literary  point  of  view,  "  The  Battle  of  the  Kegs  " 
is  very  far  from  being  the  best  of  Hopkinson's  writings. 
Nevertheless,  for  its  matter  and  its  manner  and  for  the 
adaptation  of  both  to  the  immediate  enjoyment  of  the  mul- 
titude of  readers,  it  became  in  his  own  day  the  best  known 
of  all  its  author's  productions,  even  as,  since  then,  it  is  the 
only  one  that  has  retained  any  general  remembrance  in  our 
literature. 

VI. 

Passing,  now,  from  the  writings  of  Hopkinson  against  the 
armed  invaders  of  his  country,  it  is  time  for  us  to  glance 
rapidly  at  his  principal  writings  against  that  party  of  his 
fellow-countrymen  who  were  in  sympathy  with  those 
invaders.  We  may  note,  at  the  outset,  the  quiet  ridicule 
with  which  he  deals  with  the  Tories  on  the  side  of  their 


150  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

social  prepossessions.  From  the  beginning  to  the  end  of 
the  war,  a  prodigious  obstacle  to  the  Revolutionary  cause 
was  the  social  prestige,  the  purple  dignity,  the  aristocratic 
flavor  of  the  Tory  side  of  the  question;  and  Hopkinson, 
having  the  shrewdness  to  see  that  a  portion  of  American 
Toryism  had  its  origin  in  mere  snobbish  sentiment,  spoke 
of  having  known  a  lady  "  who  did  not  possess  one  political 
principle,  nor  had  any  precise  idea  of  the  real  cause  of  the 
contest  between  Great  Britain  and  America,  and  yet  was  a 
professed  and  confirmed  Tory,  merely  from  the  fascination 
of  sounds.  '  The  imperial  crown,'  '  the  royal  robes,'  '  the 
high  court  of  parliament,'  '  the  lord  chancellor  of  England,' 
and  so  on,  were  words  of  irresistible  influence;  whilst  '  Cap- 
tain A.  the  tailor,'  '  Colonel  B.  the  tavern-keeper,'  and 
even  '  General  Washington  the  farmer,'  only  created  con- 
tempt. But  I  am  persuaded,  if  some  Indian  chief,  with  a 
long  Cherokee  or  Mohawk  name,  had  commanded  our 
armies,  she  would  have  thought  much  more  respectably  of 
the  American  cause. ' '  l 

A  more  pungent  specimen  of  his  satire  is  "  The  Birds, 
the  Beasts,  and  the  Bat,"8  a  fable  in  Hudibrastic  verse, 
intended  to  portray  the  political  trimmer  of  the  Revolution, 
— the  American  who  was  a  Whig  or  a  Tory,  from  day  to 
day,  according  to  the  state  of  the  military  weather, — that 
is,  the  creature  who  like  the  bat,  was  part  bird  and  part 
beast ;  but  who  was  always  ready  to  proclaim  himself  as  all 
bird  when  the  birds  were  in  luck,  and  as  all  beast  when  the 
beasts  seemed  likely  to  win. 

A  strong  piece  of  work,  and  in  a  vein  altogether  different 
— that  of  invective — was  his  "  Letter  to  Joseph  Galloway, 
Esquire,"  3  published  in  1778,  and  accusing  that  preeminent 
Loyalist  of  treachery  to  his  country  and  to  his  friends,  and 

"  The  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  etc.,  ii.  55-56.     The  passage  above  quoted 
appears  to  have  been  written  after  the  war,  but  it  is  available  as  an  illustration 
of  his  method  of  dealing  with  the  Tories  even  during  the  war. 
1  "  Poems  on  Several  Subjects,"  177-180. 
"  The  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  etc.,  i.  127-131. 


FAA.VC/S  &OPKINSON.  151 

of  nearly  every  crime  by  which  unscrupulous  ambition  may 
seek  to  climb  the  steps  of  power. 

At  some  time  during  the  year  1776,  Hopkinson  touched 
very  skilfully  the  nerve  of  American  enmity  toward  the 
Loyalists,  by  publishing  "  Two  Letters,"  written  appa- 
rently by  a  member  of  that  detested  party,  and  avowing 
with  boastful  and  exasperating  frankness  those  servile  polit- 
ical sentiments  and  those  unscrupulous  practices  which  were 
then  attributed  to  them  by  their  American  opponents. 
Here,  without  any  disguise,  is  the  master-principle  of  their 
party: — "  Mr.  Printer,  I  am  a  Tory,  the  son  of  a  Tory,  born 
and  bred  in  the  pure  principles  of  unconditional  submission, 
and  a  true  friend  to  the  Hanoverian  family,  right  or  wrong 
and  at  all  events.  .  .  .  But  the  infatuated  people  of  this 
most  vile  portion  of  this  most  vile  planet  have  been  moved 
by  the  instigation  of  the  devil  to  oppose  the  earnest  desire  of 
George  the  Third — God  bless  his  majesty ! — to  govern  them 
in  all  cases  whatsoever,  according  to  his  good  will  and 
pleasure.  For  my  own  part,  I  truly  abominate  and  abhor 
their  rebellious  obstinacy.  His  majesty  hath  been  pleased, 
in  his  great  goodness,  and  to  my  unspeakable  satisfaction, 
to  send  over  his  fleets  and  armies  to  conquer  and  subdue 
this  horrible  country.  Now,  it  is  the  indispensable  duty  of 
all  those  who  would  be  called  the  friends  of  arbitrary  gov- 
ernment and  of  the  said  George  the  Third,  to  render  all  the 
assistance  in  their  power  to  the  fleets  and  armies,  and  to  the 
worthy  lords  and  generals  whom  this  worthy  and  benign 
monarch  hath  commissioned  to  direct  and  manage  them." 

Among  the  many  methods  devised  by  the  loyal  inhabi- 
tants of  America  for  aiding  their  king  in  his  noble  undertak- 
ing, one  is  the  formation  of  a  club  of  Tories,  the  members 
of  which  are  parcelled  off  into  committees  for  promoting  in 
their  several  ways  the  success  of  the  king's  troops, — such  as 
"  the  committee  of  wiles  and  stratagems,"  "  the  committee 
of  extortion,"  "  the  committee  of  depreciation,"  "  the 


The  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  etc.,  i.  132-133. 


I j2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

committee  of  false  reports,"  and  "  the  committee  of  lies." 
Probably  none  of  these  committees  are  more  active  or  more 
important  than  the  last  two.  The  duty  of  "  the  committee 
of  false  reports  "  is  "  to  circulate  misrepresentations  of  facts 
respecting  the  armies,  and  things  of  a  public  nature,  on  the 
large  scale,"  '  so  as  "  to  alarm  and  terrify  timid  Whigs,  and 
distract  the  minds  of  the  people."  *  The  duty  of  the  com- 
mittee of  lies,  however,  is  somewhat  different:  it  is  to 
"  frame  temporary  lies"  for  the  use  of  the  city  of  Phila- 
delphia, "  particularly  respecting  the  deliberations  and 
intentions  of  Congress.  These  lies  must  be  fresh,  and  fresh 
every  day,  and  always  supported  by  a  strong  assertion  that 
the  information  came  from  some  leaky  member  of  Congress, 
generally  without  mentioning  the  name  of  any  individual 
member;  yet,  in  cases  of  urgency,  the  real  name  of  some 
leading  character  may  be  adduced,  when  the  lie  may  have 
had  its  operation  before  it  can  be  contradicted."  3 

Of  course,  in  this  world,  all  good  men  have  their  calumni- 
ators. The  Tories  are  no  exception  to  this  rule.  "  Some 
narrow-minded  people  say,  that  we  are  doing  all  we  can  to 
ruin  our  country,  and  entail  a  miserable  slavery  on  our  un- 
born posterity.  We  believe  we  are  doing  the  best  we  can 
for  ourselves — and,  pray,  what  has  posterity  done  for  us, 
that  we  should  run  the  risk  of  confiscation  and  a  halter  for 
them  ?  .  .  .  'T  is  true,  if  the  British  generals  should 
succeed  in  their  enterprise,  we  may  see  our  neighbors  and 
friends  imprisoned  by  hundreds,  and  hanged  by  dozens, 
their  estates  confiscated,  and  their  children  turned  out  to 
beggary  and  want;  but,  then,  we  shall  ourselves  escape, 
and  enjoy  in  safety  our  lives  and  estates — and,  perhaps,  be 
even  promoted  for  our  present  services  to  places  of  honor 
and  emolument."  4 

No  vein  of  satire  against  the  enemy,  and  particularly 
against  the  Tories,  was  more  expertly  worked  by  Hopkin- 
son  than  the  one  exhibited  in  these  "  Two  Letters," 

"  The  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  etc.,  i.  139.  *  Ibid.  138. 

8  Ibid.  139-146.  «  Ibid.  141. 


FRANCIS  HOP  KIN  SON.  153 

namely,  the  systematic  use  of  lies  as  a  weapon  of  war.  In 
"  A  Letter  to  the  Editor  of  the  New  Jersey  Gazette,"  in 
January,  1778,  he  called  attention  once  more  to  the  im- 
mense importance  attached  by  the  enemy  to  this  powerful 
weapon,  declaring  that  "  as  soon  as  the  Howes  got  to  New 
York,  they  appointed  their  Liar  General,  who  played  off 
innumerable  lies  from  the  batteries  of  Rivington  and 
Gaine  "  ' ;  and  that  the  same  thing  was  done  by  them 
immediately  after  they  had  taken  possession  of  Philadel- 
phia.8 Here,  then,  was  a  method  of  warfare  not  to  be 
neglected  by  the  people  against  whom  it  has  thus  far  been 
so  vigorously  employed.  Of  course,  "  nothing  would  be 
more  vain  than  to  attempt  to  counteract  these  productions 
of  the  British  Lying  Offices  in  New  York  and  Philadelphia, 
with  serious  answers  of  truth  and  reason.  Like  must  be 
opposed  to  like.  And,  therefore,  I  hope  that  Congress  will 
no  longer  delay  to  establish  Lying  Offices  on  our  side  of  the 
question,  with  handsome  salaries  annexed,  and  would 
especially  recommend  this  my  project  to  their  serious  con- 
sideration. Let  there  be  an  advertisement  forthwith  publish- 
ed by  authority,  to  the  following  effect :  '  Wanted,  for  the 
continental  service,  a  person  well  qualified  for  the  office  of 
Liar  General  to  the  United  States.  Also,  three  assistants, 
or  petit-liars,  in  said  office.  Those  who  are  willing  and  able 
to  serve  their  country  in  this  department,  are  requested  to 
send  in  their  names  to  ...  on  or  before  the  first  day  of 
March  next.  As  it  is  supposed  there  may  be  a  number  of 
persons  well  versed  in  this  art  amongst  the  Tories,  free 
pardon  and  good  encouragement  will  be  given  to  such  as 
will  exert  their  lying  faculties  in  favor  of  their  country. 
N.  B.  Specimens  of  ability  will  be  required  of  candidates.'  ' 

Perhaps  nothing  that  Hopkinson  wrote  during  the  Revo- 
lution can  give  one  a  truer  impression  of  the  sprightliness 
and  the  delicacy  of  his  humor,  than  the  jeu  d'esprit  which 
he  published  shortly  after  the  surrender  of  Cornwallis,  and 

1  "  The  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  etc.,  i.  143-144. 

•  Ibid.  144.  *  Ibid.  145. 


154  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

with  which  he  may  be  said  to  have  closed  his  work  as  a 
Revolutionary  satirist.  This  is  a  mock  advertisement,  bear- 
ing the  name  of  James  Rivington  and  dated  at  New  York, 
November  i,  1781,  wherein  Hopkinson  contrives,  not  only 
to  exhibit  with  great  drollery  the  state  of  mind  into  which 
poor  Rivington  is  supposed  to  have  been  thrown  by  the 
appalling  news  from  Yorktown,  but  likewise  to  scatter  the 
shafts  of  ridicule  along  the  entire  line  of  the  royal  and  min- 
isterial project  for  subjugating  America.  Rivington's  print- 
ing-office and  book-shop  in  New  York  had  been  regarded 
during  the  whole  war  as  the  very  citadel  and  pest-house  of 
American  Toryism  ;  while  his  newspaper,  "  The  Royal 
Gazette,"  had  always  been  "  exceedingly  virulent,  abusive, 
and  illiberal  "  against  the  Americans,  their  Congress,  their 
army,  their  officers,  and  their  measures.  "  Every  paper 
abounded"  according  to  the  Whig  view  of  things,  "  with 
the  grossest  falsities,  misrepresentations,  and  insults."  ' 
If  there  was  in  America  any  Loyalist  who  must  realize  that 
the  downfall  of  the  British  cause  meant  the  necessity  of  his 
own  speedy  exit  from  the  scene,  it  was  James  Rivington. 
Accordingly,  he  is  here  represented  as  publishing  in  his 
newspaper  an  "  Advertisement,"  over  his  own  name,  an- 
nouncing that  as  "  the  late  surrender  of  Lord  Cornwallis 
and  his  army,  together  with  a  variety  of  other  circum- 
stances," had  "  rendered  it  convenient  for  the  subscriber  to 
remove  to  Europe,"  he  requests  the  favor  of  an  immediate 
settlement  of  all  his  accounts  in  America,  and  likewise  offers 
for  sale  at  public  auction  at  an  early  day,  the  whole  of  "  his 
remaining  stock  in  trade,"  consisting  of  "books,"  "plays," 
"  maps  and  prints,"  "  philosophical  apparatus,"  and  "pat- 
ent medicines."  Then  follows  a  partial  catalogue: 

"  BOOKS. 

"  The  History  of  the  American  War;  or,  the  Glorious 
Exploits  of  the  British  Generals,  Gage,  Howe,  Burgoyne, 
Cornwallis,  and  Clinton. 

"  The  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  etc.,  i.  159. 


FRANCIS  HOPKINSON.  155 

The  Royal  Pocket  Companion :  Being  a  New  System  of 
Policy,  founded  on  Rules  deduced  from  the  Nature  of  Man, 
and  proved  by  Experience,,  whereby  a  Prince  may  in  a  short 
time  render  himself  the  Abhorrence  of  his  Subjects,  and  the 
Contempt  of  all  good  and  wise  Men. 

Select  Fables  of  y£sop,  with  suitable  Morals  and  Ap- 
plications. Amongst  which  are, — '  The  Dog  and  his 
Shadow,'  '  The  Man  and  His  Goose  which  laid  a  Golden 
Egg,'  etc.,  etc. 

A    New   System  of    Cruelty :    Containing    a   Variety   of* 
modern  Improvements  in  that  Art.      Embellished  with  an 
elegant  Frontispiece,  representing  an  inside  View  of  a  Prison 
Ship. 

The  Right  of  Great  Britain  to  the  Dominion  of  the 
Sea — a  Poetical  Fiction. 

The  State  of  Great  Britain  in  October,  1760,  and  Oc- 
tober, 1781,  compared  and  contrasted. 

A  Geographical,  Historical,  and  Political  History  of  the 
Rights  and  Possessions  of  the  Crown  of  Great  Britain  in 
North  America.  This  valuable  Work  did  consist  of  thirteen 
volumes  in  Folio,  but  is  now  abridged  by  a  Royal  Author 
to  a  single  Pocket  Duodecimo,  for  the  greater  Convenience 
of  Himself,  his  Successors,  and  Subjects. 

Tears  of  Repentance :  or,  the  Present  State  of  the  Loyal 
Refugees  in  New  York,  and  elsewhere. 

The  Political  Liar:  a  Weekly  Paper,  published  by  the 
Subscriber,  bound  in  Volumes. 


MAPS  AND   PRINTS. 

"An  Elegant  Map  of  the  British  Empire  in  North  Amer- 
ica, upon  a  very  small  Scale. 

An  Accurate  Chart  of  the  Coast  of  North  America, 
from  New  Hampshire  to  Florida;  with  the  Soundings  of  all 
the  principal  Inlets,  Bays,  Harbors,  and  Rivers.  This 


156  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Work  was  undertaken  and  completed  by  his  Majesty's 
special  command,  and  at  a  national  expense  of  many  mil- 
lions of  Guineas,  thousands  of  Men,  and  hundreds  of  Mer- 
chantmen and  Royal  Ships  of  War. 

A  Survey  of  Lord  Cornwallis's  Route  through  the 
Southern  Colonies,  beginning  at  Charleston  in  South 
Carolina,  and  terminating  at  York,  in  Virginia.  As  the 
preceding  Chart  gives  an  accurate  description  of  the  Sea 
Coast,  so  it  was  intended  to  form  a  correct  Map  of  the 
interior  Parts  of  this  Country;  but  the  rude  Inhabitants 
grew  jealous  of  the  Operation,  and  actually  opposed  his 
Lordship's  Progress. 

The  Battle  of  Saratoga,  and  the  Surrender  at  York: 
Two  elegant  Prints,  cut  in  Copper,  and  dedicated  to  the 
King. 


"  PHILOSOPHICAL  APPARATUS. 

"A  curious  new-invented  Magic  Lanthorn:  very  useful 
for  those  who  are  at  the  head  of  affairs.  This  machine  was 
constructed  by  an  able  artist,  under  Lord  North's  imme- 
diate direction,  for  the  amusement  of  the  good  people  of 
England.  The  spectators  are  gratified  with  an  illuminated 
view  of  the  fictitious  objects  presented,  but  kept  totally  in 
the  dark  with  respect  to  the  real  objects  around  them. 

Microscopes,  for  magnifying  small  objects,  furnished 
with  a  select  set  ready  fitted  for  use.  Amongst  these  are  a 
variety  of  real  and  supposed  successes  of  the  British  Gen- 
erals in  America. 

A  Complete  Electrical  Apparatus,  with  improvements, 
for  the  use  of  the  King  and  his  Ministers.  The  machine 
should  be  exercised  with  great  caution;  otherwise,  as  ex- 
perience hath  shown,  the  operator  may  unexpectedly  receive 
the  shock  he  intends  to  give. 

Pocket  Glasses  for  Short-sighted  Politicians. 


FRANCIS  HOPKINSON.  157 

"  PATENT   MEDICINES. 

x 

"  Aurum  Potabile.  This  preparation  was  formerly  sup- 
posed to  be  a  never-failing  specific,  but  has  been  found  not 
so  well  adapted  to  the  American  climate,  having  been  fre- 
quently tried  here  without  effect.  But  its  reputation  is 
again  rising,  as  it  has  lately  been  administered  with  success 
to  General  Arnold. 

Vivifying  Balsam:  excellent  for  weak  nerves,  palpita- 
tions of  the  heart,  over-bashfulness,  and  diffidence.  In 
great  demand  for  the  officers  of  the  army. 

Sp.  Men.  Or,  the  genuine  Spirit  of  Lying.  Ex- 
tracted by  distillation  from  many  hundreds  of  '  The  Royal 
Gazette  of  New  York.'  .  .  ,„,.-.. 

Cordial  Drops  for  Low  Spirits :  prepared  for  the  special 
use  of  the  Honorable  the  Board  of  Loyal  Refugees  at  New 
York. 

Anodyne  Elixir,  for  quieting  fears  and  apprehensions. 
Very  necessary  for  Tories  in  all  parts  of  America. 

With  a  great  variety  of  other  articles  too  tedious  to 
enumerate. 

N.  B.  To  every  purchaser  to  the  value  of  five  Pounds, 
will  be  delivered  gratis,  one  quire  of  counterfeit  Continental 
Currency.  Also,  two  quires  of  Proclamations  offering 
Pardon  to  Rebels." ' 

1  "  The  Miscellaneous  Essays,"  etc.,  i.  159-169. 


CHAPTER    XXXI. 

SATIRES,     SONGS,     AND    BALLADS   FOR  AMERICAN    INDE- 
PENDENCE. 

I. — Revolutionist  satire  in  its  minor  and  incidental  forms — The  partisan's  in. 
tolerance  of  moderation  and  neutrality — Epigram  on  the  Middlesex  resolu- 
tions— The  change  in  American  feeling  toward  George  the  Third,  from 
reverence  to  execration — The  King  as  an  object  of  satire — Lines  on  his 
inverted  portrait — The  cynical  tone  in  American  verse  in  the  months  pre- 
ceding the  capture  of  Burgoyne — The  "  Prophecy  "  written  on  an  egg-shell 
— "Another  Prophecy,"  by  the  "Genius  of  America" — Epigrams  on 
Burgoyne — Satires  on  the  traitor  Arnold. 

II. — Charles  Henry  Wharton,  and  his  satire  on  English  political  corruption,  in 
"  A  Poetical  Epistle  to  George  Washington,"  1779 — The  poet's  ideal  of  an 
American  commonwealth. 

III. — Francis  Lieber's  estimate  of  the  Anglican  race  as  writers  of  national 
songs — Grouping  of  the  political  and  military  songs  of  the  American  Revo- 
lution. 

IV. — Some  of  the  song-writers  of  the  Revolution, — Prime,  McClurg,  Howell, 
Oliver  Arnold,  Humphreys,  Barlow,  Dwight — The  latter's  "Columbia," 
1777. 

V. — Nathaniel  Niles,  and  "  The  American  Hero,  a  Sapphic  Ode,"  1775. 

VI. — The  nobler  mood  of  the  American  mind  in  1776 — Its  faith  and  fortitude 
as  expressed  in  "  The  American  Patriot's  Prayer." 

VII.—"  The  American  Soldier's  Hymn." 

VIII. — Characteristics  of  the  ballads  of  the  Revolution — "  Liberty's  Call," 
1775— "A  Song  for  the  Red-Coats,"  and  "The  Fate  of  John  Burgoyne," 
1777 — "Brave  Paulding  and  the  Spy,"  1780 — "Battle  of  King's  Moun- 
tain," 1781—"  The  Wyoming  Massacre  "  and  "  Bold  Hawthorne." 

IX.— Captain  Nathan  Hale,  the  American  Spy— Compared  with  Andre— His 
arrest  within  the  British  lines— His  hard  fate— The  ballad  of  "  Hale  in  the 
Bush." 

I. 

ELSEWHERE  in  this  book,  it  has  been  shewn  that  at 
a  certain  stage  of  the  Revolutionary  controversy,  satire 
became,  on  both  sides,  a  principal  weapon  in  the  literary 

158 


REVOLUTIONIST  SATIRE.  159 

warfare  then  waged,  and  that  in  the  use  of  that  weapon 
each  side  was  able  to  point  to  at  least  two  or  three  expert 
and  powerful  masters.  So  far  as  the  spirit  of  the  great 
quarrel  is  thus  preserved  in  satirical  writings,  it  is  to  be 
traced,  in  its  strongest  and  most  authentic  form,  in  the 
work  of  Stansbury  and  Odell,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of 
Hopkinson,  Trumbull,  and  Freneau  on  the  other. 

Nevertheless,  while  these  writers  are  the  chief  exponents 
of  the  satiric  mood  throughout  the  later  period  of  the  dis- 
pute, that  mood  found  abundant  expression,  likewise,  in  a 
multitude  of  forms  less  elaborate  and  less  masterful  indeed, 
and  yet  not  lacking  in  sprightliness  and  point,  and  not  un- 
worthy of  a  passing  glance  as  examples  of  one  very  charac- 
teristic method  of  literary  expression  in  a  time  of  fiery  and 
implacable  controversy.  The  newspapers  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary period  are  strown  with  such  productions, — satirical 
poems,  long  and  short,  of  nearly  all  degrees  of  merit  and 
demerit,  some  of  them  gross  and  obscene,  some  of  them  sim- 
ply clownish  and  stupid,  some  absolutely  brutal  in  their 
partisan  ferocity,  some  really  clever — terse,  polished,  and 
edged  with  wit.  As  students  of  the  intellectual  and  emo- 
tional development  of  the  Revolution,  we  may  not  alto- 
gether disregard  even  these  casual,  unowned,  and  flitting 
tokens  of  a  sincere  literary  partisanship. 

Of  course,  to  men  who  are  themselves  imbued  with  the 
Revolutionary  passion,  no  attitude  in  others  is  apt  to  seem 
quite  so  intolerable  as  that  of  neutrality  or  even  of  mod- 
eration in  partisanship.  Our  Revolution  abounds  with  exam- 
ples of  this  statement.  Thus,  in  1774,  to  take  but  a  single 
example,  an  assemblage  of  Loyalists  in  Middlesex  county, 
Virginia,  passed  a  series  of  resolutions  deprecating  all  vio- 
lent measures  in  opposition  to  the  government, — an  inci- 
dent which  was  made  the  text  for  an  epigram,  all  the  more 
cutting  as  being  written  by  a  woman  : 

"  To  manhood  he  makes  vain  pretense, 
Who  wants  both  manly  force  and  sense  : 


l6o  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

From  such  a  creature,  Heaven  defend  her  ! 
Each  lady  cries — '  No  neuter  gender  ! ' 
But,  when  a  number  of  such  creatures, 
With  woman's  hearts  and  manly  features, 
Their  country's  generous  schemes  perplex, 
I  own — I  hate  this  Middle-sex  !  "  ' 

j  The  hatred  for  Tories  and  for  Toryism,  thus  avowed  in 
/I/74,  never  failed  or  faltered  in  quantity  or  force  till  long 
after  the  Revolution  ended,  if  indeed  it  can  be  said  to 
have  failed  or  faltered  even  yet.  And  in  the  fullness  of 
Revolutionary  wrath,  there  came  a  time  when,  to  the 
majority  of  Americans,  the  greatest  and  hatefulest  Tory  of 
all,  on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic,  was  King  George  him- 
self. During  all  the  bitterness  of  the  first  decade  of  the 
struggle,  the  theory  had  been  carefully  cherished  among  us 
that,  not  upon  the  good  king,  but  upon  his  wicked  ad- 
visers, upon  his  false  and  blood-thirsty  agents,  was  to  be  laid 
the  blame  for  all  the  tyranny  that  had  come  or  was  com- 
ing,— a  pleasant  fiction  which  was  diligently  preserved  and 
promulgated  even  in  the  manifestoes  of  the  American  Con- 
gress, and  until  near  the  close  of  the  year  1775.  So  im- 
mense was  the  arc  of  emotion  through  which  the  people 
passed,  that,  after  the  adoption  of  the  purpose  of  Inde- 
pendence, and  as  if  moved  by  a  spontaneous  impulse,  they 
everywhere  tore  down  from  their  houses  all  emblems  and 
memorials  of  the  king;  they  changed  the  names  of  streets 
and  public  places  which  had  commemorated  their  love  and 
reverence  for  him  and  for  his  family ;  and  even  the  halfpence 
which  bore  the  image  and  superscription  of  George  the 
Third,  were  either  refused  when  offered  as  money  or  were 
degraded  into  farthings.  Of  all  this  tremendous  revulsion 
of  feeling  toward  the  king,  a  very  touching  example  was 
seen  in  many  private  houses,  where  his  portrait,  once  held 
in  so  much  honor,  was  left  hanging  in  its  place,  but  with 
its  face  turned  to  the  wall.  In  one  mansion,  however,  a 

1  F.  Moore,  "  Songs  and  Ballads,"  68  n. 


REVOLUTIONIST  SATIRE.  l6l 

more  dramatic  denunciation  of  the  king  was  resorted  to : 
the  portrait  of  his  majesty,  having  been  lifted  from  the  nail 
on  which  it  had  hung,  was  simply  placed  upon  the  floor  and 
there  left  leaning  against  the  wall — but  with  the  head 
downward,  while  some  lines  were  written  beneath  it,  as  if 
to  deepen,  if  possible,  this  spectacular  testimony  of  Ameri- 
can hatred  and  contempt : 

"  Behold  the  man,  who  had  it  in  his  power 
To  make  a  kingdom  tremble  and  adore. 
Intoxicate  with  folly,  see  his  head 
Placed  where  the  meanest  of  his  subjects  tread. 
Like  Lucifer,  the  giddy  tyrant  fell : 
He  lifts  his  heel  to  Heaven,  but  points  his  head  to  Hell." * 

So,  as  the  drama  of  the  Revolution  moved  on  from  Scene 
to  Scene,  from  Act  to  Act,  there  appeared  to  be  standing 
by  a  sort  of  chorus  of  patriotic  poetasters,  who,  with  jest 
and  scoff  and  invective,  flung  out  in  blunt  or  biting  verse 
their  free  comments  on  such  of  the  actors  as  they  disap- 
proved of,  and  upon  such  of  the  things  done  or  attempted 
as  went  counter  to  their  wishes, — first  of  all,  Toryism,  in 
all  its  shapes  and  manners,  in  all  its  champions  and  confed- 
erates; next,  the  principalities  and  powers  in  Great  Britain 
which  were  resolved  upon  our  subjugation;  and,  finally,  all 
the  civilized  or  savage  tools  of  ministerial  policy,  and  all 
their  projects,  blunders,  successes,  and  failures,  to  the  last 
action  and  passion  of  the  conflict. 

The  spring  and  summer  of  the  year  1777  seem  to  stand 
out  in  our  annals  as  a  season  of  extraordinary  dread  and 
gloom  on  the  part  of  the  friends  of  the  Revolution.  In 
some  of  the  writings  of  that  time  is  to  be  heard  a  note  of 
almost  cynical  bitterness,  as  in  these  lines  added  to  one 
version  of  a  patriotic  song  then  given  to  the  public: 

"  The  times,  it  seems,  are  altered  quite  ; 

The  scales  are  cracked,  the  sword  is  broke, 

1  "Works  of  John  Adams,"  ii.  434. 
VOL.  a — xi 


1 62  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Right  is  now  wrong,  and  wrong  is  right, 
And  justice  is  a  standing  joke."1 

Notwithstanding  the  glimmer  of  good  cheer  brought  in 
by  the  two  little  dashes  of  success  during  the  previous  win- 
ter, at  Trenton  and  Princeton,  the  general  effect  of  the 
heavy  defeats  suffered  by  our  arms  within  the  latter  half  of 
1776,  was  still  weighing  upon  the  popular  imagination;  nor 
was  this  burden  in  any  way  lightened  by  the  fact  that  two 
powerful  armies,  one  under  Howe,  one  under  Burgoyne, 
were  apparently  getting  ready  to  sever  all  connection  be- 
tween the  three  great  groups  of  States  then  in  rebellion, 
after  which  it  might  seem  an  easy  thing  to  conquer  and 
crush  each  of  these  groups  in  its  turn.  In  spite  of  Howe's 
lack  of  enterprise  in  the  campaign  of  1776,  and  of  his  obvi- 
ous failure  to  push  his  advantages,  his  reputation  among  us 
was  still  a  most  formidable  fact.  Under  the  uncertainty  as 
to  what  he  might  do  that  summer  with  the  force  at  his 
command,  his  name  was  still  a  name  to  conjure  with.  It  is 
an  odd  token  of  the  various  methods  and  weapons  for  pub- 
lic influence  then  resorted  to  on  both  sides,  that  the  solemn 
announcement  was  made  of  the  discovery  of  an  egg  which 
had  been  laid  by  an  inspiied  hen  in  the  ancient  town  of 
Plymouth,  and  which  bore  upon  its  shell,  in  legible  charac- 
ters, "  A  Prophecy,"  in  these  dreadful  words:  "  Oh,  oh, 
America!  Howe  shall  be  thy  conqueror."  Of  course,  so 
appalling  a  prediction  was  not  likely  to  be  suffered  to  travel 
about  the  country  without  being  met  by  some  counter- 
prediction,  which,  accordingly,  was  very  soon  supplied  by 
the  "  Genius  of  America  "  in  "  Another  Prophecy,"  of  which 
these  are  the  closing  lines  :— 

"  When  eggs  can  speak  what  fools  indite, 
And  hens  can  talk,  as  well  as  write  ; 
When  crocodiles  shed  honest  tears, 
And  truth  with  hypocrites  appears  ; 


1  This  stanza  was  added  to  a  song  on  "  The  Times,"  beginning,  "  My  Muse, 
now  thy  aid  and  assistance  we  claim."     F.  Moore,  "  Ballad  History,"  200-201. 


REVOLUTIONIST  SATIRE.  163 

When  every  man  becomes  a  knave, 
And  feels  the  spirit  of  the  slave  ; 
And  when  veracity  again 
Shall  in  a  Tory's  bosom  reign  ; 
When  vice  is  virtue,  darkness  light, 
And  freemen  are  afraid  to  fight ; 
When  they  forget  to  play  the  men, 
And  with  the  spirit  of  a  hen 
Desert  the  just  and  sacred  cause, 
And  opening  Heaven  smiles  applause 
On  such  a  bloody,  barbarous  foe, — 
Then  I  '11  be  conquered  by  a  Howe  !  "  * 

As  to,  Burgoyne,  it  is  easy  for  us  now,  as  it  was  for 
Thackeray  some  forty  years  ago,  to  imagine  that  grandiose 
hero  4<  tripping  off  from  St.  James's  Street  to  conquer 
the  Americans,  and  slinking  back  into  the  club  somewhat 
crestfallen  after  his  beating."*  We  cannot  wonder  that 
the  derisive  comments  of  our  American  chorus  upon  the 
unparalleled  fiasco  which  closed  his  word-thunderous  career 
among  us,  were  not  at  all  tempered  by  delicacy  or  by  self- 
restraint.  To  recall  only  two  of  these  choric  gibes  will 
doubtless  be  quite  enough  : 

(a) 

"  Burgoyne,  alas,  unknowing  future  fates, 
Could  force  his  way  through  woods,  but  not  through  Gates." " 

(b) 

"  In  seventeen  hundred-and-seventy-seven,4 
General  Burgoyne  set  out  for  Heaven  ; 

1  Given  in  full  in  F.  Moore,  "Songs  and  Ballads,"  etc.,  160-162. 
5  "  The  Four  Georges,"  69. 

3  This  epigram,  said  to  have  been  written  by  David  Edwards,  was  published 
in  the  newspapers  shortly  after  Burgoyne's  surrender.     Some  account  of  Ed- 
wards is  given   by  W.  L.  Stone,  in  his  "  Burgoyne  Ballads,"  66-68  n.     The 
authorship  of  this  epigram  has  also  been  claimed  for  a  Westminister  School-boy, 
who  is  said  to  have  composed  it  in  Latin  on  the  subject  of  "  Saratoga  '' — that 
word  having  been  given  out  for  the  day's  exercise  in  Latin  verse.     Stone  thinks 
this  claim  to  be  "  without  foundation." 

4  "Burgoyne   Ballads."  66.       This  epigram  is  said  to  have  been  kept  in 


1 64  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

But,  as  the  Yankees  would  rebel, 

He  missed  his  route,  and  went — to  Hell." 

The  discovery  of  the  treason  of  Benedict  Arnold,  in  1780, 
stirred  the  abhorrence  of  the  American  people  more  deeply, 
perhaps,  than  did  any  other  event  of  the  war.  Of  course, 
this  emotion  expressed  itself  in  an  infinite  variety  of  forms; 
but  of  those  merely  in  the  form  of  verse  sarcastic,  a  fair 
example  is  afforded  by  certain  lines  "  To  the  Traitor 
Arnold,"  published  in  "  The  Pennsylvania  Packet  "  for 
October  24,  1780:' 

"  Arnold  !  thy  name,  as  heretofore, 
Shall  now  be  Benedict  no  more  ; 
Since,  instigated  by  the  devil, 
Thy  ways  are  turned  from  good  to  evil. 
'T  is  fit  we  brand  thee  with  a  name 
To  suit  thy  infamy  and  shame  ; 
And  since  of  treason  thou  'rt  convicted, 
Thy  name  should  now  be  Maledict-ed. 

And  odious  for  the  blackest  crimes, 
Arnold  shall  stink  to  latest  times." 

In  the  same  number  of  the  paper  which  contained  the 
lines  just  given,  appeared  this  epigram  on  the  visible  result 
of  the  bargain  between  Arnold  and  Sir  Henry  Clinton: 

"  'T  was  Arnold's  post  Sir  Harry  sought, 
Arnold  ne'er  entered  in  his  thought. 
How  ends  the  bargain  ?     Let  us  see, — 
The  fort  is  safe  as  safe  can  be  : 

memory  in  Vermont  for  many  years  after  the  Revolution.  It  is  one  result,  per- 
haps, of  the  theological  training  of  the  period,  that  the  wits  and  satirists  on  both 
sides  of  the  controversy  were  so  facile  in  despatching  their  antagonists  to  Hell,— 
a  penal  institution  of  easy  access  to  all,  and  therefore  singularly  useful  to  a 
heated  debater  who  otherwise  might  have  been  at  a  loss  to  know  just  how  to 
make  final  disposition  of  the  party  of  the  other  part. 

1  A  copy  of  this  paper  is  in  the  library  of  the  Pennsylvania  Historical  Society. 


CHARLES  HENRY   WHARTON.  165 

His  favorite  perforce  must  die  ; 
His  view  's  laid  bare  to  every  eye  ; 
His  money  's  gone — and  lo  !  he  gains 
One  scoundrel  more  for  all  his  pains. 
Andre  was  generous,  true,  and  brave, 
And  in  his  room  he  buys  a  knave. 
'T  is  sure  ordained  that  Arnold  cheats 
All  those,  of  course,with  whom  he  treats. 
Now  let  the  devil  suspect  a  bite — 
Or  Arnold  cheats  him  of  his  right." 

Henceforth,  the  name  of  Arnold  was  seldom  mentioned  by 
any  Revolutionist  writer  without  its  being  coupled  with 
that  of*  Satan,  between  whom  and  the  traitor  the  inter- 
course was  assumed  to  be  both  familiar  and  without  inter- 
mission. Thus,  the  "  New  Jersey  Gazette,"  for  November 
i,  1780,  was  enabled  to  report  this  quite  affectionate  con- 
versation as  having  then  recently  taken  place  between  the 
two  distinguished  personages : 

"  Quoth  Satan  to  Arnold  ;  '  My  worthy  good  fellow, 

I  love  you  much  better  that  ever  I  did  ; 
You  live  like  a  prince,  with  Hal J  may  get  mellow, — 
But  mind  that  you  both  do  just  what  I  bid.' 

"  Quoth  Arnold  to  Satan  :  '  My  friend,  do  not  doubt  me  ! 

I  will  strictly  adhere  to  all  your  great  views  ; 
To  you  I  'm  devoted,  with  all  things  about  me — 
You  '11  permit  me,  I  hope,  to  die  in  my  shoes.'  " " 


II. 


From  these  trifles  in  political  satire,  it  is  pleasant  to  turn 
to  a  deliberate  and  a. noble  poem  of  the  year  1779,  which, 
while  breathing  high  eulogy  of  the  Revolutionist  cause 

1  Sir  Henry  Clinton.  8  F.  Moore,  "  Diary  of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  ii.  333. 


1 66  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

and  especially  of  its  Chief,  is  also  a  stern  satire  upon  the 
political  blindness  and  corruption  of  the  English  court  and 
parliament — a  condition  of  things  out  of  which,  according 
to  this  poet,  it  was  possible  for  so  foolish  and  fatal  a  project 
to  be  born,  as  that  of  exterminating  the  germs  of  a  manly 
political  life  in  America. 

At  the  time  of  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  there  was  living 
in  England,  as  chaplain  to  the  Roman  Catholics  in  the  city 
of  Worcester,  an  American  priest,  Charles  Henry  Wharton, 
— a  man  of  singular  strength  and  purity  of  character,  and  of 
quite  extraordinary  mental  gifts, — who,  notwithstanding 
his  long  absence  from  his  native  land,  had  never  been  able 
to  lay  aside  his  love  for  her,  or  his  concern  that  she  should 
be  able,  when  her  great  trouble  came,  to  beat  back,  with 
victory  and  honor,  the  blows  of  her  enemies.  He  was  of  an 
old  Roman  Catholic  family  in  Maryland,  long  settled  at 
Notley  Hall,  where  he  was  born  in  1,48.  When  but  twelve 
years  of  age,  he  had  been  sent  abroad  to  the  Jesuit  College 
at  St.  Omers.  Not  many  years  afterward,  on  the  expulsion 
of  the  Jesuits  from  France,  he  had  been  removed  with  his 
college  to  Bruges,  where  he  completed  his  undergraduate 
studies,  rising  to  eminence  both  as  a  classicist  and  as  a 
mathematician.  Having  afterward  studied  at  the  Jesuit 
College  at  Liege,  and  having  there  received  priest's  orders, 
he  was  in  1773  admitted  into  its  faculty  as  professor  of 
mathematics.  This  position  he  seems  not  to  have  retained 
very  long, — leaving  it,  apparently,  in  order  to  serve  in  spir- 
itual offices  a  congregation  of  his  own  faith  in  England. 

Living  thus  in  an  English  community,  in  the  midst  of 
the  wrath  and  clangor  attendant  on  the  war  then  in  progress 
against  his  own  kinsmen  and  countrymen  in  America,  he 
could  only  watch  afar  off  the  bitter  unfolding  of  events, 
himself  quite  powerless  to  shape  or  steer  them  by  any  phys- 
ical intervention  of  his  own.  Through  all  the  bewilder- 
ments of  the  scene,  his  eye  seems  "to  have  fixed  itself  in 
admiration  and  trust  upon  the  person  of  Washington. 
Accordingly,  in  1778,— the  very  year  in  which  an  American 


CHARLES  HENRY    WHARTON,  167 

cabal  had  been  in  progress  for  Washington's  overthrow, — 
this  .sturdy  priest  gave  utterance  to  the  thought  that  was 
within  him  touching  the  whole  situation,  in  "  A  Poetical 
Epistle  to  George  Washington,  Esquire,  Commander-in- 
Chief  of  the  Armies  of  the  United  States  of  America," 
published  first  in  America,  and  subsequently  in  England, — 
in  the  latter  case,  after  receiving  the  friendly  revision  of  Sir 
William  Jones.1  It  may  help  us  to  realize  to  how  great  an 
extent  English  society  always  refused  its  sanction  to  the 
king's  war  against  their  American  brethren,  to  note  that 
this  poem  was  published  in  London,  in  1780,  under  the 
express  sanction  of  the  Duchess  of  Devonshire,*  and  that 
fifteen  thousand  copies  of  it  were  sold  there  in  about  three 
weeks  at  two  shillings  and  sixpence  each — the  money  being 
intended  for  the  relief  of  the  American  prisoners  of  war.* 

The  full  note  of  confidence  in  Washington  which  breathes 
through  these  verses,  is  nowhere  weakened  by  any  gush  of 
panegyric.  The  poem  is  at  once  a  manly  tribute  to  the 
character  and  ability  of  the  American  leader,  a  satire  on 
the  corruption  and  folly  of  the  ministerial  party  in  Eng- 
land, and  a  magnanimous  lesson  in  civic  virtue  addressed 
to  the  poet's  own  fellow-countrymen  in  their  great  move- 
ment toward  nationality.  Of  course,  having  the  conven- 
tionalized diction  of  eighteenth-century  satire,  it  comes  to 
us  in  a  metrical  garb  which  now  suggests  unreality — hum- 
drum thought  and  manufactured  emotion.  Nevertheless, 
there  is  in  this  poem  a  genuiifbness  that  is  not  to  be  smoth- 

1  Wharton's  "  Remains,"  i.  Appendix  xxiv.          'Ibid. 

3  This  fact  is  mentioned  in  the  Providence  edition  of  the  poem.  The  editor 
of  Wharton's  "  Remains"  states  that  the  poem  was  first  printed  by  Bradford  in 
Philadelphia,  in  1778.  I  have  been  unable  to  find  any  trace  of  such  publica- 
tion. I  have,  however,  met  with  three  early  copies  of  the  poem,  as  follows  : — 
(i)  a  London  edition  bearing  the  date  of  1780,  and  professing  to  be  a  reprint 
of  an  American  edition  published  at  Annapolis  in  1779  I  (2)  an  edition  published 
in  Philadelphia  in  1781,  and  professing  to  be  a  reprint  of  a  London  edition  ; 
(3)  an  edition  published  in  Providence  in  1781,  and  professing  to  be  a  reprint  of 
a  London  edition.  The  poem  was  certainly  in  manuscript  in  the  year  1778; 
but  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  Annapolis  and  the  year  1779  are  the  true  place 
and  time  of  its  original  publication. 


!68  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

ered  even  by  such  an  envelopment — the  sincerity  and 
robustness  of  a  clear,  fearless  and  forthright  thinker.  /The 
poem,  which  begins  in  the  usual  fashion  of  satire, — gibing 
at  follies  and  wrongs  that  surround  the  poet  and  provoke 
his  anger, — quickly  leads  on  to  a  sudden  turn  in  the 
thought,  involving  a  bit  of  restrained  but  very  impressive 
homage  to  the  noble  person  to  whom  it  is  directed : 

"  While  many  a  servile  Muse  her  succor  lends 
To  flatter  tyrants,  or  a  tyrant's  friends  ; 
While  thousands,  slaughtered  at  Ambition's  shrine, 
Are  made  a  plea  to  court  the  tuneful  Nine  ; 
Whilst  Whitehead '  lifts  his  hero  to  the  skies, 
Foretells  his  conquests  twice  a  year — and  lies, 
Damns  half-starved  rebels  to  eternal  shame, 
Or  paints  them  trembling  at  Britannia's  name  ; 
Permit  an  humble  bard,  great  Chief,  to  raise 
One  truth-erected  trophy  to  thy  praise. 
No  abject  flattery  shall  these  numbers  seek, 
To  raise  a  blush  on  Virtue's  modest  cheek  ; 
Rehearse  no  merit,  no  illustrious  deed, 
But  foes  must  own — and  Washington  may  read."  * 

After  portraying  the  political  corruption  then  prevalent 
in  England,  and  the  folly  of  the  ministry  in  too  long  dis- 
regarding the  claims  of  the  American  colonists,  he  prays 
that  his  own  country  may  be  saved  from  a  leadership  so 
blind,  arrogant,  and  ruinous  as  that  from  which  England 
was  then  suffering;  and  he  ends  with  a  noble  sketch  of 
what  he  would  have  America  become, — a  sketch  which  it 
might  still  profit  us  to  be  somewhat  better  acquainted 
with: 

"  Great  without  pomp,  without  ambition  brave, 
Proud  not  to  conquer  fellow-men,  but  save  ; 
Friend  to  the  wretched,  foe  to  none  but  those 
Who  plan  their  greatness  on  their  brethren's  woes  ; 

1  Poet  laureate  from  1757  to  1785.  2  "A  Poetical  Epistle,"  etc.,  8. 


POLITICAL  AND  MILITARY  SONGS.  169 

Awed  by  no  titles,  faithless  to  no  trust, 

Free  without  faction,  obstinately  just ; 

Too  rough  for  flattery,  dreading  e'en  as  death 

The  baneful  influence  of  Corruption's  breath  ; 

Warmed  by  Religion's  sacred  genuine  ray 

That  points  to  future  bliss  the  unerring  way ; 

Spurning  as  Hell  grim  Superstition's  laws — 

Too  long  a  tyrant  in  the  noblest  cause  ; 

The  world's  great  mart,  yet  not  by  gold  defiled  ; 

To  mercy  prone,  in  justice  ever  mild — 

Save  to  the  man  who  saps  great  Freedom's  roots  ; 

And  never  cursed  with  Mansfields,  Norths,  and  Butes  ! 

Such  be  my  country  ! — what  her  sons  should  be, 

O,  may  they  learn,  great  Washington,  from  thee  !  "  ' 


III. 


"  It  is  very  odd,"  says  Francis  Lieber,  "  that  the  Angli- 
can race  hardly  ever  produces  songs  with  life  and  soul,  when 
the  life  of  the  nation  throbs  high.  We  produced  no  Revo- 
lutionary song  worth  talking  of. "  a  To  the  general  purpose 
of  this  statement  one  may  safely  assent,  but  with  the  added 
remark  that  several  of  the  Revolutionary  songs  that  have 
been  the  most  talked  of,  have  been  perhaps  among  the  least 
worthy  of  it, — that  is,  not  only  are  they  lacking  in  "  life 
and  soul,"  but  they  belong  to  the  pompous,  rhetorical 
and  truly  ligneous  variety  of  the  article  in  question.  Such, 
for  example,  is  John  Dickinson's  much  belauded  "  Liberty 
Song,"  *  produced  in  1768;  such,  also,  is  "  The  American 
Hearts  of  Oak,"  4  by  the  Virginian,  Hewlings,  produced  in 
1775;  and  such  is  Jonathan  Mitchell  Sewall's  song  "  On 
Independence,"  5  produced  in  1776.  On  the  other  hand, 

1  "An  Epistle,"  etc.,  14-15.  In  1881  was  published  in  Boston  an  edition  of 
this  poem  "  From  the  Original  MS.  belonging  to  David  Pulsifer,  A.M." 

*  Perry,  "  Life  and  Letters  of  Francis  Lieber,"  277. 

*  F.  Moore,  "  Songs  and  Ballads,"  etc.,  36-39. 
4  Ibid.  103-105.     *  Ibid.  144-146. 


I7O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

while  these  songs  have  had  among  us,  for  a  hundred  years 
and  more,  a  sort  of  conventionalized  and  dutiful  celebrity, 
it  would  not  be  difficult  to  shew  that  we  inherit  from  the 
Revolution  several  others  which  since  then  have  scarcely 
been  talked  of  at  all,  but  which  certainly  have  something 
of  the  sparkle  and  dash  of  true  popular  lyrics,  born  too  of 
a  time  when  the  life  of  the  nation  throbbed  high.  Such  a 
so'ng,  for  example,  is  one  produced  in  1775,  to  the  Scottish 
tune — "  I  winna  marry  ony  lad  but  Sandy  o'er  the  lea," 
and  entitled  "  The  Pennsylvania  Song,"  of  which  the  first 
stanza  runs  as  follows : 

"  We  are  the  troop  that  ne'er  will  stoop 

To  wretched  slavery, 
Nor  shall  our  seed  by  our  base  deed 

Despised  vassals  be  ! 
Freedom  we  will  bequeathe  to  them, 

Or  we  will  bravely  die  ; 
Our  greatest  foe  ere  long  shall  know 
How  much  did  Sandwich  lie. 
And  all  the  world  shall  know, 

Americans  are  free  ; 
Nor  slaves  nor  cowards  we  will  prove — 
Great  Britain  soon  shall  see."  ' 

Such  a  song,  also,  is  one  entitled  "  Independence,"  pro- 
duced in  the  spring  of  1776,  and  beginning  thus: 

"  Freemen  !  if  you  pant  for  glory, 
If  you  sigh  to  live  in  story, 

If  you  burn  with  patriot  zeal, 
Seize  this  bright  auspicious  hour  ; 
Chase  those  venal  tools  of  power, 

Who  subvert  the  public  weal."4 

Such  a  song  is  one  produced  in  1778,  in  praise  of  the  cour- 
age  and  devotion  of  the  patriotic  women  of  the  Revolution, 

1  The  entire  song  is  in  F.  Moore,  "  Songs  and  Ballads,"  etc.,  90-91. 
*  Ibid.  139-140. 


POLITICAL   AND  MILITARY  SONGS.  I /I 

and  entitled  "  The  Old  Man's  Song,"  of  which  these  stan- 
zas are  a  part : 

"  Boy,  fill  me  a  bumper  !  as  long  as  I  live, 
The  patriot  fair  for  my  toast  must  I  give  : 
Here's  a  health  to  the  sex  of  every  degree — 
Where  sweetness  and  beauty  with  firmness  agree. 

"  No  more  will  I  babble  of  times  that  are  past, 
My  wish  is,  the  present  forever  may  last  ; 
Already  I  see  sulky  George  in  despair  — 
Should  he  vanquish  the  men — to  vanquish  the  fair ! 

"  Of  Greeks  and  of  Romans  enough  has  been  said, 
To  Codrus  and  Brutus  full  tribute  been  paid  : 
O'er  musty  old  heroes  no  longer  I  '11  dream — 
Living  beauty  and  virtue  enliven  my  theme. 

"  Fill  a  bumper  again,  boy,  and  let  it  go  round, 
For  the  waters  of  youth  in  claret  are  found  ; 
The  younkers  shall  know,  I  Ve  the  courage  to  dare 
Drink  as  deep  as  the  best  to  the  patriot  fair."  ' 

Such  a  song,  finally,  is  one  produced  in  1780,  and  entitled 
"  The  Volunteer  Boys,"  of  which  the  first  two  stanzas  and 
the  last  are  as  follows:  — 

"  Hence  with  the  lover  who  sighs  o'er  his  wine, 

Cloes  and  Phillises  toasting, 

Hence  with  the  slave  who  will  whimper  and  whine, 
Of  ardor  and  constancy  boasting. 
Hence  with  love's  joys", 
Follies  and  noise, — 
The  toast  that  I  give  is  the  Volunteer  Boys. 

"  Nobles  and  beauties  and  such  common  toasts, 

Those  who  admire  may  drink,  sir  ; 
Fill  up  the  glass  to  the  Volunteer  Hosts, 
Who  never  from  danger  will  shrink,  sir. 

1  F.  Moore,  "  Songs  and  Ballads,"  etc.,  206-207. 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Let  mirth  appear, 
Every  heart  cheer, 
The  toast  that  I  give  is — the  Brave  Volunteer. 

"  Thus,  the  bold  bands  for  old  Jersey's  defence, 

The  Muse  hath  with  rapture  reviewed,  sir  ; 
With  our  Volunteer  Boys,  as  our  verses  commence, 
With  our  Volunteer  Boys  they  conclude,  sir. 
Discord  or  noise, 
Ne'er  damp  our  joys, 
But  health  and  success  to  the  Volunteer  Boys."1 


IV. 


Respecting  this  large  group  of  compositions — the  political 
and  military  songs  of  the  Revolution — the  writers  of  the  most 
of  them  still  enjoy  the  blessing  of  being  unknown, — a  bless- 
ing in  which  they  are  not  to  be  disturbed  by  any  efforts  of 
ours.  Benjamin  Young  Prime,  a  physician  who  had  some 
proclivity  to  verse-writing,  and  who  in  1764  wrote  "  The 
Patriot  Muse,"  a  is  said  to  have  produced  in  the  course  of 
the  Revolution  several  political  songs  which  enjoyed  a  sort 
of  vogue  in  their  day.  Of  James  McClurg,  also  a  physician, 
a  classmate  and  friend  of  Jefferson's,  there  is  a  tradition 
which  certifies  to  his  skill  in  the  writing  of  neat  and  tripping 
society-verses,  and  of  clever  songs  for  the  Revolutionary 
cause.8  Rednap  Howell,  who  was  a  school-master  in  North 
Carolina,  and  who,  in  1771,  published  a  series  of  caustic 
articles  upon  the  political  controversies  then  raging  within 

1  The  whole  song  is  in  F.  Moore,  "  Songs  and  Ballads,"  etc.,  285-288. 

2  I  have  not  met  with  this  poem. 

3  Some  impression  of  him,  perhaps,  may  be  formed,  from  a  sprightly  little 
poem  called  "The  Belles  of  Williamsburg,"  which  is  said  to  have  been  the  joint 
work  of  McClurg  and  of  St.  George  Tucker  in  the  year  1777,  and  which,  by  a 
pardonable  anachronism,   John   Esten   Cooke  has  contrived  to  weave  into  his 
chapter  on   "  Governor  Fauquier's  Ball,"  in  "  The  Virginia  Comedians,"  ii. 
266-269. 


TIMOTHY  D  WIGHT.  173 

that  colony,1  is  to  be  mentioned  also  as  a  writer  of  patriotic 
songs.  In  Connecticut,  likewise,  was  a  coterie  of  poets, 
Oliver  Arnold,3  David  Humphreys,  Joel  Barlow,3  and  Tim- 
othy Dwight,4  who  are  said  to  have  shewn  their  sympathy 
for  the  Revolution  by  the  production  of  many  war-songs — 
all  of  which,  apparently,  their  country  has  quite  willingly 
permitted  to  die.  Only  one  of  these  war-songs,  that  of 
"  Columbia,"  written  by  Dwight  while  acting  as  chaplain 
to  the  American  army  in  the  campaign  against  Burgoyne, 
seems  to  have  lived  beyond  the  occasion  from  which  it 
sprang;  and  very  likely,  to  those  who  now  read  Dwight's 
"  Columbia  "  as  a  detached  text,  and  who  do  not  re-create 
for  themselves  the  very  scene,  the  atmosphere,  the  needs, 
the  moods,  from  the  midst  of  which  this  song  came  into 
life,  it  will  be  but  ponderous  and  humdrum  verse.  Of 
course,  winged  words  these  are  not,  and  were  not;  and  yet 
so  true  was  this  song  to  the  very  heart  of  its  time,  that, 
high  above  the  hail  and  smoke  and  curses  of  the  battle-field, 
it  really  lifted  the  hearts  of  men  who  were  just  then  over- 
burdened by  a  dreadful  task,  who  were  bewildered  in  the 
dust  and  cries  of  the  fighting,  and  begrimed  with  its  soilure 
and  blood ;  and  it  actually  gave  to  them,  for  some  great 
moments,  a  clear  vision  of  the  triumphant  issue  of  all  this 
havoc  and  horror, — home,  country,  a  new  fatherland  in  the 
world,  which  should  erect  its  power  and  renown,  not  on 
the  antique  vulgarities  of  slaughter  and  conquest,  but  on  the 
happiness  of  men, — on  liberty,  justice,  opportunity,  science, 
beauty,  genius: 

"  A  world  is  thy  realm  ;  for  a  world  be  thy  laws, 
Enlarged  as  thy  empire,  and  just  as  thy  cause." 

Therefore,  with  this  splendid  vision  before  him,  the  singer, 
wandering  alone  from  his  camp  into  a  forest  of  cedars  and 

1  "A  Fan  for  Fanning  and  a  Touchstone  to  Tryon.  By  Regulus."  Reprinted 
in  the  "  North  Carolina  Magazine,"  for  Feb.  and  March,  1859. 

4  F.  Moore,  "  Songs  and  Ballads,"  82  ;  379.  3  C.  B.  Todd,  "  Life  of  Bar- 
low,"  2o/-*30  n.  4  "  Memoir,"  in  Dwight's  "  Theology,"  i.  13. 


174 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


there  trying  to  find  some  lofty  cheer  for  others,  finds  it  also 
for  himself: 

"  Thus,  as  down  a  lone  valley,  with  cedars  o'erspread, 
From  war's  dread  confusion  I  pensively  strayed — 
The  gloom  from  the  face  of  fair  heaven  retired, 
The  winds  ceased  to  murmur,  the  thunders  expired ; 
Perfumes  as  of  Eden,  flowed  sweetly  along, 
And  a  voice,  as  of  angels,  enchantingly  sung, — 
*  Columbia,  Columbia,  to  glory  arise, 
The  queen  of  the  world,  and  the  child  of  the  skies.' " J 


V. 


When  the  news  of  Bunker  Hill  fight,  speeding  southward, 
reached  the  town  of  Norwich,  in  Connecticut,  it  found 
there  in  Nathaniel  Niles  a  soul  prepared  to  receive  it  and 
whatsoever  it  forboded,  with  the  fearlessness  which  comes 
of  faith  in  things  not  to  be  won  or  lost  in  such  warfare. 
This  man,  who  was  born  in  Rhode  Island  in  1741,  who  was 
graduated  at  Princeton  in  1766,  and  who  died  in  Vermont 
in  1828,  was  an  instance  of  that  versatility  which  seems  to 
be  the  fatal  privilege,  as  it  is  the  badge,  of  civilization  in 
its  pioneer  stages.  Of  towering  intellect  and  commanding 
moral  force,  he  laid  his  hand,  during  his  long  life,  on  nearly 
all  of  the  great  occupations  which  draw  to  themselves  the 
service  of  educated  men, — pedagogy,  philosophy,  medicine, 
law,  divinity,  mechanical  invention,  agriculture,  politics, 
legislation,  magistracy.  Though  without  ordination  as  a 
minister  in  the  religious  body  to  which  he  belonged,  he 
preached  not  infrequently  in  its  pulpits;  and  on  several 
occasions  he  published  religious  discourses  which  made 
their  impression  upon  the  public.  All  his  life,  too,  his 
mind  was  busy  with  the  current  affairs  of  this  world,  partic- 

1  The  whole  song  is  in  "  American  Poems,"  62-64.  These  sentences  concern- 
ing Dwight's  "  Columbia,"  are  transferred  with  some  alterations  from  a  little 
book  of  mine  entitled,  "  Three  Men  of  Letters,"  82-84. 


NATHANIEL   NILES,  175 

ularly  those  of  his  own  country, — on  which  he  wrote  and 
spoke  as  became  a  philosopher  and  a  patriot. 

This  man  it  was  who,  being  at  his  home  in  Norwich  as 
the  heart-shaking  tidings  from  Bunker  Hill  rolled  that  way, 
and  being  prompted  thereby  to  commune  with  those  high 
thoughts  which  have  in  all  times  ministered  strength  and 
serenity  in  the  midst  of  turmoil  and  pain,  poured  out  his 
soul  in  a  poem  of  sedate  and  touching  melody, — "  The 
American  Hero, — A  Sapphic  Ode," — which  was  straight- 
way set  to  music  and  was  sung  everywhere  in  the  churches, 
and  proved  itself  to  be  a  true  lyric  of  fortitude  and  peace 
through  all  those  troubled  years: 


"  Why  should  vain  mortals  tremble  at  the  sight  of 
Death  and  destruction  in  the  field  of  battle, 
Where  blood  and  carnage  clothe  the  field  in  crimson, 
Sounding  with  death-groans  ? 

"  Death  will  invade  us  by  the  means  appointed ; 
And  we  must  all  bow  to  the  king  of  terrors  ; 
Nor  am  I  anxious,  if  I  am  prepared, 
What  shape  he  comes  in. 

"  Infinite  wisdom  teacheth  us  submission  ; 
Bids  us  be  quiet  under  all  His  dealings  ; 
Never  repining,  but  forever  praising 
God  our  Creator. 

"  Well  may  we  praise  Him  :  all  His  ways  are  perfect, 
Though  a  resplendence  infinitely  glowing 
Much  hides  th'e  glory  from  the  sight  of  mortals, 
Struck  blind  by  lustre. 

"  Good  is  Jehovah  in  bestowing  sunshine  ; 
Nor  less  his  goodness  in  the  storm  and  thunder : 
Mercies  and  judgments  both  proceed  from  kindness — 
Infinite  kindness  ! 


176  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  Oh  then  exult  that  God  forever  reigneth  ! 
Clouds  that  around  Him  hinder  our  perception, 
Bind  us  the  stronger  to  exalt  His  name  and 
Shout  louder  praises  ! 

"  Then  to  the  goodness  of  my  Lord  and  Master, 
I  will  commit  all  that  I  have  or  wish  for  : 
Sweetly  as  babes  sleep,  will  I  give  my  life  up 
When  called  to  yield  it. 

"  Now,  War,  I  dare  thee,  clad  in  smoky  pillars, 
Bursting  from  bombshells,  roaring  from  the  cannon, 
Rattling  in  grapeshot,  like  a  storm  of  hailstones, 
Torturing  ether  ! 

*  To  the  bleak  heavens  let  the  spreading  flame  rise, 
Bursting  like  Etna  through  the  smoky  columns, 
Lowering  like  Egypt  o'er  the  burning  city — 
Wantonly  ruined. 

"  While  all  their  hearts  quick  palpitate  for  havoc, 
Let  slip  your  bloodhounds,  named  the  British  lions, 
Dauntless  as  death-stares,  nimble  as  the  whirlwind, 
Dreadful  as  demons  ! 

"  Let  ocean  waft  on  all  your  floating  castles, 
Fraught  with  combustion  horrible  to  nature  ; 
Then,  with  your  sails  filled  by  a  storm  of  vengeance, 
Bear  down  to  battle. 

'*  From  the  dire  caverns  made  by  ghostly  miners, 
Let  the  explosion,  dreadful  as  volcanoes, 
Heave  the  broad  town,  with  all  its  wealth  and  people, 
Quick  to  destruction. 


Still  shall  the  banner  of  the  King  of  Heaven 
Never  advance  where  I  'm  afraid  to  follow  : 
While  that  precedes  me,  with  an  open  bosom, 
Mars,  I  defy  thee  ! 


AMERICAN  PATRIOT'S  PRAYER.  177 

Fame  and  dear  Freedom  lure  me  on  to  battle  ; 
While  a  fell  despot,  grimmer  than  a  death's  head, 
Stings  me  with  serpents  fiercer  than  Medusa's, 
To  the  encounter. 

Life  for  my  country  and  the  cause  of  freedom, 
Is  but  a  cheap  price  for  a  worm  to  part  with  : 
And  if  preserved  in  so  great  a  conflict  contest, 
Life  is  redoubled."  l 


The  year  1776  opened  with  most  solemn  portents  for 
Americans,  for  Englishmen,  for  mankind.  The  word  Inde- 
pendence, held  back  so  long,  so  long  repudiated  as  a  word 
hateful  and  calamitous,  had  been  flung  at  last  into  the  con- 
troversy, and  was  thenceforward  to  be  spoken  by  many  lips 
white  with  dread  or  tremulous  with  desire.  No  man  could 
foresee  what  was  coming  upon  the  earth  :  all  men  could 
foresee  that  something  was  coming  which  the  earth  itself 
had  not  seen  before.  Thus,  while  in  those  early  months  of 
1776,  the  people  of  this  land  were  doubting  or  affirming, 
were  cursing,  weeping,  fighting,  or  fleeing  from  the  fight, 
one  man,  whose  name  we  know  not,  set  down  upon  paper, 
and  sent  forth  in  print,  a  few  lines  of  verse  which,  perhaps, 
would  long  ago  have  become  celebrated  in  literature  had 
they  been  uttered  anywhere  else  than  among  ourselves,  and 
which,  at  any  rate,  may  convince  us  that  in  the  midst  of  all 
that  hurly-burly  were  men  and  women  who  knew  how, 
alway,  through  all  confusions,  right  guidance  lies  in  the 
path  of  high  principle  and  especially  of  trust  in  the  Unseen 
Leader.  These  lines,  thus  written  and  printed,  frame 
themselves  into  a  prayer,  laconic,  austere,  devout  ;  they  are 
a  stately  and  sweet  poem,  fit  to  be  placed  by  the  side  of 

1  This  poem,  as  commonly  published,  has  been  altered  in  many  particulars 
from  the  original,  and  in  most  cases  for  the  worse.  My  copy  is  taken  with 
exactness  from  the  original  manuscript,  which  was  courteously  sent  to  me  by 
Nathaniel  Niles,  of  New  York,  a  grandson  of  the  writer,  whose  name  he  bears. 


i;8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

any  other  of  its  kind  that  can  be  met  with  anywhere  in  the 
many-mansioned  treasure-house  of  our  English  speech : 

"The   American    Patriot's    Prayer." 

"  Parent  of  all,  omnipotent 

In  heaven,  and  earth  below, 
Through  all  creation's  bounds  unspent, 
Whose  streams  of  goodness  flow, 

"  Teach  me  to  know  from  whence  I  rose, 

And  unto  what  designed  ; 
No  private  aims  let  me  propose, 
Since  link'd  with  human  kind. 

"  But  chief  to  hear  my  country's  voice, 

May  all  my  thoughts  incline  ; 
'T  is  reason's  law,  't  is  virtue's  choice, 
'T  is  nature's  call  and  Thine. 

"  Me  from  fair  Freedom's  sacred  cause 

Let  nothing  e'er  divide  ; 
Grandeur,  nor  gold,  nor  vain  applause, 
Nor  friendship  false,  misguide. 

"  Let  me  not  faction's  partial  hate 

Pursue  to  this  land's  woe  ; 
Nor  grasp  the  thunder  of  the  state 
To  wound  a  private  foe. 

"  If,  for  the  right  to  wish  the  wrong 

My  country  shall  combine, 
Single  to  serve  th'  erroneous  throng, 
Spite  of  themselves,  be  mine."  ' 

1  This  remarkable  poem  first  appeared,  so  far  as  I  am  able  to  discover,  in  the 
"  Large  Additions  to  Common  Sense,"  appended  to  the  third  edition  of  that 
pamphlet  as  published  by  Robert  Bell,  in  Philadelphia,  February,  1776. 
Thomas  Paine's  latest  and  best  biographer  (M.  D.  Conway,  i.  116)  seems  to 
have  been  led  by  this  fact  to  ascribe  the  poem  to  his  hero.  In  that  opinion  I 


AMERICAN  SOLDIER'S  HYMN.  179 

VII. 

A  noble  specimen  of  the  religious  songs  that  were  actu- 
ally sung  by  the  armies  of  the  Revolution,  remains  to  us  in 
"  The  American  Soldier's  Hymn,"  a  composition  not  un- 
worthy to  be  placed  by  the  side  of  Luther's  "  Ein  feste 
Burg  ist  unser  Gott,"  a  composition  in  the  manner  of  the 
great  hymn-writers  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centu- 
ries,— simple,  earnest,  reverent,  stately,  with  the  deep  note 
of  heroic  trust  in  the  help  of  the  Eternal  Helper: 

"  'T  is  God  that  girds  our  armor  on, 
And  all  our  just  designs  fulfills  ; 
Through  Him  our  feet  can  swiftly  run, 
And  nimbly  climb  the  steepest  hills. 

"  Lessons  of  war  from  Him  we  take, 
And  manly  weapons  learn  to  wield  ; 
Strong  bows  of  steel  with  ease  we  break, 
Forced  by  our  stronger  arms  to  yield. 

"  'T  is  God  that  still  supports  our  right, 
His  just  revenge  our  foes  pursues  ; 
'T  is  He  that  with  resistless  might, 
Fierce  nations  to  His  power  subdues. 

"  Our  universal  safeguard  He  ! 
From  Whom  our  lasting  honors  flow  ; 
He  made  us  great,  and  set  us  free 
From  our  remorseless  bloody  foe. 

am  unable  to  concur.  Of  course,  the  first  appearance  of  the  poem  in  the 
addenda  to  "  Common  Sense"  does  not  at  all  prove  that  it  was  written  by  the 
author  of  that  pamphlet  ;  since  Paine  wrote  but  few,  if  any,  of  that  miscellane- 
ous collection  of  pieces.  When  one  turns  to  the  test  of  internal  evidence,  it 
seems  to  me  difficult  to  conclude  that  this  poem  bears  the  characteristic  marks 
of  Paine'swork.  I  do  not  recall  anything,  known  to  have  been  written  by  him, 
which,  whatever  its  merit,  is  not  somewhere  marred  by  at  least  a  touch  of  dispro- 
portion, of  excess,  of  pungency  verging  towards  truculence,  and  of  a  willingness  to 
surrender  his  uncommon  gift  of  expression  to  mere  smartness  of  phrase  ;  whereas 
this  poem  is  characterized  throughout  by  spiritual  ripeness,  by  self-restraint,  and 
by  an  entire  freedom  from  any  trace  either  of  rancor  or  of  rhetorical  glitter. 


ISO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  Therefore  to  celebrate  His  fame, 
Our  grateful  voice  to  Heaven  we  '11  raise  ; 
And  nations,  strangers  to  His  name, 
Shall  thus  be  taught  to  sing  His  praise." ' 

VIII. 

Crossing  the  somewhat  indistinct  line  between  the  song 
and  the  ballad,  we  find  that  there  were  produced  during  the 
Revolution  a  great  number  of  those  blunt  and  artless  com- 
positions, intended  either  to  be  sung  or  to  be  recited, 
wherein  the  more  picturesque  and  stirring  incidents  of  the 
war  are  told  with  the  undisguised  emotion,  and  in  the 
homely  diction  and  loose  measure  made  dear  to  so  many 
generations  of  our  race  in  the  old  ballads  of  England  and 
Scotland.  It  is  doubtful  if  the  American  ballads  which 
sprang  into  life  on  either  side  of  our  Revolutionary  contro- 
versy, will  be  found  to  differ  materially,  either  in  quality  or 
in  form,  from  such  products  of  popular  feeling  as  have  been 
thrown  forth,  in  similar  times  of  commotion,  upon  the 
highways  and  byways  of  the  mother  country.  At  any 
rate,  among  the  most  characteristic  of  these  American  bal- 
lads, on  the  Revolutionist  side  of  the  controversy,  should 
be  mentioned  one  of  considerable  sprightliness  and  imagina- 
tive vigor,  entitled  "  Liberty's  Call,"  said  to  have  been 
written  in  1775,  and  beginning  with  these  lines: 

"  High  on  the  banks  of  Delaware, 

Fair  Liberty  she  stood, 
And  waving  with  her  lovely  hand, 
Cried,  '  Still,  thou  roaring  flood  ! '  " a 

1  !  use  the  copy  given  by  F.  Moore  in  his  "  Ballad  History  of  the  American 
Revolution,"  221-222,  and  taken  by  him  from  a  manuscript  found  among  the 
papers  of  General  George  Clinton. 

9  First  printed  in  "The  Pennsylvania  Packet"  in  1775,  it  enjoyed  great 
popularity  during  the  Revolution  ;  was  attributed  to  several  different  writers, 
notably  to  Francis  Hopkinson  ;  but  was  probably  the  work  of  John  Mason,  an 
eccentric  tradesman  of  Philadelphia.  F.  Moore,  "  Songs  and  Ballads,"  83-87. 


REVOLUTIONARY  BALLADS.  igl 

Nor  should  we  forget  "  A  Song  for  the  Red  Coats," 
which  tells,  with  the  true  ballad-ring,  the  never-to-be- 
exhausted  story  of  the  successful  campaign  against  Bur- 
goyne  in  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1777: 

"  Come  unto  me,  ye  heroes, 

Whose  hearts  are  true  and  bold, 
Who  value  more  your  honor, 

Than  others  do  their  gold  ! 
Give  ear  unto  my  story, 

And  I  the  truth  will  tell, 
Concerning  many  a  soldier 

Who  for  his  country  fell." ' 

Upon  the  same  prolific  theme  is  the  ballad  of  "  The 
Fate  of  John  Burgoyne,"  written  likewise  in  1777,  and  in 
its  opening  lines  depicting  the  merry  scene  of  this  hero's 
departure  from  London  for  the  conquest  of  America: 

"  When  Jack,  the  king's  commander, 

Was  going  to  his  duty, 
Through  all  the  crowd  he  smiled  and  bowed — 

To  every  blooming  beauty  ; 
The  city  rung  with  feats  he  'd  done 

In  Portugal  and  Flanders, 
And  all  the  town  thought  he  'd  be  crowned 

The  first  of  Alexanders."* 

For  the  thrilling  story  of  the  capture  and  fate  of  Major 
John  Andr£,  a  very  genuine  thing,  self-styled  a  "ditty," 
is  "  Brave  Paulding  and  the  Spy, "  wherein  the  shrewdness 
and  incorruptible  integrity  of  Paulding  are  celebrated  with 
a  fervor  which  yet  admits  of  downright  admiration  and 
sympathy  for  the  unfortunate  young  officer  whom  Paulding 

1  F.  Moore,  "Songs  and  Ballads,"  176-184. 

*  Ibid.,  185.  Much  of  the  contemporary  verse  evoked  by  our  victory-  over 
Burgoyne  is  doleful  rubbish,  such  as  a  "  Short  Review  of  Burgoyne's  Expedi- 
tion," by  Robert  Dinsmore,  the  "  rustic  bard, "  and  all  the  metrical  stuff  written 
by  the  Reverend  Wheeler  Case. 


1 82  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

had  to  bring  to  his  death.  Thus,  in  singing  of  Andre  upon 
the  gallows — an  enemy  and  a  spy — this  homely  ballad  has 
a  robust  compassion  and  an  unshrinking  honesty  of  praise 
to  be  expected  only  in  an  utterance  so  fearless  as  a  genuine 
street-song : 

"  When  he  was  executed, 

He  looked  both  meek  and  mild  ; 
He  looked  upon  the  people, 

And  pleasantly  he  smiled. 
It  moved  each  eye  with  pity, 

Caused  every  heart  to  bleed  ; 
And  every  one  wished  him  released — 

And  Arnold  in  his  stead. 
He  was  a  man  of  honor, 

In  Britain  he  was  born  ; 
To  die  upon  the  gallows 

Most  highly  he  did  scorn." ' 

The  almost  matchless  victory  of  the  rebels,  achieved  in 
1780  on  a  rugged  height  near  the  northern  border  of  South 
Carolina,  has  claimed  popular  commemoration  ever  since  in 
a  hundred  forms, — in  none  of  them  more  genuine  than  in  a 
ballad  published  in  1781  and  called  "  Battle  of  King's 
Mountain," — a  ballad  which  begins  with  this  bit  of  charm- 
ingly outspoken  vituperation : 

'T  was  on  a  pleasant  mountain 

The  Tory  heathens  lay, — 
With  a  doughty  major  at  their  head, 

One  Ferguson  they  say. 
Cornwallis  had  detached  him, 

A  thieving  for  to  go, 
And  catch  the  Carolina  men, 

Or  bring  the  rebels  low."* 

It  may  be  worth  while  for  us  also  to  take  note  of  two 
other  fighting  ballads,  one  with  the  flavor  of  the  land  and 

1  F.  Moore,  "  Songs  and  Ballads,"  etc.,  320-321.         *  Ibid.  335. 


HALE  IN   THE  BUSH.  183 

one  with  the  flavor  of  the  sea,  namely,  "  The  Wyoming 
Massacre,"  written  by  Uriah  Terry,1  and  "  Bold  Haw- 
thorne, or,  The  Cruise  of  the  '  Fair  American  '  "  ":  both  of 
them  crude  enough  in  form,  but  both  breathing  the  very 
breath  of  the  life  of  those  strong  and  passionate  days. 

IX. 

Four  years  before  the  tragical  adventure  of  Andr£  had 
drawn  toward  him  the  tenderness  of  millions  of  hearts  on 
both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  a  fate  not  unlike  his,  though 
without  its  immediate  compensations  in  sympathy  and 
glory,  had  befallen  Nathan  Hale,  a  most  gallant  and  ac- 
complished young  American,  of  a  character  stronger  and 
more  original,  probably,  than  Andre's,  and  certainly  not 
less  noble.  A  graduate  of  Yale  College  in  1773,  a  school- 
teacher at  New  London,  and  a  candidate  for  the  ministry, 
the  tidings  from  Lexington  and  Concord  had  turned  him 
into  a  soldier;  and  by  the  early  autumn  of  1776,  he  had 
risen  to  be  captain  of  a  company  in  the  "  Connecticut 
Rangers,"  forming  a  part  of  the  army  under  the  immediate 
command  of  Washington  in  the  neighborhood  of  New 
York.  In  response  to  an  earnest  appeal  from  Washington, 
he  consented  to  go  in  disguise  within  the  enemy's  lines 
for  the  purpose  of  procuring  information  greatly  needed  by 
the  commander-in-chief :  in  short,  he  took  upon  himself,  in 
the  name  of  duty  to  his  country,  the  ignominy  and  the 
peril  of  becoming  a  spy.  In  that  service  he  was  caught, 
was  carried  before  General  Howe,  was  hurriedly  tried  and 
condemned,  and  was  hurriedly  executed, — having  been 
refused  by  the  provost-marshal  the  attendance  of  a  chap- 
lain or  the  use  of  a  Bible,  and  having  suffered  the  added 
cruelty  of  seeing  his  letters  of  farewell  to  his  sisters  and  to 
his  betrothed  torn  in  pieces  before  his  face.  The  story  of 
this  young  fellow's  fearless  devotion  and  death,  has  not 

1  Charles  Miner,  "  History  of  Wyoming,"  Appendix. 
*  McCarty's  "  National  Songs,"  ii.  250. 


!g4  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

been  suffered  to  die  or  to  grow  dim  among  us.  Poems  have 
been  written  about  him.1  Statues  have  been  reared  to  him. 
Anniversaries  have  been  kept  in  his  honor.  Moreover,  in 
the  very  year  of  his  self-immolation,  his  fate  was'sung  in  a 
ballad  which  for  poetic  quality — for  weird  pathos,  for  a 
strange  sweet  melody — probably  deserves  to  be  placed  at 
the  head  of  this  entire  class  of  writings  as  produced  during 
the  period  of  the  Revolution. 

Landing  from  his  little  boat  upon  a  lonely  spot  within 
the  enemy's  lines,  .Hale  had  openly  gone  about  in  the  dis- 
guise of  a  Loyalist  school-master;  he  had  visited  the  various 
British  camps  on  Long  Island  and  in  New  York ;  but  hav- 
ing, according  to  one  account,  been  recognized  by  an  un- 
relenting kinsman  who  was  a  real  Loyalist,  he  was  tracked 
and  captured  just  as  he  was  in  the  act  of  making  his  escape 
by  the  way  he  had  come.  It  is  at  this  stage  of  the  story 
that  the  ballad  begins : 

"  The  breezes  went  steadily  through  the  tall  pines, 

A  saying  '  oh  !  hu-ush  ! '  a  saying  '  oh  !  hu-ush  ! ' 
As  stilly  stole  by  a  bold  legion  of  horse, 
For  Hale  in  the  bush,  for  Hale  in  the  bush. 

"  'Keep  still ! '  said  the  thrush  as  she  nestled  her  young, 

In  a  nest  by  the  road,  in  a  nest  by  the  road  ; 
1  For  the  tyrants  are  near,  and  with  them  appear 
What  bodes  us  no  good,  what  bodes  us  no  good.' 

The  brave  captain  heard  it,  and  thought  of  his  home 
In  a  cot  by  the  brook,  in  a  cot  by  the  brook, 

With  mother  and  sister  and  memories  dear 
He  so  gaily  forsook,  he  so  gaily  forsook. 

'  Cooling  shades  of  the  night  were  coming  apace, 
The  tattoo  had  beat,  the  tattoo  had  beat ; 

1  No  other  verse  inspired  by  the  story  of  Nathan  Hale  is,  in  my  opinion,  equal 
to  a  lyric  by  Francis  Miles  Finch,  beginning,— 

"  To  drum-beat,  and  heart-beat, 
A  soldier  marches  by." 


HALE  IN   THE  BUSH. 


I85 


The  noble  one  sprang  from  his  dark  lurking  place, 
To  make  his  retreat,  to  make  his  retreat. 


"  He  warily  trod  on  the  dry  rustling  leaves, 

As  he  passed  through  the  wood,  as  he  passed  through  the 

wood  ; 
And  silently  gained  his  rude  launch  on  the  shore, 

As  she  played  with  the  flood,  as  she  played  with  the  flood. 

"  The  guards  of  the  camp  on  that  dark  dreary  night, 

Had  a  murderous  will,  had  a  murderous  will ; 
They  took  him  and  bore  him  afar  from  the  shore, 
To  a  hut  on  the  hill,  to  a  hut  on  the  hill. 

"  No  mother  was  there,  nor  a  friend  who  could  cheer, 

In  that  little  stone  cell,  in  that  little  stone  cell ; 
But  he  trusted  in  love  from  his  Father  above — 
In  his  heart  all  was  well,  in  his  heart  all  was  well. 

"  An  ominous  owl  with  his  solemn  bass  voice, 

Sat  moaning  hard  by,  sat  moaning  hard  by  : — 
'  The  tyrant's  proud  minions  most  gladly  rejoice, 
For  he  must  soon  die,  for  he  must  soon  die.' 


They  took  him  and  bound  him  and  bore  him  away, 
Down  the  hill's  grassy  side,  down  the  hill's  grassy  side 

*T  was  there  the  base  hirelings,  in  royal  array, 
His  cause  did  deride,  his  cause  did  deride. 

Five  minutes  were  given,  short  moments,  no  more, 

For  him  to  repent,  for  him  to  repent ; 
He  prayed  for  his  mother — he  asked  not  another — 

To  Heaven  he  went,  to  Heaven  he  went. 

1  The  faith  of  a  martyr  the  tragedy  shewed, 

As  he  trod  the  last  stage,  as  he  trod  the  last  stage ; 
And  Britons  will  shudder  at  gallant  Hale's  blood, 
As  his  words  do  presage,  as  his  words  do  presage  : — 


1 86  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  '  Thou  pale  king  of  terrors,  thou  life's  gloomy  foe, 

Go  frighten  the  slave,  go  frighten  the  slave  ; 
Tell  tyrants,  to  you  their  allegiance  they  owe — 
No  fears  for  the  brave,  no  fears  for  the  brave  ! ' " l 

1  F.  Moore,  "  Songs  and  Ballads,"  130-133. 


CHAPTER   XXXII. 

THE   DRAMATIC   LITERATURE   OF  THE   REVOLUTION. 

I. — The  beginnings  of  our  dramatic  literature— These  writings  exceed  all  others 
in  the  frankness  and  realism  with  which  they  exhibit  the  ideas  and  passions 
of  the  period. 

II.— The  tragedy  of'"  Ponteach,  or  the  Savages  of  America,"  by  Major  Robert 
Rogers,  1766 — The  author's  acquaintance  with  the  American  Indians  and 
their  wrongs— Method  of  this  tragedy— Outline  of  its  plot— Estimate  of  the 
work — Fails  in  the  presentation  of  real  savages. 

III.—"  Disenchantment,  or,  The  Force  of  Credulity,"  a  comic  opera,  by 
Andrew  Barton,  1767. 

IV. — A  Loyalist  colloquy,  "  The  Americans  Roused,  in  a  Cure  for  the  Spleen," 
by  Jonathan  Sewall,  1774. 

V. — Two  political  satires  in  dramatic  form  by  Mercy  Otis  Warren — "  The 
Adulateur,  a  Tragedy,  as  it  is  now  Acted  in  Upper  Servia,"  1773 — Ex- 
hibits historical  situations  in  New  England  from  1770  to  1773 — Also,  the 
prevailing  fear  and  hatred  of  Governor  Hutchinson — "  The  Group,"  a 
metrical  play  in  two  Acts,  1775 — Satirizes  the  British  and  Loyalist  leaders 
in  Boston  just  prior  to  the  military  stage  of  the  conflict — Her  two  elaborate 
tragedies  in  blank  verse,  "  The  Sack  of  Rome,"  and  "  The  Ladies  of 
Castile." 

VI. — An  American  Chronicle  Play,  early  in  1776,  on  "  The  Fall  of  British 
Tyranny,  or,  American  Liberty.  Triumphant.  The  First  Campaign.  A 
Tragi-Comedy  of  Five  Acts,  as  lately  planned  at  the  Royal  Theatrum  Pan- 
demonium at  St.  James  " — A  jocular  and  rough  Whig  satire — Its  chief 
personages — Represents  the  British  attack  on  American  rights  as  originating 
in  the  ambition  of  Lord  Bute — Various  scenes  in  the  play — Satire  on  Lord 
Dunmore,  and  the  British  generals  in  America — The  Epilogue  alludes  to 
"  Common  Sense,"  and  avows  its  doctrine. 

VII. — The  evacuation  of  Boston  by  the  British  in  March,  1776,  celebrated  in 
the  American  army  by  a  farce  entitled  "  The  Blockheads,"  in  reply  to 
Burgoyne's  recent  farce  entitled  "  The  Blockade." 

VIII. — "  The  Battle  of  Brooklyn,"  a  Loyalist  farce  just  after  the  American 
defeat  on  Long  Island,  August,  1776 — Satirizes  the  American  leaders  as 
vulgar  adventurers,  and  reflects  some  of  the  coarse  personal  scandals  of  the 
time. 

IX.— The  high  literary  merit  of  two  dramatic  poems  by  Hugh  Henry  Bracken- 
ridge,  both  dealing  with  military  events  in  the  first  year  of  the  war—"  The 
187 


1 88  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Battle  of  Bunker's  Hill " — The  motive  of  this  drama,  in  the  moral  superiority 
of  the  American  cause  compared  with  that  of  the  enemy — Outline  of  the  poem. 

X. — Brackenridge's  second  dramatic  poem,  "  The  Death  of  General  Montgom- 
ery at  the  Siege  of  Quebec  " — Its  purpose,  to  stimulate  American  military 
ardor  by  stimulating  American  hatred  of  the  British — Outline  of  the  poem. 

XI. — Jonathan  Mitchell  Sewall's  "  Epilogue  to  Addison's  Tragedy  of  Cato," 
1778. 

XII. — "  The  Motley  Assembly,  a  Farce,"  1779,  a  satire  on  a  fashionable  clique 
in  Boston  accustomed  to  sneer  at  the  Revolution,  to  denounce  the  French 
allies,  and  to  regret  the  good  old  days  of  the  British  occupation. 

XIII. — "The  Blockheads,  or,  Fortunate  Contractor,  an  Opera,  in  Two  Acts," 
1782,  a  satire  on  the  French  Alliance. 


I. 


TENTATIVE  and  crude  as  are  nearly  all  of  the  writings  in 
dramatic  form,  which  were  produced  among  us  during  the 
period  of  the  Revolution,  they  are  not  unworthy  of  some 
slight  attention,  in  the  first  place,  as  giving  the  genesis  of  a 
department  of  American  literature  now  become  consider- 
able; but,  chiefly,  as  reproducing  the  ideas,  the  passions, 
the  motives,  and  the  moods  of  that  stormful  time  in  our 
history,  with  a  frankness,  a  liveliness,  and  an  unshrinking 
realism  not  approached  by  any  other  species  of  Revolu- 
tionary literature. 

II. 

A  very  early  and  also  a  very  notable  example  of  dramatic 
writing  in  our  literature,  is  "  Ponteach,  or,  The  Savages  of 
America:  a  Tragedy,"  published  in  London  in  1766,  and 
believed  to  have  been  the  work  of  Major  Robert  Rogers,  an 
American  officer  in  the  service  of  England  during  her  last 
great  war  with  the  French  and  Indians  in  America.1 
Written,  therefore,  by  a  man  who  knew  the  Indians  in  some 
other  manner  than  by  hearsay  or  through  a  haze  of  idealiz- 
ing sentiment — whose  acquaintance  with  them,  in  fact,  was 
of  that  intimate  and  authentic  kind  which  is  to  be  had  by 

1  Robert  Rogers  is  also  dealt  with  in  Chapter  vii.  of  the  present  work. 


PON  TEACH.  189 

living  among  them  and  fighting  with  them  and  of  course 
occasionally  killing  them — this  drama  nevertheless  exhibits 
the  red  men  of  the  American  forests  as,  upon  the  whole, 
more  courteous  and  more  generous,  as  honester,  as  nobler, 
than  the  white  men  who,  in  the  capacity  of  traders,  hunters, 
or  warriors,  had  invaded  those  forests  in  order  to  transact 
business  with  them.  According  to  Major  Rogers, — veteran 
bush-whacker,  forest-ranger,  and  skull-cracker  to  his  ma- 
jesty among  the  American  Indians, — it  was  they  who,  in 
all  communications  with  the  white  men  were  usually  lied 
to  and  insulted,  in  all  bargains  usually  cheated,  in  the 
beginning  of  all  quarrels  usually  the  party  suffering  injury. 

The  tragedy  of  "  Ponteach  "  is  built  out  into  Five  Acts, 
after  the  conventional  pattern  for  structures  of  this  kind ; 
it  is,  also,  in  blank  verse,  with  occasional  accesses  of  rhyme. 
Its  tragic  culmination  springs  from  two  sets  of  enormities — 
on  the  one  hand,  those  of  the  English  against  the  Indians, 
on  the  other,  those  of  the  Indians  against  one  another; 
and  it  is  reached  along  two  lines  of  retributive  fulfillment, 
often  entangled  together,  yet  always  easily  discriminated. 

The  First  Act  brings  forward  the  first  set  of  crimes — 
those  of  rapacity,  treachery,  and  cruelty  practised  upon 
Indians  by  white  men.  Thus,  in  the  opening  Scene,  two 
traders  commune  together  over  their  plans  for  sundry  large 
and  profitable  frauds  upon  their  unsophisticated  customers 
— exulting  in  all  this  as  one  might  exult  in  something  alto- 
gether laudable.  In  the  Second  Scene,  a  hunter  named 
Honeyman,  proposes  to  another  hunter,  named  Osbourn, 
the  jolly  plan  of  enriching  themselves  without  much  trouble, 
by  shooting  down  such  straggling  Indians  as  they  might 
chance  to  fall  in  with — especially  if  found  to  be  carrying 
furs  to  market.  Honeyman 's  proposal  leads  to  the  follow- 
ing colloquy: 

"  Osbourn.     Trust  me  for  that — I  '11  join  with  all  my  heart  ; 
Nor  with  a  nicer  aim  or  steadier  hand 
Would  shoot  a  tiger  than  I  would  an  Indian. 


I  gO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

There  is  a  couple  ! — stalking  now  this  way, 
With  lusty  packs  !     Heaven  favor  our  design  ! 

Honeyman.     Silence  !  conceal  yourself,  and  mind  your  eye ! 
Osbourn.     Are  you  well  charged  ? 
Honeyman.     I  am.     Take  you  the  nearest, 
And  mind  to  fire  exactly  when  I  do. 

Osbourn.     A  charming  chance  ! 

Honeyman.     Hush  !  let  them  still  come  nearer." 

As  soon  as  these  Indians,  unconscious  of  danger,  have  come 
somewhat  nearer,  the  hunters  shoot;  then  Honeyman  cries 
out — 

"  They  're  down,  old  boy,  a  brace  of  noble  bucks  !  " — 

whereupon  these  two  Christian  gentlemen  rush  forward  and 
strip  their  pagan  victims  of  the  rich  load  of  furs  they  had 
with  them.1 

In  the  Third  Scene,  two  officers  of  the  English  army 
wantonly  insult  the  great  Ottawa  chieftain,  Ponteach ;  and 
to  his  face  they  tell  him  of  their  expectation  soon  to  have 
the  pleasure  of  slaughtering  his  people,  and  of  laying  the 
fire-brand  to  their  wigwams  and  their  corn-fields. 

In  the  Fourth  Scene,  we  are  permitted  to  witness  a  con- 
ference between  three  provincial  governors,  who  arrive  at 
the  friendly  agreement  to  rob  the  Indians  of  the  money 
and  other  gifts  which  the  king  had  sent  out  for  them,  and  at 
the  same  time,  in  order  to  shew  their  impartiality,  to  rob  the 
king,  also,  of  the  presents  which  Ponteach  had  entrusted 
to  these  noble  governors  for  his  royal  brother  in  England. 

This  closes  the  First  Act.  In  the  Second  Act,  the  Indian 
portion  of  the  plot  has  its  beginning, — in  the  perception  by 
the  Indians  that  they  must  have  war  with  the  English ;  in 
the  plans  of  Ponteach  for  conducting  such  war;  in  the  fatal 
rivalry,  both  in  love  and  in  ambition,  between  his  two  sons, 
Chekitan  and  Philip. 

"  Ponteach,  or  The  Savages  of  America,"  9-10. 


PON  TEACH.  I9I 

From  these  several  causes,  then,  issue  the  events  which 
follow  in  the  tragedy,  wherein  we  have  an  abundance 
of  intrigue,  violence,  hate,  love,  lust,  superstition,  oratory, 
ceremony,  state-craft,  torture,  assassination,  suicide.  At 
last,  when  so  many  of  those  whom  he  loved  or  cared  for  are 
weltering  in  their  blood,  and  disasters  overwhelm  him  on 
every  hand,  the  hero  of  the  tragedy  stands  out  alone  in  all 
the  grandeur  of  a  great  soul  unconquered  by  misfortune, 
determined  still  to  show  to  the  gods  an  unbending  purpose 
and  a  courage  worthy  even  of  themselves. 

While  the  details  of  this  plot  are  almost  entirely  without 
historical  basis,  the  piece  as  a  whole  has  a  certain  authen- 
ticity in  its  presentation  of  the  genius  and  the  daring  of  its 
celebrated  hero,  as  well  as  of  the  wrongs  inflicted  on  him 
and  his  people  by  the  superior  race  then  incontinently  help- 
ing itself  to  their  country.  "  The  style  of  the  drama  is," 
in  the  opinion  of  Francis  Parkman,  "  superior  to  the  plot; 
and  the  writer  displays  at  times  no  small  insight  into  the 
workings  of  human  nature."1  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
hard  to  understand  how  a  composition  in  which  a  man  like 
Major  Robert  Rogers  had  a  considerable  share,  could  have 
escaped  so  perfectly  as  this  drama  has  done,  almost  every 
note  of  the  true  Indian  manner  in  thought  or  expression. 
In  fact,  nearly  all  the  Indians  to  be  met  with  in  this  play 
are  rather  cultivated  persons.  Even  the  filth  and  the  pro- 
fanity, which  Parkman  a  complains  of  as  being  rather  too 
pervasive  of  the  talk  of  the  white  men  whom  we  have  here 
to  listen  to,  are  probably  much  truer  to  the  life  of  which 
this  drama  professes  to  be  a  representation,  than  are  those 
refinements  of  sentiment,  those  elaborations  of  conventional 
phrase,  which  the  play  puts  into  the  mouths  of  such  young 
savages  as  Chekitan,  Torax,  and  Monelia.  Indeed,  of  all 
the  American  Indians  thus  set  upon  the  stage  for  us  to 
look  at  and  listen  to,  it  must  be  said  that  if  they  are  savages 
— as  the  title  of  this  drama  declares  them  to  be — they  are 
extremely  artificial  savages.  As  a  professed  delineation  of 

1  "  The  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,"  ii.,  321.          8  Ibid.  332. 


192  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

the  life  and  thought  and  speech  of  Ottawas  and  Mohawks, 
the  tragedy  of  "  Ponteach  "  may  be  original — it  can  hardly 
claim  to  be  aboriginal.1 


III. 


Sometime  in  the  year  1767, — during  that  lull  in  political 
excitement  which  intervened  between  the  repeal  of  the 
Stamp  Act  and  the  subsequent  return  of  parliament  to  its 
policy  of  colonial  taxation, — there  was  published  in  New 
York  a  play  which  is  at  least  notable  for  its  exemption  from 
all  the  perplexities  incident  to  affairs  of  state,  being  simply 
a  frolicsome  satire  on  a  certain  phase  of  character  then  too 
prominent  in  this  part  of  the  world,  to  wit,  the  greed 
and  the  credulity  which  bewitched  so  many  men,  and 
tempted  them  to  spend  life  and  fortune  and  hope  itself  in 
digging  for  treasures  supposed  to  have  been  hidden  in  the 
earth  by  valiant  pirates  and  other  thrifty  accumulators  in  a 
former  time.  This  play  bears  the  title  of  "  Disenchant- 
ment ;  or,  The  Force  of  Credulity.  A  New  American 
Comic  Opera,  of  Three  Acts.  By  Andrew  Barton,  Es- 
quire";' and  while  the  text  is  not  at  all  brilliant,  the 
drollery  of  some  of  the  situations  must  have  given  to  it  no 
little  effectiveness.3 

1  In  "  The  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,"  i.,  164  note,'Parkman  says  of  this  tragedy 
of  "  Ponteach"  :  "  It  is  very  rare  ;  and  besides  the  copy  in  my  possession,  I 
know  of  but  one  other,  which  may  be  found  in  the  library  of  the  British 
Museum."  As  some  indication  of  the  bibliographical  treasures  now  accumulated 
in  the  public  and  private  libraries  of  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  and  of  the 
generous  courtesy  with  which  those"  treasures  are  made  available  to  students,  I 
may  state  that  the  only  two  copies  of  "  Ponteach  "  which,  after  considerable 
enquiry,  I  have  ever  been  able  to  see,  are  both  in  that  city  ;  one  of  them  be- 
longing to  Mr.  John  Nicholas  Brown,  the  other  to  the  library  of  Brown 
University. 

*  Perhaps  an  assumed  name  for  Col.  Thomas  Forrest  of  Germantown.  Manu- 
script note  on  title-page  of  the  old  copy  in  Library  Company  of  Philadelphia. 

3  Indeed,  its  personal  allusions  were  so  effective  that  "  Douglas's  Company," 
playing  in  Philadelphia  in  April,  1767,  withdrew  it  after  having  put  it  in 
rehearsal.  P.  L.  Ford,  "  Beginnings  of  Am.  Dram.  Lit.,"  13-14. 


MERCY    WARREN.  193 

IV. 

One  of  the  earliest  and  certainly  one  of  the  crudest 
experiments  in  the  dfrection  of  dramatic  writing,  during 
this  period,  is  a  colloquy,  published  probably  in  the  autumn 
of  1774,  and  entitled  "  The  Americans  Roused,  in  a  Cure 
for  the  Spleen.  Or,  Amusement  for  a  Winter's  Evening : 
Being  the  Substance  of  a  Conversation  on  the  Times,  over 
a  Friendly  Tankard  and  Pipe."  This  production,  which 
was  probably  written  by  Jonathan  Sewall  of  Massachusetts, 
won  for  itself  considerable  notoriety,  not  indeed  for  its  wit 
or  its  literary  charm,  but  for  the  unshrinking  candor  with 
which,  under  the  shield  of  a  dramatic  irresponsibility,  its 
author  denounced  the  work  of  the  first  Continental  Con- 
gress, and  the  entire  movement  in  opposition  to  the  British 
ministry. 

V. 

Two  notable  efforts  at  political  satire  in  dramatic  form 
were  made  in  the  years  just  preceding  the  outbreak  of  mili- 
tary violence,  by  "  Madam  Mercy  Warren,  the  historical, 
philosophical,  poetical,  and  satirical  consort  of  . 
General  James  Warren  of  Plymouth."  '  Of  these  once 
celebrated  performances,  the  first  is  "  The  Adulateur:  a 
Tragedy,  as  it  is  now  Acted  in  Upper  Servia,"  wherein  the 
streets,  buildings  and  people  of  that  far-off  country  do 
duty  for  the  streets,  buildings,  and  people  of  Boston ; 
wherein  Brutus,  Cassius,  Marcus,  Portius  and  other  patri- 
otic and  grandiloquent  conspirators  stand  for  James  Otis, 
John  Adams,  Samuel  Adams,  Hancock,  Warren  and  the 
rest ;  wherein  Bagshot,  as  Aga  of  the  Janizaries,  enacts  the 
bloodthirsty  part  then  popularly  attributed  to  Captain 
Preston  of  His  Majesty's  Twenty-Ninth  Regiment  of  In- 
fantry; wherein  Rapatio,  as  Governor  of  Upper  Servia, 
embodies  the  boundless  and  unscrupulous  ambition,  the 

'John  Adams,  "Works,"  x.  99. 


I94  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

treachery,  the  ingenuity,  the  lust  for  blood,  then  supposed 
to  characterize  Thomas  Hutchinson,  His  Majesty's  Gov- 
ernor of  Massachusetts  Bay.  The  play  is  duly  elaborated 
into  Five  Acts,  chiefly  in  unrhymed'  pentameter  verse.  It 
exhibits  a  series  of  historical  situations  in  New  England, 
ranging  from  some  imaginary  moment  prior  to  the  Boston 
massacre  in  1770,  down  to  some  time  in  1773,  when  the 
very  air  is  hot  with  conspiracy,  revolution,  and  readiness 
for  deeds  of  violence,  and  when  the  habit  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary chiefs  seems  to  have  been  to  talk  of  American  lib- 
erty in  the  grandiose  fashion  of  Greek  and  Roman  patriots. 
Another  most  veracious  note  of  this  play,  is  the  profound 
suspicion  of  Governor  Thomas  Hutchinson  which  it  every- 
where intimates — the  fear  of  him,  the  hate  of  him — as  the 
colossal  marplot  and  head-devil  of  British  tyranny  in 
America.  For  example,  one  of  Hutchinson's  creatures, 
named  Gripeall,  boasts  to  the  governor  how  he  means  so  to 
use  his  official  authority  over  the  Upper  Servians  as  to 

.     .     .     "cramp  their  trade  till  pale-eyed  Poverty 
Haunts  all  their  streets  and  frowns  destruction  on, 
While  many  a  poor  man,  leaning  on  his  staff, 
Beholds  a  numerous  famished  offspring  round  him, 
Who  weep  for  bread.     Gods,  how  his  bosom  heaves  ! 
Ghastly  he  rolls  an  aching  eye  upon  them, 
Then  blasts  my  name,  and  with  a  groan  expires." 

In  response  to  this  jubilant  portrayal  of  public  misery  to  be 
wrought  by  his  own  servant  upon  people  whose  only  crime 
is  insubmission  to  his  despotism,  the  governor  exclaims — 

"  What  throbs  of  joy  !     Nero,  I  tower  above  thee  !  "  ' 

Mercy  Warren's  second  and  more  effective  experiment 
in  political  satire  is  her  metrical  play,  called  "  The  Group," 
published  early  in  the  year  1775,  apparently  before  the  day 
of  Lexington  and  Concord.  By  that  time,  Hutchinson, 

"  The  Adulateur,"  25. 


MERCY  WARREN. 


'95 


the  most  dreaded  of  the  Tory  leaders,  was  in  England, 
whither  he  had  been  summoned  to  make  personal  report  to 
the  king;  but  the  malign  character  ascribed  to  him  by  his 
enemies  is  here  well  sustained  by  his  brother,  Foster  Hutch- 
inson,  who  appears  in  "  The  Group  "  under  the  name  of 
Judge  Meagre;  and  along  with  him  are  a  dozen  or  more 
of  the  New  England  chiefs  of  the  Loyalist  party, — Peter 
Oliver  as  Lord  Chief  Justice  Hazlerod,  Timothy  Ruggles 
as  Brigadier  Hateall,  the  foppish  Daniel  Leonard  as  Beau 
Trumps,  Harrison  Gray  as  Scriblerius  Fribble,  Sir  William 
Pepperell  as  Sir  Sparrow  Spendall,  Nathaniel  Ray  Thomas 
as  Simple  Sapling,  Secretary  Thomas  Flucker  as  Dupe,1 
and  so  on.  Moreover,  these  Tory  chiefs,  thus  forming  the 
"dramatis  personae  "  of  the.  play,  are  "attended  by  a 
swarm  of  court  sycophants,  hungry  harpies,  and  unprinci- 
pled danglers  collected  from  the  neighboring  villages, 
hovering  over  the  stage  in  the  shape  of  locusts,  led  by 
Massachusettensis  in  the  form  of  a  basilisk ;  the  rear  brought 
up  by  Proteus,  bearing  a  torch  in  one  hand  and  a  powder 
flask  in  the  other;  the  whole  supported  by  a  mighty  army 
and  navy  from  Blunderland,  for  the  laudable  purpose  of 
enslaving  its  best  friends." 

The  play  has  but  two  Acts.  The  scene  of  the  first  is  laid 
in  "  a  little  back  parlor,"  with  "  guards  standing  at  the 
door  "  3;  while  in  the  second  Act  "  the  scene  changes  to  a 
large  dining  room.  The  table  furnished  with  bowls,  bot- 
tles, glasses,  and  cards.  The  group  appear  sitting  round  in 
a  restless  attitude.  In  one  corner  of  the  room  is  discovered 
a  small  cabinet  of  books  for  the  use  of  the  studious  and 
contemplative,  containing  Hobbes's  Leviathan,  Sipthrop's 
Sermons,4  Hutchinson's  History,  Fable  of  the  Bees,  Phila- 

1  I  here  follow  the  identification  of  characters  as  given  by  Norton  Quincy. 
J.  Adams,  "  Works,"  x.  gg  note.  This  assignment  seems  to  have  been  satisfac- 
tory to  Jared  Sparks,  who  inserted  it  in  his  own  copy  of  "  The  Group,"  now  in 
the  library  of  Cornell  University.  In  one  of  the  copies  of  the  play  belong- 
ing to  the  Boston  Athenaeum,  I  observed  an  assignment  of  characters  somewhat 
different  from  the  above.  *  "  The  Group,"  2. 

3  Ibid.  3.         4  A  gibe  at  the  Reverend  East  Apthorp. 


196  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

lethes  on  Philanthrop  with  an  Appendix  by  Massachu- 
settensis,  Hoyle  on  Whist,  Lives  of  the  Stuarts,  Statutes  of 
Henry  the  Eighth  and  William  the  Conqueror,  Wedder- 
burn's  Speeches,  and  Acts  of  Parliament  for  1774." 

Within  those  two  rooms,  accordingly,  the  members  of 
this  Tory  club  have  ample  opportunity  to  exhibit,  either 
for  the  derision  or  for  the  horror  of  their  Whig  fellow- 
countrymen,  their  half-hearted  ambitions,  their  qualms  of 
conscience,  their  guilty  surmises  of  failure,  their  plots, 
disagreements,  jealousies,  fears,  hopes,  hatreds,  and  their 
sullen  contempt  for  the  rights  and  the  sufferings  of  their 
fellow-countrymen.  In  the  course  of  the  play,  there  enter 
the  Tory  members  of  the  colonial  council  who,  "  with 
trembling  servile  gestures,"  present  to  Sylla — that  is,  to 
General  Gage — several  petitions  from  their  "  Under-Tools 
in  the  distant  counties,  begging  each  a  guard  of  myrmidons 
to  protect  them  from  the  armed  multitudes  .  .  .  ap- 
proaching to  take  speedy  vengeance  "  upon  them;  whereat 
Sylla,  walking  up  and  down  the  room  "  in  great  perplex- 
ity," discusses  the  whole  miserable  business  with  Hateall, 
Dupe,  Meagre,  Simple  Sapling  and  others,  confessing 
frankly  his  own  sense  of  the  nobility  and  strength  of  the 
cause  against  which  he  is  ordered  to  make  war,  and  his  own 
deep  reluctance  to  do  anything  to  precipitate  the  bloody 
conflict  which  seems  so  near : 

'*  shall  I  rashly  draw  my  guilty  sword, 
And  dip  its  hungry  hilt  in  the  rich  blood 
Of  the  best  subjects  that  a  Brunswick  boasts, 
And  for  no  cause,  but  that  they  nobly  scorn 
To  wear  the  fetters  of  his  venal  slaves  !  "  * 

As  Sylla  then  goes  from  the  stage  with  such  words  of 
misgiving  upon  his  lips,  Hazlerod  exclaims  "  in  great  agi- 
tation,"— 

"  This  balancing  of  passions  ne'er  will  do, 
And  by  the  scale  which  virtue  holds  to  reason, 

1  "The  Group,"  7.         JIbid.  13-17. 


MERCY    WARREN.  197 

Weighing  the  business  ere  he  executes, — 
Doubting,  deliberating,  half  resolved 
To  be  the  savior  of  a  virtuous  state, — 
Instead  of  guarding  refugees  and  knaves, 
The  buzzing  reptiles  that  crawl  about  his  court, 
And  lick  his  hand  for  some  delicious  crumb. 

I'  11  hasten  after,  and  stir  up  his  soul 
To  dire  revenge  and  bloody  resolutions, 
Or  the  whole  fabric  falls  on  which  we  hang, 
And  down  the  pit  of  infamy  we  plunge, 
Without  the  spoils  we  long  have  hoped  to  reap."1 

Accordingly,  as  Hazlerod  "  crosses  the  stage  hastily  and 
goes  after  Sylla, "  Dupe  and  Meagre  are  left  standing  "  at 
the  further  part  of  the  stage  ' ' ;  and  in  the  conversation 
which  then  takes  place  between  them  and  which  ends  the 
play,  Meagre  proves  by  his  honest  avowal  of  the  very  high- 
est sort  of  Toryism  how  worthy  he  is,  at  least  according  to 
the  conception  of  the  satirist,  to  be  the  brother  of  the 
greatest  of  Tories,  Governor  Hutchinson: 

"  Let  not  thy  soft  timidity  of  heart 
Urge  thee  to  terms,  till  the  last  stake  is  thrown. 
'T  is  not  my  temper  ever  to  forgive — 
When  once  resentment 's  kindled  in  my  breast. 
I  hated  Brutus3  for  his  noble  stand 
Against  the  oppressors  of  his  injured  country. 
I  hate  the  leaders  of  these  restless  factions 
For  all  their  generous  efforts  to  be  free. 
I  curse  the  senate  which  defeats  our  bribes. 

I  hate  the  people  who,  no  longer  gulled, 

See  through  the  schemes  of  our  aspiring  clan. 

1  "The  Group,"  17-18. 

8  The  reference  is  probably  to  James  Otis,  brother  of  the  satirist,  then  dis- 
qualified for  further  service  on  account  of  the  brutal  beating,  and  especially  the 
sword-cut  upon  the  head,  which  he  received  in  1769  from  sundry  revenue  offi- 
cers and  others  in  a  tavern. 


198  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

And  from  the  rancor  of  my  venomed  mind, 

1  look  askance  on  all  the  human  race  ; 

And  if  they  're  not  to  be  appalled  by  fear, 

I  wish  the  earth  might  drink  that  vital  stream 

That  warms  the  heart  and  feeds  the  manly  glow — 

The  love  inherent,  planted  in  the  breast, 

To  equal  liberty  conferred  on  man 

By  Him  who  formed  the  peasant  and  the  King. 

Could  we  erase  these  notions  from  their  minds, 

We  'd  smoothly  glide  on  midst  a  race  of  slaves,1 
Nor  heave  one  sigh — though  all  the  human  race 
Were  plunged  in  darkness,  slavery,  and  vice." 

Besides  these  two  dramatic  poems  having  direct  relation 
to  the  controversies  of  the  Revolution,3  Mercy  Warren 
wrote,  "  as  the  amusement  of  solitude,  at  a  period  when 
every  active  member  of  society  was  engaged,  either  in  the 
field  or  the  cabinet,  to  resist  the  strong  hand  of  foreign 
domination,"3  two  carefully  wrought  historical  plays,  "  The 
Sack  of  Rome,"  and  "  The  Ladies  of  Castile,"  which, 
however,  were  not  published  till  the  year  1790. 


VI. 

Early  in  the  year  1776 — probably  in  the  month  of  March  * 
— there  was  published  in  Philadelphia  a  drama  bearing  this 
rather  emotional  title,—"  The  Fall  of  British  Tyranny;  or, 
American  Liberty  Triumphant.  The  First  Campaign.  A 
Tragi-Comedy  of  Five  Acts,  as  lately  planned  at  the  Royal 
Theatrum  Pandemonium  at  St.  James'."  This  produc- 
tion may  be  roughly  described  as  an  American  Chronicle 

"  The  Group,"  20-21. 

^  The  authorship  of  a  farce  called  "  The  Blockheads,"  mentioned  later  in  this 
chapter,  is  attributed  to  her. 

3  Warren,  "  Poems,  Dramatic  and  Miscellaneous,"  Dedication,  p.  iii. 

4  From  internal  evidence,  it  must  be  inferred  that  the  writing  of  the  play  was 
finished  after  the  publication  of  "  Common  Sense"  in  January,  1775,  and  before 


FALL   OF  BRITISH   TYRANNY.  199 

Play.  Being  in  no  respect  embarrassed  by  attention  to  the 
dramatic  unities,  it  shifts  the  scene  with  a  truly  sovereign 
facility  from  one  side  of  the  Atlantic  to  the  other, — from 
England  to'  Massachusetts,  from  Massachusetts  to  Virginia, 
from  Virginia  to  Massachusetts,  from  Massachusetts  to  Can- 
ada, and  from  Canada  back  again  to  Massachusetts.  As  to 
the  period  of  the  action,  it  may  be  said  to  begin  at  that 
moment — quite  impossible  to  ascertain — when  in  the  ambi- 
tious and  plotting  soul  of  Lord  Bute,  was  born,  as  is  here 
assumed,  the  purpose  to  create  a  disastrous  American  crisis 
in  order  to  precipitate  a  still  more  disastrous  English  crisis, 
amid  the  commotions  of  which  George  the  Third  should  be 
driven  to  an  abdication  of  the  throne, — whereupon  Bute's 
own  kinsmen,  the  Stuarts,  should  come  back  and  enjoy 
their  own  again.  From  that  indefinable  point  of  beginning, 
the  action  sweeps  on  and  on,  year  after  year,  until  it  culmi- 
nates in  the  first  campaign  of  actual  war  in1  America,  includ- 
ing the  incidents  at  Lexington  and  Concord,  the  battle  of 
Bunker  Hill,  Lord  Dunmore's  negro-stealing  and  house- 
burning  raids  along  the  Virginia  coast,  the  American  inva- 
sion of  Canada,  and  especially  the  spectacle, — astonishing 
to  gods  and  men — of  a  rabble  of  half-armed  peasants  shutting 
up  the  invincible  army  of  Britain  within  the  city  of  Boston, 
where  they  are  saved  from  starvation  only  by  great  displays 
of  valor  on  their  part  in  the  stealing  of  chickens,  sheep, 
and  pigs  from  the  islands  and  shores  of  the  harbor.  The 
action  comes  to  an  end  just  before  the  British  evacuation  of 
Boston, — which  occurred  on  the  i/th  of  March,  1776. 

Of  course,  for  this  huge  and  very  Gothic  drama,  no  claim 
of  artistic  merit  need  be  supposed.  Nevertheless,  as  a  pre- 
sentation of  the  spirit  and  method  of  Revolutionary  thought 
when  first  confronted  with  the  question  of  Independence, 

the  news  had  reached  Philadelphia  of  the  evacuation  of  Boston,  March  17,  1776. 
Sabin  confidently  attributes  this  play  to  John  Leacock.  ("Dictionary,"  etc., 
sub  nom.)  Hildeburn  is  more  cautious,  being  content  to  remark  that  it  is 
"  said  to  have  been  written  by  Mr.  Laycock  of  Philadelphia."  ("  Issues  of  the 
Press,"  etc.,  ii.  249.) 


20O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  The  Fall  of  British  Tyranny  "  is  of  the  highest  interest 
and  value.  It  is  simply  a  tremendous  Whig  satire,  in  dra- 
matic form,  first,  on  the  one  deep,  treasonable  motive 
attributed  to  the  Tory  conspirators  who,  in  England  and 
America,  had  forced  the  two  countries  into  so  monstrous  a 
conflict ;  and,  secondly,  on  the  imbecility,  the  cowardice, 
and  the  grotesque  failure  thus  far  displayed  by  the  mili- 
tary agents  of  these  Tory  conspirators  in  the  execution  of 
their  horrid  plot. 

Even  in  the  long  list  of  the  "  dramatis  personae  "  of  the 
play,  one  may  catch  something  of  its  rough  humor,  and 
especially  of  its  jocular  indifference  to  the  majesty  of  all 
great  names  in  England  below  that  of  the  king, — the  latter 
being  here  spared  contumelious  mention  except  as  a  victim 
of  the  political  profligacy  of  his  own  chief  servants : 

Lord  Paramount,  Mr.  Bute. 

Lord  Mocklaw,  Mr.  Mansfield. 

Lord  Hypocrite,  Mr.  Dartmouth. 

Lord  Poltroon,  Mr.  Sandwich. 

Lord  Catspaw,  Mr.  North. 

Lord  Wisdom,  Mr.  Chatham. 

Lord  Religion,  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph. 

Lord  Justice,  Mr.  Camden. 

Lord  Patriot,  Mr.  Wilkes. 

Bold  Irishman,  Mr.  Burke. 

Judas,  Mr.  Hutchinson. 

Charlie,  Mr.  Jenkinson. 

Brazen,  Mr.  Wedderburn. 

Colonel,  Mr.  Barre". 

Lord  Boston,  Mr.  Gage. 

Admiral  Tombstone,  Mr.  Graves. 

Elbow  Room,  Mr.  Howe. 

Mr.  Caper,  Mr.  Burgoyne. 

Lord  Kidnapper,  Mr.  Dunmore. 

Besides  the  foregoing  persons,  are  Washington,  Charles 
Lee,  Putnam,  Earl  Percy,  and  several  other  characters, 
who  appear  in  the  play  under  their  own  names. 


FALL   OF  BRITISH   TYRANNY.  2OI 

In  developing  the  vast  series  of  actions  participated  in  by 
this  army  of  dramatic  personages,  the  play  opens  with  a 
scene  intended  to  fasten  the  attention  powerfully  upon  the 
alleged  origin  of  the  American  Revolution,  namely,  in  the 
Jacobite  designs,  in  the  perfidy  and  subtlety,  of  Lord  Bute. 
It  is  a  room  in  the  palace  of  St.  James,  where  he — Lord 
Paramount,  solus — is  strutting  about  in  an  ecstacy  of  self- 
admiration,  discoursing  betimes  upon  his  own  greatness : — 
"  Many  long  years  have  rolled  delightfully  on,  whilst  I 
have  been  basking  in  the  sunshine  of  grandeur  and  power, 
— whilst  I  have  imperceptibly,  though  not  unsuspected, 
guided  the  chariot  of  state,  and  greased  with  the  nation's 
gold  the  imperial  wheels.  'T  is  I  that  move  the  mighty 
engine  of  royalty;  and  with  the  tincture  of  my  somniferous 
opiate,  or,  in  the  language  of  a  courtier,  by  the  virtue  of 
my  secret  influence,  I  have  lulled  the  axletree  to  sleep,  and 
brought  on  a  pleasing  insensibility.  Let  their  champion, 
Lord  Wisdom,  groan ;  he  is  now  become  feeble  and  impor 
tent — a  mere  cripple  in  politics.  Their  Lord  Patriot's 
squint  has  lost  its  basilisk  effect.  And  the  Bold  Irishman 
may  bellow  the  Keenew  till  he  is  hoarse, — he  's  no  more, 
when  compared  to  me,  than  an  Irish  salmon  to  a  Scotch 
herring.  I  care  not  a  bawbee  for  them  all.  I  '11  reign 
Britain — I  '11  be  king  of  their  councils,  and  chief  among  the 
princes.  Oh  Ambition !  thou  darling  of  my  soul,  stop  not 
till  I  rise  superior  to  all  superlative, — till  I  mount  triumph- 
antly the  pinnacle  of  glory, — or  at  least  open  the  way  for 
one  of  my  own  family  and  name  to  enter  without  oppo- 
sition." ' 

This  soliloquy  is  broken  by  the  entrance  of  the  astute 
and  unscrupulous  Lord  Mocklaw,  whom  Paramount  had 
summoned  as  his  confidential  adviser,  and  to  whom  he  now 
discloses  the  outline  of  his  scheme.  At  the  first  glance, 
Mocklaw  sees  great  difficulties  in  the  way: — "You  have 
need,  my  lord,  of  all  your  wisdom,  fortitude  and  power, 
when  you  consider  with  whom  you  have  to  contend.  Let 
1  "  The  Fall,"  etc.,  1-2. 


2Q2  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

me  see!  Lord  Wisdom,  Lord  Religion,  Lord  Justice,  Lord 
Patriot,  the  Bold  Irishman,  and  so  forth,  and  so  forth,  and 
so  forth,  and  the  wisdom  of  the  United  Colonies  of  America 
in  Congress  to  cope  with.  As  individuals,  they  are  trifling ; 
but  in  league  combined,  may  become  potent  enemies." 
To  this  Paramount  replies:  "  Granted,  but  are  you  so  little 
of  a  lawyer  as  not  to  know  the  virtue  of  a  certain  specific 
I  'm  possessed  of,  that  will  accomplish  anything,  even  to 
performing  miracles  ?  Don't  you  know,  there  's  such  sweet 
music  in  the  shaking  of  the  Treasury  keys,  that  they  will 
instantly  lock  the  most  babbling  patriot's  tongue,  transform 
a  Tory  into  a  Whig,  and  a  Whig  into  a  Tory,  make  a  super- 
annuated old  miser  dance,  and  an  old  cynic  philosopher 
smile  ?  How  many  thousand  times  has  your  tongue  danced 
at  Westminster  Hall  to  the  sound  of  such  music  ?  " 

Thus  the  interview  continues,  until  Lord  Paramount 
brings  it  to  a  close  by  whispering  to  his  confidant  the  lead- 
ing details  of  his  plan: — "  Now,  then,  for  a  line  of  politics. 
I  propose  to  begin,  first,  by  taxing  America  as  a  blind. 
That  will  create  an  eternal  animosity  between  us,  and  by 
sending  over  continually  ships  and  troops,  this  will  of 
course  produce  a  civil  war,  weaken  Britain  by  leaving  her 
\oasts  defenceless,  and  impoverish  America, — so  that  we 
need  not  fear  anything  from  that  quarter.  Then,  the 
united  fleets  of  France  and  Spain,  with  troops,  to  appear  in 
the  channel  and  make  a  descent,  while  my  kinsman,  with 
thirty  thousand  men,  lands  in  Scotland,  marches  to  Lon- 
don, and  joins  the  others.  What,  then,  can  prevent  the 
scheme  from  having  the  wished-for  effect  ?  This  is  the 
main  point, — which  keep  to  yourself."  ' 

In  the  subsequent  Scenes  of  the  First  Act,  we  are  per- 
mitted to  watch  the  several  moves  of  the  game  which  Bute 
has  undertaken  to  play,  and  which  reaches  an  important 
stage  in  the  closing  Scene.  Here  we  are  witnesses  of  a 
meeting  of  the  privy  council,  at  which  Judas  of  Massachu- 
setts  is  present  by  special  invitation.  With  much  apparent 
1  "  The  Fall,"  etc.,  4-5. 


AN  AMERICAN  CHRONICLE   PLA  Y.  203 

indignation,  Lord  Paramount  lays  before  the  Council  the 
series  of  seditious  acts  perpetrated  by  the  Americans  in 
opposition  to  royal  authority,  and  demands  that  vigorous 
measures  be  taken  to  put  down  such  insolent  proceedings, 
— a  proposition  which  is  loudly  echoed,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  by  his  creatures — Mocklaw,  Brazen,  and  Poltroon. 

My  advice,"  says  the  latter,  "  is  that  Lord  Boston  and 
Admiral  Tombstone /be  immediately  sent  to  Boston,  with 
two  or  three  regiments, — though  one  would  be  more  than 
sufficient, — and  a  few  ships  to  shut  up  their  ports.  Disan- 
nul their  charters,  stop  their  trade;  and  the  pusilanimous 
beggars, — those  rascals,  whose  predominant  passion  is  fear, 
— would  immediately  give  up,  on  the  first  landing  of  the 
regulars,  and  fly  before  'em  like  a  hare  before  the  hounds. 
That  this  would  be  the  case,  I  pawn  my  honorxto  your 
Lordships;  nay,  I  '11  sacrifice  my  life."  '  This  proposition 
is  adopted.  The  troops  and  the  warships  are  ordered  off 
to  America;  and  with  this  ample  and  admirable  preparation 
of  national  disaster,  the  First  Act  ends. 

The  Second  Act  presents,  in  one  Scene,  a  vigorous  debate 
in  the  house  of  lords  on  the  American  question,  with 
speeches  by  Lord  Wisdom,  Lord  Religion,  and  Lord  Justice 
— all  strongly  against  the  harsh  and  harmful  measures  of 
the  ministry;  and,  in  another  Scene,  a  lively  conversation 
on  the  same  subject  between  Lord  Patriot,  the  Bold  Irish- 
man, and  the  Colonel.  The  Third  Act  carries  the  action 
across  the  Atlantic,  where  the  logical  results  of  Lord  Bute's 
policy  begin  to  shew  themselves.  Here  we  have,  in  one 
Scene,  the  city  of  Boston  just  after  the  application  to  it  of 
the  port  bill  in  1774,  and  the  call  of  the  first  Continental 
Congress;  in  another,  a  preacher  making  announcement 
that  their  charter  had  been  taken  away,  themselves  pro- 
claimed rebels,  and  their  property  doomed  to  confiscation ; 
in  another,  the  excitement  and  confusion  in  the  streets  of 
Boston  on  the  arrival  of  Lord  Boston  with  his  troops  and 

1  "The  Fall, "etc.,  12. 


204  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

ships;  in  another,  Lord  Boston  himself,  on  the  iQth  of 
April,  1775,  surrounded  by  his  guards,  and  awaiting  in  great 
complacency  the  victorious  return  of  the  expedition  sent  out 
by  him  toward  Lexington  and  Concord  under  Colonel  Smith 
the  night  before.  "  If  Colonel  Smith  succeeds  in  his  em- 
bassy," says  Lord  Boston,  musingly,  "  and  I  think  there  's 
no  doubt  of  it,  I  shall  have  the  pleasure  this  evening,  I  ex- 
pect, of  having  my  friends  Hancock  and  Adams's  good 
company.  I  '11  make  each  of  them  a  present  of  a  pair  of 
handsome  iron  ruffles,  and  Major  Provost  shall  provide 
a  suitable  entertainment  for  them  in  his  apartment." 
"  Sure,"  says  an  officer  in  reply,  "  they  '11  not  be  so  un- 
polite  as  to  refuse  your  excellency's  kind  invitation. ' '  Lord 
Boston  rejoins  in  his  bland  and  merry  way, — "  Should  they, 
Colonel  Smith  and  Major  Pitcairn  have  my  orders  to  make 
use  of  all  their  rhetoric,  and  the  persuasive  eloquence  of 
British  thunder."1  And  while  the  smiles  which  applaud 
this  witticism  are  still  playing  over  the  faces  of  the  guards, 
in  rushes  a  messenger  in  hot  haste  with  news  that  the  troops 
are  in  full  retreat  before  the  rebels.  A  touch  of  comedy  is 
given  by  the  Scene  in  which  two  shepherds  near  Lexington, 
Dick  and  Roger,  talk  over  in  bucolic  language  the  rout  and 
flight  of  the  regulars;  while  the  pathos  of  all  this  ghastly 
business  transacted  for  the  political  accommodation  of  Lord 
Bute,  comes  out  in  the  last  Scene,  wherein  an  American 
matron  grieves  over  the  loss  of  her  husband,  son  and  brother, 
all  slain  in  Bunker  Hill  fight,  which  is  then  graphically  de- 
scribed by  a  neighbor  who  witnessed  it. 

The  earlier  portion  of  the  Fourth  Act  is  laid  in  Virginia, 
and  exhibits  in  realistic  fashion  the  ravages  of  Lord  Dun- 
more  along  that  coast,— his  alleged  rapacity,  cruelty,  and 
shameless  lust.  After  six  Scenes  devoted  to  Dunmore,  the 
action  returns  to  Boston,  immediately  after  the  battle  of 
Bunker  Hill.  Then  follows  one  of  the  most  effective  pas- 
sages of  the  play— a  council  of  war  at  which  the  chief  offi- 

1  "The  Fall,"  etc.,  27-28. 


AN  AMERICAN  CHRONICLE  PLA  Y.  205 

cers  of  the  army,  Lord  Boston,  Elbow  Room,  Caper,  Percy, 
and  Clinton,  appear  to  be  grotesquely  terrified  and  even 
paralyzed  by  the  unexpected  military  capacity  of  the  rebels, 
while  Admiral  Tombstone,  bursting  with  a  truly  marine 
contempt  for  his  military  associates,  these  cowardly  and 
baffled  lubbers  of  the  land,  utters  his  opinion  of  them  in 
frequent  jets  of  extremely  nautical  phraseology.  "  I  fully 
expected,"  maunders  Lord  Boston,  "  with  the  help  of  the 
last  re-enforcement  you  brought  me  over,  and  the  advice 
and  assistance  of  three  accomplished  and  experienced  gen- 
erals, I  should  have  been  able  to  have,  subdued  the  reoels, 
and  gained  immortal  laurels  to  myself, — to  have  returned  to 
Old  England  like  a  Roman  consul,  with  a  score  or  two  of 
the  rebel  generals,  colonels,  and  majors  to  have  graced  my 
triumph."  Upon  this  slur,  the  conversation  is  taken  up  by 
Elbow  Room,  Percy,  Clinton,  and  Caper,  and  soon  becomes 
a  bedlam  of  angry  recrimination  between  them, — whereupon 
the  bluff  Admiral  breaks  in: — "  Damn  it,  don't  let  us  kick 
up  a  dust  among  ourselves,  to  be  laughed  at  fore  and  aft. 
This  is  a  hell  of  a  council  of  war, — though  I  believe  it  will 
turn  out  one  before  we  've  done." 

Clinton:  Pray,  gentlemen,  drop  this  discourse.  Con- 
sider, the  honor  of  England  is  at  stake,  and  our  safety 
depends  upon  this  day's  consultation. 

Lord  Boston :  Well,  gentlemen,  what  are  we  met  here 
for? 

Admiral  Tombstone :  Who  the  devil  should  know,  if  you 
don't  ?  Damn  it,  did  n't  you  send  for  us  ? 

Lord  Boston :  Our  late  great  loss  of  men  has  tore  up  the 
foundation  of  our  plan,  and  rendered  all  further  attempts 
impracticable.  'T  will  be  a  long  time  ere  we  can  expect 
any  more  re-enforcements;  and  if  they  should  arrive,  I  'm 
doubtful  of  their  success. 

Clinton :  The  provincials  are  vastly  strong,  and  seem  no 
novices  in  the  art  of  war.  'T  is  true,  we  gained  the  hill  at 
last,  but  of  what  advantage  is  it  to  us  ?  None.  The  loss 
of  fourteen  hundred  as  brave  men  as  Britain  can  boast  of,  is 


2o6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

a  melancholy  consideration,  and  must  make  our  most  san- 
guinary friends  in  England  abate  of  their  vigor. 

Elbow  Room :  I  never  saw  or  read  of  any  battle  equal  to 
it.  Never  was  more  martial  courage  displayed ;  and  the 
provincials — to  do  the  dogs  justice — fought  like  heroes; 
fought,  indeed,  more  like  devils  than  men.  Such  carnage 
and  destruction  not  exceeded  by  Blenheim,  Minden,  Fon- 
tenoy,  Ramilies,  Dettingen,  the  Battle  of  the  Boyne;  and 
the  late  affair  of  the  Spaniards  and  Algerines  a  mere  cock 
fight  to  it !  No  laurels  there ! 

Mr.  Caper:  No,  nor  triumphs  neither.  I  regret  in  par- 
ticular the  number  of  brave  officers  that  fell  that  day,  many 
of  whom  were  of  the  first  families  in  England. 

Admiral  Tombstone :  Aye,  a  damned  affair,  indeed ! 
Many  powdered  beaux — petit  maitres — fops — fribbles — skip 
jackets — macaronies — jack  puddings— noblemen's  bastards 
and  whores'  sons  fell  that  day ;  and  my  poor  marines  stood 
no  more  chance  with  'em  than  a  cat  in  hell  without  claws. 

Lord  Boston:  It  can't  be  helped,  Admiral.  What  is  to 
be  done  next  ? 

Admiral  Tombstone :  Done  ? — why,  what  the  devil  have 
you  done  ?  Nothing  yet,  but  eat  Paramount's  beef,  and 
steal  a  few  Yankee  sheep;  and  that,  it  seems,  is  now  be- 
come a  damned  lousy  beggarly  trade,  too;  for  you  have  n't 
left  yourselves  a  mouthful  to  eat. 

(Aside.)     '  Bold  at  the  council  board 

But  cautious  in  the  field,  he  shunned  the  sword.' 

Lord  Boston :  But  what  can  we  do,  Admiral  ? 

Admiral  Tombstone :  Do  ?  Why,  suck  your  paws ; — 
that  's  all  you  're  like  to  get."  ' 

For  the  last  Act,  one  Scene  presents  to  us  the  American 
forces  at  the  capture  of  Montreal;  another,  Ethan  Allen 
groping  about  in  a  British  dungeon,  and  stormily  execrating 
his  keepers,  who  have  entered  to  lay  him  in  irons ;  another, 

1  "  The  Fall,"  etc.  51-54. 


THE  BLOCKHEADS.  207 

the  American  army  at  Cambridge ;  and  still  another,  Wash- 
ington's grief  over  the  news  of  the  death  of  General  Mont- 
gomery, and  the  solemn  act  wherein  he  and  his  generals 
renew  their  vows  of  devotion  to  the  American  cause,  even 
unto  death.  Finally,  the  real  purpose  of  the  play  is 
brought  out  in  a  pithy  epilogue,  with  its  telling  allusion  to 
a  political  pamphlet,  the  title  of  which  was  just  then 
resounding  through  the  land : 

"  Are  we  not  men  ?     Pray,  who  made  men,  but  God  ? 
Yet  men  made  kings — to  tremble  at  their  nod  ! 
What  nonsense  this  !  let  "s  wrong  with  right  oppose, 
Since  naught  will  do  but  sound,  impartial  blows. 
Let 's  act  in  earnest,  not  with  vain  pretense ; 
Adopt  the  language  of  sound  COMMON  SENSE, 
And  with  one  voice  proclaim — INDEPENDENCE  ! "  * 

VII. 

During  the  winter  of  1775  and  1776,  while  the  British 
army  lay  shut  up  in  the  town  of  Boston,  their  officers  made 
efforts  to  drive  dull  care  away,  in  part,  by  giving  theatrical 
performances  in  Faneuil  Hall ;  and  for  such  an  entertain- 
ment, General  Burgoyne,  already  well-known  as  a  dramatic 
writer,  supplied  a  farce  ironically  called  "  The  Blockade,'* 
and  intended  to  make  light  of  the  valor  of  the  rebel  soldiers, 
and  of  the  gravity  of  their  own  situation.  Shortly  after 
their  departure  from  the  town,  in  March,  1776,  was  pub- 
lished there  a  retort  in  the  form  of  a  farce  in  three  Acts,  with 
a  title  that  is  itself  a  slant  upon  that  of  the  play  of  which  it 
is  itself  a  mirthful  reverberation.  It  is  called  "  The  Block- 
heads, or,  The  Affrighted  Officers,"  '  and  is  a  bit  of  rough 
fun-making  which  must  have  been  greatly  relished  at  the 
time,  when  played,  as  it  probably  was,  by  some  of  the  vic- 

1  "  The  Fall,"  etc.  66. 

*  This  farce  is  attributed  to  Mercy  Warren,  by  P.  L.  Ford.  "  Beginnings  of 
American  Dramatic  Literature,"  16-19. 


208  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

torious  American  soldiers  for  the  diversion  of  their  own 
comrades.  The  time  of  the  play  is  that  memorable  morn- 
ing on  which  Washington  was  discovered  with  his  extem- 
porized intrenchments  on  Dorchester  Heights,  and  ready 
to  sweep  with  his  guns  the  town  and  the  shipping.  Doubt- 
less, for  many  a  day  after  the  presentation  of  this  piece,  the 
quarters  occupied  by  the  American  troops  in  Boston  and 
the  neighborhood  rang  with  their  shouts  of  merriment  over 
the  numerous  and  by  no  means  delicate  hits  herein  given  at 
the  political  and  military  aspects  of  the  situation, — more 
especially  at  the  alleged  cowardice,  stupidity,  and  profligacy 
of  the  British  soldiers,  at  their  ridiculous  sufferings  from 
hunger  during  the  long  siege,  and,  finally,  at  the  disgust 
and  dismay  of  the  Amercan  Loyalists  in  Boston  upon  learn- 
ing that  their  invincible  protectors  were  about  to  flee  for 
their  lives. 

VIII. 

One  proof  of  the  effectiveness  of  Whig  satire  on  the  Loy- 
alists, as  contained  in  "  The  Fall  of  British  Tyranny,"  is 
to  be  met  with  in  a  Loyalist  retort  in  kind,  which  appears  to 
have  been  written  just  after  the  American  defeat  on  Long 
Island,  the  2;th  of  August,  1776,  and  is  entitled  "  The 
Battle  of  Brooklyn,  a  Farce."  The  intention  of  this  per- 
formance is  to  retaliate  upon  the  rebel  cause,  by  holding  up 
to  derision  the  contemptible  character  of  its  chief  leaders— 
they  being,  in  most  cases,  bar-tenders,  horse-jockeys,  black- 
legs, ploughmen,  and  cobblers,  transformed  into  colonels 
and  generals;  actuated  by  groveling  motives;  wielding  their 
military  authority  in  the  spirit  of  pick-pockets  and  common 
swindlers ;  of  low,  obscene,  and  profligate  lives.  The  satir- 
ical method  of  the  play  is  fairly  revealed  in  its  "  dramatis 
personae,"  these  being  divided  into  two  groups,  contempt- 
uously designated  as  "  Men"  and  as  "  Women."  The 
former  are  headed  by  four  "  Rebel  Chiefs  "—Washington, 
Putnam,  Sullivan,  and  Stirling..  These  are  followed  by 


THE  BA  TTLE   OF  BROOKL  YN.  2OQ 

three  "  Colonels,"  to  wit,  "  Lasher,  a  shoemaker  of  New- 
York  ;  Clark,  a  retailer  of  rum  in  Connecticut ;  Remsen,  a 
farmer  of  Newtown,  Long  Island."  These  several  digni. 
taries  are  ministered  to  in  various  capacities  by  "  Ebenezer 
Snuffle,  a  New  England  parson,  Chaplain  to  General  Put- 
nam ;  Joe  King,  servant  to  Sterling;  Noah,  servant  to  Sul- 
livan; Skinner,  a  thief  employed  by  Putnam." 

The  list  of  "  Women  "  includes  but  two  names, — "  Lady 
Gates  "  and  "  Betty,  her  servant  ";  and  the  interchanges 
of  confidence  as  here  reported  between  these  two  women  are 
extremely  candid  examples  of  retail  traffic  in  the  grosser 
scandals  of  the  period  as  affecting  Washington  and  other 
American  leaders  both  military  and  civil.  In  the  develop- 
ment of  this  farce,  Lord  Sterling  is  set  before  us  as  a  mere 
pretender  whose  natural  stupidity  is  quite  needlessly  en- 
hanced by  perpetual  drunkenness.  General  Putnam,  on  the 
other  hand,  appears  as  a  patriotic  and  clever  scoundrel  who 
has  taken  up  arms  for  his  country  mainly  on  account  of  the 
facilities  he  thereby  gets  for  petty  plundering,  and  who  is 
here  represented  as  calling  to  sharp  account  one  of.  his 
officers,  Lieutenant  Skinner,  because  the  latter  had  failed 
to  share  with  his  chief  the  watches,  rings  and  other 
valuables  filched  from  the  houses  to  which  Putnam  had 
sent  him  for  the  purpose.  The  military  incompetence  of 
the  rebel  officers  and  the  almost  universal  cowardice  of  their 
men  are  exhibited  in  the  immense  object-lesson  furnished 
by  their  defeat  on  Long  Island  and  their  hurried  flight 
across  the  North  River.  In  all  this  lavish  distribution  of 
infamy,  it  is  perhaps  possible  to  detect  some  slight  forbear- 
ance toward  Washington,  to  whom  is  attributed  a  certain 
superiority  to  the  men  whom  he  leads — a  superiority,  how- 
ever, not  extending  to  such  particulars  as  low  lust  and  polit- 
ical hypocrisy.  The  whole  production  is  unutterably  coarse 
— mere  provender  for  bovine  and  porcine  appetites — a  tri- 
umphant exhibition  of  vigor  in  the  flinging  back  of  filth  at 
the  enemy — in  these  respects,  therefore,  an  authentic  mem- 
orial of  the  very  spirit  and  procedure  of  the  time. 


210  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

IX. 

The  dramatYc  writings  thus  far  noticed,  must  continue  to 
I  have  an  interest  for  us,  not  only  as  illustrating  the  begin- 
!  nings  of  this  species  of  literature  in  America,  but  like- 
wise as  embodying  in  authentic  form  the  thoughts  and 
'passions  which  warred  fiercely  in  the  minds  of  the  Ameri- 
can people  during  their  Revolutionary  conflict.  The  lit- 
erary defects  of  these  writings  need  not  be  dwelt  upon, 
— they  are  obvious.  It  is  in  spite  of  their  literary  de-Sects, 
— their  crudity,  dullness,  coarseness,  provincialism, — that 
they  are  worth  the  moment's  glance  which  we  here  give  to 
them ;  for  they  are  vestiges  of  one  enti're  stage  of  our  liter- 
ary development  as  a  people,  and  are  frank  witnesses  to  the 
throes  of  mental  and  moral  anguish  through  which  we  had 
to  pass  in  order  to  become  a  nation.  But  we  now  approach 
two  examples  of  dramatic  writing  having  a  literary  merit  so 
positive  and  so  remarkable  as  to  justify  our  study  of  them 
even  on  that  account  alone. 

Hugh  Henry  Brackenridge  demands  and  deserves  our 
notice  on  account  of  two  dramatic  poems  produced  by  him 
soon  after  the  opening  of  the  physical  conflict  of  the  Revo- 
lution, and  having  in  themselves  a  striking  distinctness  of 
method  and  of  purpose.  Like  every  other  writer  of  this 
period,  he  seems  to  have  been  deeply  stirred  by  the  signif- 
icance of  the  military  events  of  the  first  year  of  that  con- 
flict— the  year  1775 — their  pathos,  their  tragic  horror,  and 
their  prodigious  messages  both  of  warning  and  of  good- 
cheer.  From  all  these  events  he  selects  two,  each  as  the 
subject  of  a  serious  dramatic  poem, — the  one  being  the 
first  real  clash  between  American  and  Briton  as  displayed 
on  the  seventeenth  of  June,  upon  a  height  in  full  view  from 
Boston;  the  other  being  the  death  of  the  high-minded 
American  leader,  General  Montgomery,  in  his  baffled  at- 
tempt at  the  capture  of  Quebec.  Both  of  these  dramas  are 
wrought  out  with  strict  attention  to  the  classic  unities  of 
time,  place,  and  action;  and  both  are  intended  merely 


THE  BATTLE   OF  BUNKERS  HILL.  211 

as  dramatic  poems  to  be  read,  not  at  all  as  plays  to  be 
acted. 

The  chief  purpose  of  the  earlier  poem — "  The  Battle  of 
Bunker's  Hill" — published  in  1776,  was  one  exactly  fitted 
to  the  need  of  the  hour  in  which  it  sprang  into  life :  it  was 
to  inspire  Americans  with  military  confidence  by  setting 
forth,  in  opposition  to  the  old  taunts  of  cowardice  and  in- 
capacity, the  remarkable  fighting  qualities — the  almost  un- 
rivaled military  effectiveness — exhibited  by  their  brethren 
in  tli«.kt  battle.  This  is  the  controlling  idea  of  the  poem ; 
and  while  it  is  indicated  from  the  very  beginning  of  the 
action,  the  full  development  of  it  is  delayed  till  near  the 
end,  when  it  is  accomplished  with  striking  effect  in  the  form 
of  spontaneous  admissions  from  the  lips  of  the  victorious 
British  officers  then  commenting  on  the  battle  they  had  just 
won  at  so  great  a  cost.  Finally,  the  lesson  of  military  con- 
fidence which  the  poem  is  meant  to  teach,  has  an  added 
impressiveness  from  the  fact  that  the  poet,  while  recogniz- 
ing the  physical  conditions  on  which  military  success  de- 
pends, gives  great  prominence,  also,  to  the  moral  conditions 
of  such  success.  Thus,  the  object  for  which  a  man  fights, 
is  sure  to  tell  on  his  success  in  fighting.  Certainly,  the  jus- 
tice or  the  injustice  of  one's  cause  must  count  for  some- 
thing. There  is  a  power  in  the  world  which  makes  for  the 
victory  of  righteousness — even  upon  a  battle-field.  And  it 
is  to  this  higher  sphere  of  prediction,  even  with  reference  to 
the  ultimate  result  of  the  physical  struggle  in  which  they 
were  then  engaged,  that  the  poet  seeks  to  raise  his  fellow- 
countrymen,  as  he  develops  in  this  drama  the  immense 
moral  contrast  between  the  objects  of  the  two  opposing 
armies, — the  implication  being  that  the  moral  superiority 
of  the  American  cause  must  be  taken  into  the  account  as 
some  offset  to  its  inferiority  in  physical  force. 

On  the  evening  of  a  certain  day  in  June,  1775,  two  mili- 
tary councils  are  held :  the  one  in  Cambridge,  by  three  high 
officers  of  the  American  army — Putnam,  Warren,  and  Gar- 
diner; the  other  only  a  few  miles  away,  in  Boston,  by  the 


212  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

British  commander,  Gage,  and  his  two  generals,  Howe  and 
Burgoyne.  The  result  of  the  former  council  is  a  forward 
movement  of  a  portion  of  the  American  army,  that  very 
night,  to  the  heights  of  Bunker  Hill,  in  the  hope  of  draw- 
ing out  the  enemy  from  their  shelter  within  the  city.  The 
result  of  the  latter  council  is  an  order  reluctantly  given  by 
Gage  at  the  demand  of  his  two  generals,  for  an  advance  of  a 
portion  of  the  British  army  the  very  next  morning  against 
the  rebel  force  supposed  to  be  still  lying  inactive  in  Cam- 
bridge. Of  course,  by  the  dawn  of  day,  the  British  discover 
that  the  rebels  have  already  come  more  than  half  way  to 
meet  them, — a  fact  which  is  thus  hurriedly  announced  by 
Burgoyne  to  the  commanding  General : 

"  The  rebel  foe,  grown  yet  more  insolent 
By  that  small  loss  or  rout  at  Lexington, 
Prevent  our  purpose  ;  and  the  night  by-past 
Have  pushed  intrenchments  and  some  flimsy  works, 
With  rude  achievement,  on  the  rocky  brow 
Of  that  tall  hill.     A  ship-boy,  with  the  day, 
From  the  tall  mast-head  of  the  admiral, 
Descried  their  aim,  and  gave  the  swift  alarm. 
Our  glasses  mark  but  one  small  regiment  there ; 
Yet  every  hour  we  languish  in  delay 
Inspires  fresh  hope,  and  fills  their  pigmy  souls 
With  thoughts  of  holding  it.     You  hear  the  sound 
Of  spades  and  pick-axes  upon  the  hill, 
Incessant,  pounding  like  old  Vulcan's  forge 
Urged -by  the  Cyclops."  ' 

These  words  of  Burgoyne  are  scarcely  spoken,  when  General 
Howe  rushes  upon  the  scene,  exclaiming : 

"  To  your  alarm  posts,  officers  !     Come,  gallant  souls, 
Let 's  out,  and  drive  them  from  that  eminence 
On  which  the  foe  doth  earth  himself. 
I  relish  not  such  haughty  neighborhood. 
Give  orders  swiftly  to  the  admiral, 

1  "  The  Battle,"  etc.  18-19. 


THE  BATTLE   OF  BUNKER'S  HILL.  213 

That  some  stout  ship  heave  up  the  narrow  bay, 
And  pour  indignant  from  the  full-tide  wave 
Fierce  cannonade,  across  the  isthmus  point, 
That  no  assistance  may  be  brought  to  them. 
If  but  seven  hundred,  we  can  treat  with  them — 
Yes,  strew  the  hill  with  death  and  carcasses, 
And  offer  up  this  band  a  hecatomb 
To  Britain's  glory,  and  the  cause  of  kings." ' 

As  they  hasten  from  the  place,  poor  Gage,  who  is  the  one 
ludicrous  character  in  the  poem,  being  portrayed  as  an  in- 
dolent and  cowardly  voluptuary,  is  left  alone,  maundering 
to  himself  of  his  guilt  and  fear: 

"  May  Heaven  protect  us  from  their  rage,  I  say. 
When  but  a  boy,  I  dreamed  of  Death  in  bed  ; 
And  ever  since  that  time,  I  hated  things 
Which  put  him,  like  a  pair  of  spectacles, 
Before  my  eyes.     The  thought  lies  deep  in  fate, 
Nor  can  a  mortal  see  the  bottom  of  it. 
'T  is  here — 't  is  there — I  could  philosophize — 
Eternity,  is  like  a  winding  sheet — 
The  seven  Commandments  like — I  think  there  's  seven. 

Oh  Bute  and  Dartmouth,  knew  ye  what  I  feel, 
You  sure  would  pity  an  old  drinking-man 
That  has  more  heart-ache  than  philosophy  !  "* 

By  this  time,  General  Howe  has  conducted  a  division  of 
the  army  across  the  bay  which  separates  them  from  that 
steep  hill  on  which  the  enemy  have  taken  position ;  and 
pausing  at  the  shore,  he  prepares  their  minds  for  a  task  that 
is  likely  to  prove  a  costly  one : 

"  Behold  yon  hill,  where  fell  Rebellion  rears 
Her  snake-streamed  ensign,  and  would  seem  to  brave, 
With  scarce  seven  hundred,  this  sea-bounded  camp, 

1 "  The  Battle,"  etc.  19.  8  Ibid.  20. 


214  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Where  may  be  counted  full  ten  thousand  men 

That  in  the  war  with  France  so  late  acquired 

Loud  fame,  and  shook  the  other  continent. 

Come  on,  brave  soldiers,  seize  your  gleaming  arms, 

And  let  this  day  in  after  times  be  held 

As  Minden  famous,  and  each  hostile  field 

Where  British  valor  shone  victorious. 

The  time  moves  slow  which  enviously  detains 

Our  just  resentment  from  these  traitors'  heads. 

Their  richest  farms  and  cultured  settlements, 

By  winding  river  or  extensive  bay, 

Shall  be  your  just  reward.     Our  noble  king, 

As  things  confiscate,  holds  their  property, 

And  in  rich  measure  will  bestow  on  you 

Who  face  the  frowns  and  labor  of  this  day. 

He  that  outlives  this  battle,  shall  ascend 

In  titled  honor  to  the  height  of  state  ; 

Dukedoms  and  baronies,  midst  these  our  foes 

In  tributary  vassalage  kept  down, 

Shall  be  your  fair  inheritance.     Come  on, 

Beat  up  the  heroic  sound  of  war  !     The  word 

Is — '  George  our  sovereign,  and  Britannia's  arms.'  "  ' 

Meanwhile,  from  behind  their  intrenchments  on  the  hill- 
top, the  Americans  can  see  the  British  upon  the  opposite 
shore,  mustering  for  the  attack.  Warren  first  addresses  the 
little  band,  trying  to  lift  them  by  his  words  to  the  height 
of  any  sacrifice,  and  saying,  as  he  closes, 

"  The  word  is  '  Liberty  ' — 
And  Heaven  smile  on  us  in  so  just  a  cause  !  "• 

Thereupon,  Colonel  Gardiner,  as  he  leads  his  men  to  the 
engagement,  says  to  them  : 

"  Fear  not,  brave  soldiers,  though  their  infantry, 
In  deep  array,  so  far  out-number  us. 
The  justness  of  our  cause  will  brace  each  arm, 

1  "  The  Battle,"  etc.  21-22.  »  Ibid.  24. 


THE  BATTLE    OF  BUNKER'S  HILL.  21$ 

And  steel  the  soul  with  fortitude;  while  they, 

Whose  guilt  hangs  trembling  on  their  consciences, 

Must  fail  in  battle,  and  receive  that  death 

Which,  in  high  vengeance,  we  prepare  for  them. 

Let,  then,  each  spirit,  to  the  height  wound  up, 

Shew  nobte  vigor  and  full  force  this  day. 

For,  on  the  merit  of  our  swords  is  placed 

The  virgin  honor  and  true  character 

Of  this  whole  continent  ;  and  one  short  hour 

May  give  complexion  to  the  whole  event, 

Fixing  the  judgment  whether  as  base  slaves 

We  serve  these  masters,  or  more  nobly  live — 

Free  as  the  breeze  that  on  the  hill-top  plays, 

With  these  sweet  fields  and  tenements  our  own. 

Oh  fellow  soldiers,  let  this  battle  speak 

Dire  disappointment  to  the  insulting  foe, 

Who  claim  our  fair  possessions,  and  set  down 

These  cultured  farms  and  bowery  hills  and  plains 

As  the  rich  prize  of  certain  victory. 

Shall  we,  the  sons  of  Massachusetts-Bay, 

New  Hampshire  and  Connecticut,  shall  we 

Fall  back,  dishonored,  from  our  native  plains, 

Mix  with  the  savages,  and  roam  for  food 

On  western  mountains,  or  the  desert  shores 

Of  Canada's  cold  lakes  ?  or,  state  more  vile, 

Sit  down  in  humble  vassalage,  content 

To  till  the  ground  for  these  proud  conquerors  ?"  ' 

Thus,  to  the  end  of  the  poem,  the  scene  shifts  in  quick  suc- 
cession from  one  side  of  the  fight  to  the  other ;  and  at  every 
stage  of  its  progress  comes  out  in  deeper  colors  the  contrast 
in  moral  significance  between  the  objects  of  the  two  armies. 
This  effect  reaches  its  culmination  in  a  noble  scene  wherein 
the  very  defeat  of  the  Americans  is  consecrated  by  the 
blood  of  their  chieftain,  Warren.  This  leader — a  hero  of 
the  antique  mold,  one  of  Plutarch's  men — having  received 
his  death  wound,  falls  upon  his  right  knee,  and  "  covering  his 

1  "  The  Battle,"  etc.  25-26. 


2i6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

breast  with  his  right  hand,  and  supporting  himself  with  his 
firelock  in  his  left,"  spends  his  fast-ebbing  strength  in  this 
appeal  to  his  comrades : 

"  By  the  last  parting  breath 
And  blood  of  this  your  fellow  soldier  slain, 
Be  now  adjured  never  to  yield  the  right, — 
The  grand  deposit  of  all-giving  Heaven 
To  man's  free  nature, — that  he  rules  himself  ! 
With  these  rude  Britons  wage  life-scorning  war, 
Till  they  admit  it,  and  like  hell  fall  off, 
With  ebbing  billows,  from  this  troubled  coast, 
Where,  but  for  them,  firm  concord  and  true  love 
Should  individual  hold  their  court  and  reign. 
The  infernal  enginery  of  state  resist 
To  death,  that  unborn  times  may  be  secure  ; 
And  while  men  flourish  in  the  peace  you  win, 
Write  each  fair  name  with  worthies  of  the  earth. 

Weep  not  for  him  who  first  espoused  the  cause, 

And  risking  life,  hath  met  the  enemy 

In  fatal  opposition — but  rejoice  ! 

For  now  I  go  to  mingle  with  the  dead, — 

Great  Brutus,  Hampden,  Sidney,  and  the  rest, 

Of  old  or  modern  memory,  who  lived 

A  mound  to  tyrants,  and  strong  hedge  to  kings, 

Bounding  the  inundation  of  their  rage 

Against  the  happiness  and  peace  of  man." 

Then,  as  the  film  thickens  over  his  eyes,  more  distinct  be- 
comes the  vision  of  that  overarching  sphere  to  which  he  sees 
himself  beckoned  by  hands  that  cannot  receive  the  indignity 
of  death : 

"  I  see  these  heroes  where  they  walk  serene, 
By  crystal  currents,  on  the  vale  of  Heaven, 
High  in  full  converse  of  immortal  acts 
Achieved  for  truth  and  innocence  on  earth. 
Meantime  the  harmony  and  thrilling  sound 


THE  BATTLE   OF  BUNKER'S  HILL.  21? 

Of  mellow  lutes,  sweet  viols,  and  guitars 
Dwell  on  the  soul,  and  ravish  every  nerve. 
Anon  the  murmur  of  the  tight-braced  drum, 
With  finely  varied  fifes  to  martial  airs, 
Winds  up  the  spirit  to  the  mighty  proof 
Of  siege  and  battle,  and  attempt  in  arms. 
Illustrious  group  !  They  beckon  me  along, 
To  ray  my  visage  with  immortal  light, 
And  bind  the  amaranth  around  my  brow. 
I  come,  I  come,  ye  first-born  of  true  fame. 
Fight  on,  my  countrymen,  be  free,  be  free  ! "  * 

At  last,  therefore,  having  thrice  repulsed  the  enemy, 
driving  them  thrice  with  almost  unexampled  slaughter 
down  the  hill,  the  little  army  of  the  rebels  "  overpowered 
by  numbers  are  obliged  to  retreat;  "  whereupon,  amid  the 
huzzas  of  victory,  the  British  leaders  concede  and  emphasize 
the  military,  significance  of  these  displays  of  prowess  and 
of  soldierlike  efficiency  on  the  part  of  men  till  that  day  set 
down  for  cowards.  Thus,  Richardson,  a  young  British 
officer,  on  the  parapet,  exclaims, 

"  The  day  is  ours,  huzza,  the  day  is  ours  ; 
This  last  attack  has  forced  them  to  retreat. 

CLINTON. 

'T  is  true,  full  victory  declares  for  us, 

But  we  have  dearly,  dearly  purchased  it. 

Full  fifteen  hundred  of  our  men  lie  dead, 

Who,  with  their  officers,  do  swell  the  list 

Of  this  day's  carnage.     On  the  well-fought  hill, 

Whole  ranks  cut  down  lie  struggling  with  their  wounds, 

Or  close  their  bright  eyes  in  the  shades  of  night. 

No  wonder  !  such  incessant  musketry 

And  fire  of  cannon,  from  the  hill-top  poured, 

Seemed  not  the  agency  of  mortal  men, 

But  heaven  itself  with  snares  and  vengeance  armed 

1  "  The  Battle,"  etc.  28-29. 


218  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

T'  oppose  our  gaining  it.     E'en  when  was  spent 
Their  ammunition,  and  fierce  Warren  slain, 
Huge  stones  were  hurled  from  the  rocky  brow, 
And  war  renewed  by  these  inveterate, 
Till  Gard'ner  wounded,  the  left  wing  gave  way, 
And  with  their  shattered  infantry,  the  whole, 
Drawn  off  by  Putnam,  to  the  causeway  fled  ; 
When  from  the  ships  and  batt'ries  on  the  wave 
They  met  deep  loss,  and  strewed  the  narrow  bridge 
With  lifeless  carcasses. 

LORD  PIGOT. 

The  day  is  ours,  but  with  heart-piercing  loss 
Of  soldiers  slain  and  gallant  officers. 

.,»j  •  • 

Should  every  hill,  by  the  rebellious  foe 
So  well  defended,  cost  thus  dear  to  us, 
Not  the  united  forces  of  the  world 
Could  master  them,  and  the  proud  rage  subdue 
Of  these  AMERICANS. 

HOWE. 

E'en  in  an  enemy  I  honor  worth 

And  valor  eminent.     The  vanquished  foe 

In  feats  of  prowess  shew  their  ancestry, 

And  speak  their  birth  legitimate, — 

The  sons  of  Britons,  with  the  genuine  flame 

Of  British  heat  and  valor  in  their  veins."  * 

X. 

\/  The  second  of  the  two  dramatic  poems  of  Brackenridge, 
"  The  Death  of  General  Montgomery,  at  the  Siege  of  Que- 
bec," was  published  in  1777.  Its  chief  purpose  was  to 
stimulate  American  military  ardor  by  stimulating  American 
hatred  of  the  enemy;  and  this  it  sought  to  accomplish 
through  a  presentation  of  their  detestable  character,  espe- 

1  "  The  Battle,"  etc.  33-35. 


THE  DEATH  OF  MONTGOMERY.  2IQ 

cially  their  sordidness,  perfidy,  and  cruelty.  Thus,  in  the 
two  poems,  the  argument  is  made  complete:  first,  that  we 
have  {he  ability  to  fight  the  British ;  and,  secondly,  that  we 
have  every  possible  motive  for  fighting,  them — since  they  are 
monsters  of  greed,  treachery,  and  inhumanity. 

The  entire  action  of  this  tragedy  takes  place  in  the  hours  r 
between  midnight  and  dawn  of  the  last  day  of  the  year 
1775, — the  time  which  was  actually  fixed  by  General  Mont- 
gomery for  his  attempt  to  capture  by  escalade  that  stout 
city  which  he  had  tried  in  vain,  during  the  previous  four 
weeks',  to  capture  by  siege.  In  the  first  Scene,  is  given  a 
view  of  the  American  camp  before  Quebec,  in  the  deep 
silence  of  a  long  December  night,  with  Montgomery  and 
Benedict  Arnold  holding  conference  together, — a  confer- 
ence of  which  the  first  words  that  reach  us  are  these,  as 
spoken  by  Montgomery: 

"  The  third  hour  turning  from  the  midnight  watch, 
By  no  ray  visited  of  moon  or  star, 
Marks  to  our  enterprise  its  proper  date. 
Now  from  above,  on  every  hill  and  copse, 
The  airy  element  descends  in  snow, 
And  with  the  dark  winds  from  the  howling  North, 
Commixed  and  driven  on  the  bounded  sight, 
Gives  tumult  privacy,  and  shrouds  the  march  ; 
So  that  our  troops,  in  reg'ment  or  brigade, 
May  undistinguished  to  the  very  walls 
Move  up  secure,  and  scale  the  battlements, — 
May  force  the  barred  gates  of  this  lofty  town, 
On  all  sides  bound  with  artificial  rock, 
Of  cloud-capped  eminence  impregnable — 
Impregnable  so  long,  and  fully  proof 
To  all  our  battery  and  sharp  cannonade  ; 
But  yet,  assailed  with  vigor  and  full  force, 
This  morn,  I  trust,  we  enter  it  in  storm, 
And  from  its  bosom  long  defiled,  pluck 
This  scorpion  progeny,  this  mixed  brood 
Of  wild-wood  savages  and  Englishmen 
Who  'gainst  their  brethren,  in  unrighteous  cause, 


220  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

With  cruel  perfidy  have  waged  war. 

Against  their  brethren,  did  I  say  ?     O  God  ! 

Are  we  the  offspring  of  that  cruel  foe 

Who  late  at  Montreal,  with  symbol  dire, 

Did  call  the  savages  to  taste  of  blood, 

Life-warm  and  streaming  from  the  bullock  slain, 

And  with  fell  language — told  it  was  the  blood 

Of  a  Bostonian — made  the  sacrament  ? 

At  this  the  hell-hounds,  with  infernal  gust, 

To  the  snuffed  wind  held  up  their  blood-stained  mouths, 

And  filled  with  howlings  the  adjacent  hills."  ' 

With  such  vigor,  with  such  unhesitant  tones  of  abhor- 
rence, does  the  poet  give  us  the  key-note  of  this  drama. 
Presently,  Montgomery  communicates  to  Arnold  the  details 
of  his  plan  for  the  assault  upon  the  city,  which  was  to  be 
made  simultaneously  at  three  different  points ;  whereupon 
Arnold  takes  his  exit  in  order  to  prepare  for  the  part  as- 
signed to  him.  Then  follow  two  or  three  Scenes  of  great 
tenderness  and  nobility,  in  which  the  poet  contrives  to  ex- 
hibit, in  sharp  opposition  to  the  execrable  and  loathsome 
qualities  attributed  to  the  enemy,  the  fine  and  high  traits 
of  the  American  leaders  in  this  daring  enterprise, — their 
superiority  to  sordid  motives,  their  pure  love  of  country  and 
of  fame,  their  kinship  with  the  great  military  heroes  of  Eng- 
land's past,  and  above  all  their  sensibility  in  that  particular 
spot  to  all  that  is  lofty,  radiant,  and  inspiring  in  the  memory 
of  Wolfe.  Two  of  Montgomery's  staff  are  Macpherson  and 
Chessman — young  fellows  noted  in  their  day  for  great  per- 
sonal attractiveness,  and  especially  for  chivalry  of  character. 
Of  Macpherson  the  General  is  particularly  fond ;  and  it  is  to 
him,  in  that  deep  stillness  before  the  crash  and  agony  of 
battle,  that  the  elder  man  now  reveals  his  own  prescience  of 
the  near  fate  which  then  awaited  them  both,  as  well  as  the 
ideals  of  glory  in  pursuit  of  which  they  could  meet  that  fate 
with  serenity : 

1  "  The  Death,"  etc.  9-10. 


THE  DEATH  OF  MONTGOMERY,  221 

'  It  seems  to  me,  Macpherson,  that  we  tread 
The  ground  of  some  romantic  fairy  land, 
Where  knights  in  armor,  and  high  combatants 
Have  met  in  war.     This  is  the  plain  where  Wolfe, 
Victorious  Wolfe,  fought  with  the  brave  Montcalm; 
And  even  yet,  the  dreary  snow-clad  tomb 
Of  many  a  hero,  slaughtered  on  that  day, 
Recalls  the  memory  of  the  bloody  strife. 
I  believe  not  superstition,  or  the  dreams 
Of  high-wrought  fantasy  that  fill  the  brain, 
But  yet  methinks,  Macpherson,  that  I  feel 
Within  this  hour  some  knowledge  of  my  end, — 
Some  sure  presentiment  that  you  and  I, 
This  day,  shall  be  with  them,  shall  leave 
Our  breathless  bodies  on  this  mortal  soil. 
But  this  allotment,  should  it  be  our  case, 
Fear  not,  young  soldier,  for  our  cause  is  just  ; 
And  all  those  failings  we  are  conscious  of, 
Shall  in  the  bosom  of  our  God  repose, 
Who  looks  with  mercy  on  the  sons  of  men, 
And  hides  their  imperfections  with  his  love. 
Say  not,  young  soldier,  that  thy  life  was  short- 
In  the  first  bloom  of  manhood  swift  cut  off. 
All  things  are  mortal — but  the  warrior's  fame  ; 
This  lives  eternal  in  the  mouths  of  men. 

MACPHERSON. 

The  light  is  sweet,  and  death  is  terrible ; 
But  when  I  left  my  father  and  my  friends, 
I  thought  of  this,  and  counted  it  but  gain, 
If  fighting  bravely  in  my  country's  cause, 
I  tasted  death,  and  met  an  equal  fame 
With  those  at  Lexington,  and  Bunker's  HilL 

MONTGOMERY. 

Sweet  fame,  young  hero,  shall  attend  thy  years  ; 
And  linked  in  friendship,  as  we  are  linked  in  death, 
Our  souls  shall  mount,  and  visit  those  fair  hills 


222  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Where  never-dying  bards  and  heroes  stray. 

There  Wolfe  shall  hail  us,  and  the  great  Montcalm 

Shall  bind  the  amaranth  around  our  brows  ; 

For  mighty  warriors,  though  opposed  here, 

There  live  serene,  in  heavenly  amity, 

And  walk  and  taste  of  conference  sublime. 

Go,  then,  young  soldier,  and  these  orders  bear 

To  Colonel  Campbell,  and  to  Livingston. 

The  disposition  for  the  attack  is  here. 

Bid  them  be  ready,  when  the  morning  breaks, 

To  try  this  city  by  an  escalade." ' 

In  the  progress  of  the  drama,  the  chief  incidents  of  the 
attack  on  Quebec  are  indicated ;  Montgomery,  Chessman, 
and  Macpherson  are  slain ;  heroic  valor  in  the  fight  is  shown 
by  Arnold,  Burr,  Oswald,  Morgan,  Lamb,  and  the  rest  of 
the  American  warriors;  the  ghost  of  General  Montgomery 
appears  upon  the  field  of  his  glorious  death,  pronouncing 
woe  upon  the  king  and  parliament,  and  predicting  final  vic- 
tory for  the  Americans  and  the  birth  of  a  great,  free  empire 
in  the  new  world ;  and  at  last,  Carleton,  the  British  general, 
comes  upon  the  "  wall  of  the  Upper  Town,  exposing  the 
body  of  Montgomery,"  and  calling  upon  the  Americans  to 
surrender  under  promise  of  honorable  and  generous  treat- 
ment. Upon  these  terms,  they  lay  down  their  arms; 
whereupon  Carleton,  violating  his  promise,  turns  upon  them 
with  these  fiendish  words : 

"  Now,  in  my  power,  disarmed  and  reduced, 
I  will  give  scope,  and  scorn  you  with  my  tongue. 
You  vile  rebellious  progeny  of  wrath, 
Fierce  and  malignant  in  Don  Quixotism 
Of  moon-mad  liberty  !     You  bedlam-brood, 
You  viper-lipped  and  serpent-hearted  race, 
Bred  on  the  poison  of  foul  fraud  and  hate, 
Scum  and  offscouring  of  humanity, 
Whom  laws  of  government  to  the  sure  cord 


The  Death,"  etc.  14-16. 


THE   DEA  TH  OF  MONTGQMER  Y.  22$ 

Have  ever  destined  !     And  were  it  not 

That  the  black  vengeance  of  your  countrymen 

Might  dare  retaliate,  and  gibbet  up 

Some  British  prisoner,  each  soul  should  hang, 

And  die  this  day,  in  execrable  form, 

The  death  of  traitors.     Yet,  whatever  shape 

Of  suffering  horrible  can  be  devised, 

In  dreary  dungeon,  and  in  obscure  jail, 

Cold,  dark,  and  comfortless,  and  lacking  bread, 

Shall  be  your  lot,  snake-venomed  parricides. 

And  first,  three  victims  from  your  shattered  band 

Must  to  the  savages  be  given  up, — 

Some  three  Bostonians  sacrificed  and  slain, 

To  glut  the  appetites  of  Indian  chiefs 

Who  at  our  cantico  at  Montreal, 

Drank  of  the  ox-blood,  roasting  his  large  limbs, 

Symbolical  of  rebels  burnt  with  fire. 

Take  these  three  men,  ye  Indian  warriors, 

And  use  them  wantonly,  with  every  pain 

Which  flame's  fierce  element  can  exercise  ; 

And  with  the  sound  of  each  loud  instrument, 

The  drum,  the  horn,  in  wildest  symphony 

With  your  own  howlings,  shall  the  scene  be  graced, 

Save  that  in  terror  oftentimes  awhile 

The  noise  shall  cease,  and  their  own  cries  be  heard."  * 

1  In  the  original  publication  of  this  tragedy,  there  is  a  footnote  by  the  author 
referring  to  these  and  other  words  attributed  to  General  Carleton  :  "  Want  of 
candor  is  very  blameable,  even  in  the  account  given  of  an  enemy.  For  this 
reason  I  have  been  sometimes  uneasy  lest  these  words  put  into  the  mouth  of 
General  Carleton,  should  seem  to  give  a  coloring  to  his  character  beyond  the 
real  complexion  of  his  Excellency's  conduct.  But  I  find  my  conscience  pretty 
much  at  ease  in  this  matter,  when  I  give  my  memory  time  to  recollect  the  in- 
humanity of  the  officers  and  soldiers  under  his  command  to  our  prisoners,  from 
the  moment  our  affairs  began  to  be  on  the  decline  in  Canada.  ...  I  have 
conversed  with  those  who  saws  the  scalps  warm  from  the  heads  of  our  country- 
men. I  have  had  the  relation  from  their  mouths  who  beheld  the  fires  lighted 
up,  and  heard,  with  a  soul-paining  sympathy,  the  horrid  shrieks  and  gloomy 
howlings  of  the  savage  tribes  in  the  execution  of  the  p&or  captives  who,  accord- 
ing to  the  threat  of  Carleton,  were  burned  on  an  island  in  the  river  St.  Lawrence 
after  our  unfortunate  surrender  at  the  Cedars."  P.  51. 


224 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


Of  course,  the  captives  remind  Carleton  of  his  promise, 
and  appeal  to  him  to  be  just  to  them,  even  if  not  merciful; 
but  he  hardens  his  heart  against  them,  reiterates  his  orders, 
and  increases  his  threats  of  further  vengeance.  In  view  of 
all  this,  the  gallant  Virginian  officer,  Morgan,  speaks  these 
words,  which  form  a  fitting  close  to  the  poem : 

"  Sad  thought  of  cruelty  and  outrage  dire  ! 
Not  to  be  paralleled  'mongst  human  kind, 
Save  in  the  tales  of  flesh-devouring  men, 
The  one-eyed  Cyclops,  and  fierce  Cannibal. 
For  what  we  hear  of  Saracen  or  Turk, 
Mogul,  or  Tartar  of  Siberia, 
Is  far  behind  the  deed  of  infamy 
And  horror  mixed,  which  Britons  meditate. 
Nature  herself,  degenerate  from  the  fall, 
In  the  cursed  earth  can  scarcely  furnish  out 
So  much  black  poison  from  the  beasts  and  herbs, 
As  swells  the  dark  hearts  of  these  Royalists. 
The  toad's  foul  mouth,  the  snake's  envenomed  bite, 
Black  spider,  asp,  or  froth  of  rabid  dog 
Is  not  so  deadly  as  these  murderers. 
When  men  far  off,  in  civilized  states, 
Shall  know  the  perfidy  and  breach  of  faith, 
The  thought  remorseless  and  dire  act  of  .these, 
In  every  language  they  shall  execrate 
The  earth-disgracing  name  of  Englishmen  ; 
And  at  the  Last  Day,  when  the  Pit  receives 
Her  gloomy  brood,  and  seen  among  the  rest 
Some  spirit  distinguished  by  ampler  swell 
Of  malice,  envy,  and  soul-griping  hate, 
Pointing  to  him,  the  foul  and  ugly  ghosts 
Of  hell  shall  say—'  That  was  an  Englishman/  "  » 

1 "  The  Death,"  etc.  48-53. 


EPILOGUE  TO   CATO.  22$ 

XI. 


In  1778  Addison's  "  Tragedy  of  Cato  "  was  played 
Bow  Street  Theatre,  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire.  An 
epilogue  for  the  play  was  written  by  Jonathan  Mitchell 
Sewall,  which  shews  how  even  quite  disinterested  theatrical 
representations  then  responded  to  the  military  themes  that 
were  then  universal.  This  epilogue  is  a  parallel  between 
Rome  in  the  time  of  Cato,  and  America  in  the  time  of  its 
Revolutionary  struggle  ;  and  its  concluding  lines  have  never 
yet  been  forgotten  among  us  : 

"  Rise,  then,  my  countrymen  !  for  fight  prepare, 
Gird  on  your  swords,  and  fearless  rush  to  war  ! 
For  your  grieved  country  nobly  dare  to  die, 
And  empty  all  your  veins  for  liberty. 
No  pent-up  Utica  contracts  your  powers, 
But  the  whole  boundless  continent  is  yours  !  "  * 


XII. 


"  The  Motley  Assembly :  a  Farce,  published  for  the  Enter- 
tainment of  the  Curious,"  in  Boston,  in  1779,  is  but  a  slight 
affair  in  itself,  but  of  no  little  significance  to  us  now  as  an 
American  satire  upon  certain  Americans  in  high  life  whose 
patriotism  had  then  grown  cool  under  the  shade  of  misfor- 
tune to  the  American  cause.  It  is  particularly  aimed  at  the 
upper  circles  of  society  in  Boston,  where  it  seems  then  to 
have  become  fashionable  to  sneer  at  the  Revolutionary 
cause,  to  speak  patronizingly  of  Washington,  to  denounce 
the  French  allies  as  both  inefficient  and  perfidious,  and  to 
indulge  in  pensive  regrets  for  the  good  old  days  of  the  Brit- 
ish occupation,  when  Boston  society  was  made  gorgeous  by 
the  presence  of  innumerable  British  officers.  Into  such  a 
company  of  high-bred  Bostonians,  where 

1  "  Occasional  Addresses."  Edited  by  Laurence  Hutton  and  William  Carey. 
New  York,  1890. 


226  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  Whigs  and  Tories,  joined  by  wayward  chance, 
Should  hand  in  hand  lead  on  the  sprightly  dance,"  ' 

-«*»  ^*-y  *" 

comes  one  day  "  Captain  Aid,"  a  gallant  young  officer  of 
the  Revolutionary  army.  He  accepts  U  glass  of  wine ;  and 
having  drunk  to  the  health  of  the  ladies,  and  of  "  Mr. 
Runt,"  the  only  person  of  his  own  sex  whom  he  finds  there, 
he  very  properly  proposes  the  health  of  "  his  most  Christian 
Majesty,  and  godlike,  glorious  Washington."  To  this 
toast,  Mrs.  Flourish,  the  hostess,  responds  with  an  almost 
inaudible  assent;  whereupon  the  excellent  little  "  Mr. 
Runt  "  speaks  up  : 

"  With  all  my  heart,  Captain.  I  really  take  that  Wash- 
ington to  be  a  very  clever  fellow. 

Aid :  Let  us  be  silent  on  that  subject,  Mr.  Runt — we 
have  neither  time  nor  talents  to  do  it  justice. 

Mrs.  Flourish :  Why,  he  is  no  more  than  man,  Captain 
Aid. 

Aid:  Then  all  mankind  beside  are  less,  madam. 

Mrs.  Flourish:  You  have  not  seen  all  mankind,  sir.  I 
believe  Mr.  Washington,  or  General  Washington,  if  you 
please,  is  a  very  honest,  good  kind  of  a  man,  and  has  taken 
infinite  pains  to  keep  your  army  together,  and  I  wish  he 
may  find  his  account  in  it.  But  doubtless  there  are  his. 
equals — so  say  no  more. 

Aid:  If  you  meant  that  as  a  compliment,  madam,  it  is 
really  so  cold  a  one,  that  it  has  made  me  shiver.  I  will, 
therefore,  with  your  leave,  drop  the  subject,  and  take 
another  glass  of  wine. 

Runt :  Ay,  ay,  that  's  right,  Captain — I  think  there  are 
more  fit  subjects  for  a  young  gentleman's  contemplation  in 
this  room. 

Aid:  Still  gallant,  Mr.  Runt.  But  the  ladies  must  par- 
don me  if  I  cannot  readily  assent  to  the  justice  of  your 
rebuke,  when  I  assure  them  that  such  charms  as  theirs 
would  justify  my  inattention  to  any  other  subject  but  what 
concerns  my  general  or  my  country. 

1  "  The  Motley  Assembly,"  15.     These  lines  are  a  part  of  the  epiloerue. 


THE  BLOCKHEADS.  22/ 

Miss  Taxall:  I  believe  we  are  all  very  ready  to  pardon 
your  inattention  to  us  at  all  times. 

Aid :  Curse  your  impudence.  [Aside.]  Knowing  my 
inclination  and  particular  attention  to  please  and  oblige  the 
ladies,  you  say  what  you  please  without  the  hazard  of 
offending.  And — as  you  seem  disposed  at  this  time  to  be 
merry  at  my  expense — I  am  extremely  sorry  to  deprive  you 
of  the  opportunity  by  being  obliged  to  leave  you.  [Exit 
Aid.]"  l 

XIII. 

Our  record  of  the  dramatic  writings  produced  here  during 
the  Revolutionary  time,  comes  to  a  rather  inglorious  end  in 
a  piece  of  crudity  which,  for  its  title,  repeats  one  already 
made  use  of :  "  The  Blockheads,  or,  Fortunate  Contractor. 
An  Opera,  in  Two  Acts,  as  it  was  performed  at  New  York. 
The  music  entirely  new,  composed  by  several  of  the  most 
eminent  masters  in  Europe."  Printed  in  London  in  1782," 
it  professes  to  be  a  reprint  of  an  edition  already  issued  in 
New  York.  It  embodies  in  light,  colloquial  form,  and  with 
some  amusing  parts  in  dialect — as  between  a  Frenchman 
and  a  Dutchman — those  satirical  views  of  the  French 
alliance  which  were  then  sincerely  cherished  by  the  Loyal- 
ists in  New  York  and  elsewhere. 

1  "  The  Motley  Assembly,"  9-10.     That  this  play  was  by  Mercy  Warren,  is 
the  not  improbable   suggestion   of  P.  L.   Ford.     "  Beginnings  of  American 
Dramatic   Literature,"  24. 

2  A  copy  of  this  rare  tract  is  in  the  Lenox  Library.     I  do  not  know  that  any 
one  has  yet  come  across  a  copy  of  the  earlier  New  York  edition,  which,  after 
all,  may  have  been  a  myth. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

PRISON     LITERATURE. 

I. — Special  interest  attaching  to  narratives  of  American  prisoners  of  war  in  the 
hands  of  the  British — Ethan  Allen — His  complex  character,  and  his 
achievements  with  sword  and  tongue — A  prisoner  of  war  from  1775  to 
1778— "A  Narrative  of  Colonel  Ethan  Allen's  Captivity  "—Its  quality  as 
a  book — Reasons  for  the  severities  bestowed  upon  him — His  experience 
with  General  Prescott  in  Canada — His  voyage  to  England — His  treatment 
there — The  astonishment  excited  by  him  among  the  natives  of  that  isle — 
His  compulsory  voyages  on  various  British  vessels — At  Cape  Fear,  Halifax, 
New  York — On  parole  in  New  York — His  sight  of  the  sufferings  of  Amer- 
ican prisoners  there. 

II. — "A  Narrative  of  the  Capitivity  and  Treatment  of  John  Dodge  by  the 
English  at  Detroit,"  1779. 

III. — The  bad  preeminence  of  the  British  prison-ships  in  New  York  harbor — 
"  The  Old  Jersey  Captive,  or,  a  Narrative  of  the  Captivity  of  Thomas 
Andros  on  board  the  Old  Jersey  Prison-Ship,"  1781 — The  career  of  Andros 
from  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  till  1781 — His  capture— His  descriptions 
of  the  "  Old  Jersey,"  and  of  the  ways  of  life  and  death  thereon. 

IV. — "A  Narrative  of  the  Capture  of  Henry  Laurens,  and  of  His  Confinement 
in  the  Tower  of  London  "  — The  high  character  of  Laurens — His  career 
as  merchant  and  statesman — President  of  Congress — Sails  as  American 
commissioner  to  Holland  in  1780 — His  capture  at  sea — His  imprisonment 
in  the  Tower  from  1780  to  1782— The  charm  of  his  story  of  this  experience. 

J. 

PERHAPS  no  aspect  of  the  Revolutionary  war  has  touched 
more  powerfully  the  imagination  and  sympathy  of  the 
American  people,  than  that  relating  f o  the  sufferings  borne 
by  their  own  sailors  and  soldiers  who  chanced  to  fall  as  pris- 
oners into  the  hands  of  the  enemy ;  and  for  many  years  after 
the  war,  the  bitterness  which  it  brought  into  the  hearts  of 
men,  was  kept  alive  and  was  hardened  into  a  perdurable 
race-tradition  through  the  tales  which  were  told  by  the  sur- 
228 


ETHAN  ALLEN  2  29 

vivors  of  the  British  prison-pens  and  especially  of  the  Brit- 
ish prison-ships. 

The  most  celebrated  of  all  these  narratives  of  military 
captivity  was  that  produced  in  1779  by  Ethan  Allen,  a  blus- 
tering frontier  hero  of  not  unchallenged  political  integrity  * ; 
described  by  a  fellow-patriot  in  the  first  year  of  the  war  as 
"  a  high-flying  genius,"  who  "  pursues  every  scheme  on  its 
first  impression,  without  consideration,  and  [with]  much  less 
judgment"2;  an  able-minded  ignoramus,  of  rough  and 
ready  humor,  of  boundless  self-confidence,  and  of  a  shrewd- 
ness in  thought  and  action  equal  to  almost  any  emergency ; 
a  warrior  who,  "  when  barred  up  in  gold  lace  .  .  .  felt 
himself  as  grand  as  the  Great  Mogul,"  '  and  who,  having 
fighting  abilities  of  the  dramatic  and  oratorical  kind,  was 
not  incapable,  upon  occasion,  of  playing  the  part  of  military 
wind-bag  and  braggart  conqueror. 

Having  won  great  notoriety  by  his  exploit  in  the  capture 
of  Ticonderoga  in  May,  1775,  he  was,  in  the  following 
autumn,  invited  to  accompany  the  little  army  under  General 
Montgomery  upon  its  march  into  Canada.  Before  very 
long,  while  in  command  of  a  small  party  of  troops  not  far 
from  Montreal,  he  was  put  to  flight,  overtaken,  and  forced 
to  surrender;  he  then  remained  as  a  prisoner  in  the  hands 
of  the  enemy  for  nearly  three  years, — gaining  his  liberty, 
upon  exchange,  in  May,  1778.  Before  the  end  of  March, 
1779,  he  had  written  out  his  story  of  this  long  and  bitter 
experience,  which  he  published  under  the  title  of  "  A  Nar- 
rative of  Colonel  Ethan  Allen's  Captivity."  4 

1  The  question  of  Ethan  Allen's  alleged  treason  to  the  American  cause  is 
briefly  stated  in  "  The  Magazine  of  Am.  Hist.,"  viii.,  221-222  ;  and  on  pages 
438-439  of  the  same  volume  is  an  article  by  H.  E.  Hayden,  discrediting  the 
charge. 

2  "  The  New  England  Chronicle,"  for  2  Nov.,  1775. 

3  So  described  in  1781  by  an  eye-witness  of  his  splendor,  Ann  Eliza  Bleecker, 
in  her  "  Works,"  153. 

4  First  published  in  Philadelphia  in  1779,  and  repeatedly  there  and  elsewhere 
during  the  Revolution  ;  since  then  at  Philadelphia  in  1799,  at  Walpole  in  1807, 
at  Albany  in  1814,  at  Burlington  in  1838  and  1846,  in  Boston  in  1845  a°d  1849, 


230  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Of  this  little  book,  it  may  fairly  be  said,  that  it  is  a  mirror 
not  only  of  its  author's  character,  but  of  that  of  many  of 
his  compatriots — especially  along  the  rougher  edge  of  our 
American  society.  As  a  literary  crudity,  we  may  easily 
deride  it,  and  fling  it  aside  as  beneath  our  notice;  but  it  in- 
structs us,  it  amuses  us,  it  does  not  bore  us;  and  with  all 
its  grotesque  faults,  it  is  an  authentic  American  product  of 
the  period.  We  cannot  wonder  at  its  popularity :  it  is  a 
series  of  staunch,  blunt,  boastful,  blundering,  fearless,  words 
from  out  of  the  heart  of  a  typical  American  man,  and  it 
easily  finds  it  way  again  to  the  hearts  of  all  such.  Indeed, 
there  is  in  Ethan  Allen's  "  Narrative  "  so  much  of  the  best 
and  of  the  worst  qualities  of  his  Revolutionary  fellow- 
countrymen — so  much  talent,  energy,  ingenuity,  audacity, 
such  composure  in  the  presence  of  danger  and  pain,  such 
rampant  scorn  of  authority  or  discipline,  such  humor  and 
good  humor,  such  invincible  hope,  such  impatience,  such 
irascibility,  such  colossal  egotism,  that  we  can  hardly  go 
wrong  in  accepting  it  as  a  thing  having  the  very  age  and 
body  of  the  time — his  form  and  pressure. 

As  Ethan  Allen  was  captured  nearly  a  year  before  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  and  while  as  yet  the  colonial 
uprising  was  under  the  first  opprobrium  attaching  to  a  fla- 
grant case  of  rebellion,  it  was  inevitable  that  he,  as  a  most 
conspicuous  and  a  most  dangerous  rebel,  should  have  had  to 

at  Day  ton  in  1849,  and  probably  at  other  times  and  places  beyond  present 
record.  I  have  looked  into  many  of  these  editions,  but  for  the  present  purpose 
have  used  the  Burlington  edition  of  1846— absurdly  calling  itself  the  "  fourth 
edition."  Ethan  Allen  was.  fond  of. nearly  all  sorts  of  big  things,  especially  of 
big  book-titles,  of  which  his  own  title  to  this  book  is  a  model :  "A  Narrative  of 
Colonel  Ethan  Allen's  Captivity,  from  the  Time  of  his  being  taken  by  the 
British,  near  Montreal,  on  the  25th  Day  of  September,  1775,  to  the  Time  of 
his  Exchange,  on  the  6th  Day  of  May,  1778  :  Containing  his  Voyages  and 
Travels,  with  the  most  remarkable  Occurrences  respecting  himself  and  many 
other  Continental  Prisoners  of  different  Ranks  and  Characters,  which  fell  under 
his  Observation,  in  the  course  of  the  same  ;  particularly,  the  Destruction  of  the 
Prisoners  at  New  York,  by  General  Sir  William  Howe,  in  the  Years  1776  and 
1777-  Interspersed  with  some  political  Observations.  Written  by  Himself  and 
now  published  for  the  Information  of  the  Curious  in  all  Nations." 


ETHAN  ALLEN.  23! 

bear  the  very  brunt  of  all  the  contempt  and  wrath — of  all 
that  craving  for  instant  and  savage  vengeance  upon  him — 
which  his  captors  would  so  naturally  feel.  It  is  probable 
that  in  all  the  Thirteen  Colonies  was  then  to  be  found  no 
other  man  better  fitted  by  boldness,  adroitness,  toughness, 
pride,  fortitude,  cheerfulness,  and  by  terrific  volubility  in 
invective,  to  be  a  pioneer  prisoner  in  the  hands  of  the 
British,  and  to  educate  them,  as  it  were,  in  the  graces  and 
virtues  of  a  proper  conduct  towards  us,  by  giving  every 
Briton  to  his  face  scorn  for  scorn,  a  pride  like  his  own  or  like 
Lucifer's,  a  fearlessness  that  could  defy  the  Tower  or  Ty- 
burn or  Tophet,  a  tenacity  of  will  that  was  able  to  wear  out 
any  tormentor;  finally,  an  amplitude  and  an  appalling  humor 
in  profane  swearing  well  calculated  to  disconcert  and  abash 
the  very  men  who  called  themselves  his  masters.  From  the 
beginning  he  seems  to  have  fixed  upon  the  line  of  conduct 
which  he  should  hold  towards  them  :  no  meekness,  no  defer- 
ence, no  apology,  no  acknowledgment  of  wrong  or  of  in- 
feriority, no  submission  to  insult  or  abuse,  no  solicitation 
of  kindness  as  a  mere  favor,  above  all,  no  whining,  and  an 
imperturbable  demand  for  his  rights  as  a  patriot,  a  prisoner 
of  war,  and  a  gentleman.  "  No  abuse  was  offered  me,"  says 
he,  in  giving  an  account  of  his  capture,  "  till  I  came  to  the 
barrack  yard  at  Montreal,  where  I  met  General  Prescott, 
who  asked  me  my  name — which  I  told  him.  He  then  asked 
me  whether  I  was  that  Colonel  Allen  who  took  Ticonderoga. 
I  told  him  I  was  the  very  same  man.  Then  he  shook  his 
cane  over  my  head,  calling  many  hard  names — among  which 
he  frequently  used  the  word  'rebel  ' — and  put  himself  in  a 
great  rage.  I  told  him  he  would  do  well  not  to  cane  me — for 
I  was  not  accustomed  to  it — and  shook  my  fist  at  him,  tell- 
ing him  that  was  the  beetle  of  mortality  for  him  if  he  offered 
to  strike;  upon  which  Captain  M'Cloud,  of  the  British, 
pulled  him  by  the  skirt  and  whispered  to  him,  as  he  after- 
wards told  me,  to  this  import — that  it  was  inconsistent 
with  his  honor  to  strike  a  prisoner."  After  some  delay 

1  "  Narrative,"  etc.  29. 


232  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

and  various  exciting  incidents,  General  Prescott  "  made 
me  the  following  reply:  '  I  will  not  execute  you  now,  but 
you  shall  grace  a  halter  at  Tyburn,  God  damn  you.'  I  re- 
member I  disdained  his  mentioning  sucb  a  place.  I  was, 
notwithstanding,  a  little  pleased  with  the  expression,  as  it 
significantly  conveyed  to  me  the  idea  of  postponing  the 
present  appearance  of  death.  Besides,  his  sentence  was  by 
no  means  final  as  to  '  gracing  a  halter,' — although  I  had 
some  anxiety  about  it  after  I  landed  in  England,  as  the 
reader  will  find  in  the  course  of  this  history.  General  Pres- 
cott then  ordered  one  of  his  officers  to  take  me  on  board  the 
'  Gaspee  '  schooner  of  war,  and  confine  me,  hands  and  feet,  in 
irons, — which  was  done  the  same  afternoon  I  was  taken."  ' 
"  The  handcuff  was  of  the  common  size  and  form;  but  my 
leg-irons,  I  should  imagine,  would  weigh  thirty  pounds. 
The  bar  was  eight  feet  long,  and  very  substantial;  the 
shackles,  which  encompassed  my  ankles,  were  very  tight.  I 
was  told  by  the  officer  who  put  them  on,  that  it  was  the 
king's  plate;  and  I  heard  other  of  their  officers  say,  that  it 
would  weigh  forty-weight.  The  irons  were  so  close  upon 
my  ankles  that  I  could  not  lay  down  in  any  other  manner 
than  on  my  back.  I  was  put  into  the  lowest  and  most 
wretched  part  of  the  vessel,  where  I  got  the  favor  of  a 
chest  to  sit  on.  The  same  answered  for  my  bed  at  night; 
.  .  .  I  was  confined  in  the  manner  I  have  related,  on 
board  the  '  Gaspee  '  schooner,  about  six  weeks ;  during  which 
time  I  was  obliged  to  throw  out  plenty  of  extravagant  lan- 
guage, which  answered  certain  purposes  at  that  time,  better 
than  to  grace  a  history.  To  give  an  instance :  upon  being 
insulted,  in  a  fit  of  anger  I  twisted  off  a  nail  with  my  teeth 
— which  I  took  to  be  a  ten-penny  nail ;  it  went  through  the 
mortise  of  the  bar  of  my  handcuff.  And  at  the  same  time, 
I  swaggered  over  those  who  abused  me;  particularly  a 
Doctor  Dace,  who  told  me  that  I  was  outlawed  by  New 
York,  and  deserved  death  for  several  years  past,  was  at  last 
fully  ripened  for  the  halter,  and  in  a  fair  way  to  obtain  it. 

3  "  Narrative,"  etc.  30-31. 


ETHAN  ALLEN.  233 

When  I  challenged  him,  he  excused  himself  in  consequence, 
as  he  said,  of  my  being  a  criminal;  but  I  flung  such  a  flood 
of  language  at  him  that  it  shocked  him  and  the  spectators 
— for  my  anger  was  very  great.  I  heard  one  say — '  Damn 
him,  can  he  eat  iron  ? '  "  ' 

Frequently  in  the  course  of  his  story — as  in  the  foregoing 
passages — the  hero  refers  with  no  little  satisfaction  to  his 
own  extraordinary  gift  for  the  use  of  strong  language — • 
those  explosive  and  sulphurous  vocables  with  which,  in 
cases  of  conflict  with  his  fellow-men,  he  seems  to  have 
flooded  the  entire  neighborhood,  and  to  have  imparted  to 
his  antagonists  a  horror-stricken  desire  for  some  form  of 
rapid  retreating  motion.  After  a  voyage  of  about  forty 
days,  during  which  he  received  the  most  brutal  treatment, 
the  vessel  came  within  sight  of  the  English  coast;  "  soon 
after  which,"  says  he,  "  the  prisoners  were  taken  from  their 
gloomy  abode,  being  permitted  to  see  the  light  of  the  sun, 
and  breathe  fresh  air,  which  to  us  was  very  refreshing.  The 
day  following,  we  landed  at  Falmouth.  .  ,....,-  .  When  the 
prisoners  were  landed,  multitudes  of  the  citizens  of  Fal- 
mouth, excited  by  curiosity,  crowded  to  see  us,  which  was 
equally  gratifying  to  us.  I  saw  numbers  on  the  tops  of 
houses;  and  the  rising  adjacent  grounds  were  covered  with 
them.  The  throng  was  so  great,  that  the  king's  officers 
were  obliged  to  draw  their  swords  and  force  a  passage  to 
Pendennis  Castle,  which  was  near  a  mile  from  the  town, 
where  we  were  closely  confined,  in  consequence  of  orders 
from  General  Carleton,  who  then  commanded  in  Canada. 
.  .  .  The  reader  will  readily  conceive  I  was  anxious 
about  my  preservation,  knowing  that  I  was  in  the  power  of 
a  haughty  and  cruel  nation.  ...  Those  that  daily  came 
in  great  numbers  out  of  curiosity  to  see  me,  both  gentle 
and  simple,  united  in  this — that  I  would  be  hanged.  A 
gentleman  from  America,  by  the  name  of  Temple,  and  who 
was  friendly  to  me,  just  whispered  me  in  the  ear,  and  told 
me  that  bets  were  laid  in  London  that  I  would  be  exe- 

1  "  Narrative,"  etc.  30-34. 


234  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

cuted;  he  likewise  privately  gave  me  a  guinea,  but  durst 
say  but  little  to  me."  '  "I  could  not  but  feel  inwardly 
extremely  anxious  for  my  fate.  This  I,  however,  con- 
cealed from  the  prisoners,  as  well  as  from  the  enemy  who 
were  perpetually  shaking  the  halter  at  me.  I  nevertheless 
treated  them  with  scorn  and  contempt.  ...  I  now 
clearly  recollect  that  my  mind  was  so  resolved,  that  I  would 
not  have  trembled  or  shewn  the  least  fear,  as  I  was  sensible 
it  could  not  alter  my  fate,  nor  do  more  than  reproach  my 
memory,  make  my  last  act  despicable  to  my  enemies,  and 
eclipse  the  other  actions  of  my  life.  For  I  reasoned  thus: 
that  nothing  was  more  common  than  for  men  to  die  with 
their  friends  around  them,  weeping  and  lamenting  over 
them,  but  not  able  to  help  them,  which  was  in  reality  not 
different  in  the  consequence  of  it  from  such  a  death  as  I 
was  apprehensive  of;  and  as  death  was  the  natural  con- 
sequence of  animal  life,  to  which  the  laws  of  nature  subject 
mankind,  to  be  timorous  and  uneasy  as  to  the  event  and 
manner  of  it,  was  inconsistent  with  the  character  of  a  phi- 
losopher and  soldier.  The  cause  I  was  engaged  in,  I  ever 
viewed  worthy  hazarding  my  life  for;  nor  was  I,  in  the 
most  critical  moments  of  trouble,  sorry  that  I  engaged  in 
it;  and  as  to  the  world  of  spirits,  though  I  knew  nothing 
of  the  mode  or  manner  of  it,  I  expected  nevertheless,  when 
I  should  arrive  at  such  a  world,  that  I  should  be  as  well 
treated  as  other  gentlemen  of  my  merit."  * 

It  fell  in  with  his  sense  of  the  comic  element  so  plenti- 
fully mixed  with  all  this  tragedy,  that  the  ingenuous  natives 
of  the  English  isle  were  apparently  impressed  with  a  notion 
that  he  was  some  uncouth  monster  of  the  American  forests, 
gifted  with  powers  extraordinary,  possibly  supernatural, 
very  likely  dangerous;  and  it  gave  him  amusement  to 
minister  to  this  impression,  while  never  failing  to  demand 
for  himself  the  treatment  due  to  his  character  as  an  Ameri- 
can patriot  and  hero.  "  I  am  apprehensive,"  he  says, 
"  my  Canadian  dress  contributed  not  a  little  to  the  surprise 
"  Narrative,"  etc.  40-42.  *  Ibid.  44-46. 


ETHAN  ALLEN.  2$$ 

and  excitement  of  curiosity.  To  see  a  gentleman  in  Eng- 
land regularly  dressed  and  well  behaved,  would  be  no  siglfc 
at  all ;  but  such  a  rebel  as  they  were  pleased  to  call  me,  it  is 
probable,  was  never  before  seen  in  England."  '  "  Among 
the  great  numbers  of  people  who  came  to  the  castle  to  see 
the  prisoners,  some  gentlemen  told  me  that  they  had  come 
fifty  miles  on  purpose  to  see  me,  and  desired  to  ask  me  a 
number  of  questions.  .  .  .  Then  one  of  them  asked 
me,  what  my  occupation  in  life  had  been.  I  answered  him, 
that  in  my  younger  days  I  had  studied  divinity,  but  was  a 
conjurer  by  profession.  He  replied,  that  I  conjured  wrong 
at  the  time  I  was  taken ;  and  I  was  obliged  to  own  that  I 
mistook  a  figure  at  that  time,  but  that  I  had  conjured  them 
out  of  Ticonderoga.  This  was  a  place  of  great  notoriety 
in  England,  so  that  the  joke  seemed  to  go  in  my  favor. 

"  It  was  a  common  thing  for  me  to  be  taken  out  of  close 
confinement  into  a  spacious  green  in  the  castle,  or  rather 
parade,  where  numbers  of  gentlemen  and  ladies  were  ready 
to  see  and  hear  me.  I  often  entertained  such  audiences 
with  harangues  on  the  impracticability  of  Great  Britain's 
conquering  the  then  colonies  of  America.  At  one  of  these 
times  I  asked  a  gentleman  for  a  bowl  of  punch,  and  he 
ordered  his  servant  to  bring  it, — which  he  did,  and  offered 
it  to  me ;  but  I  refused  to  take  it  from  the  hand  of  his 
servant.  He  then  gave  it  to  me  with  his  own  hand, — refus- 
ing to  drink  with  me  in  consequence  of  my  being  a  state- 
criminal.  However,  I  took  the  punch,  and  drank  it  all 
down  at  one  draught,  and  handed  the  gentleman  the  bowl. 
This  made  the  spectators,  as  well  as  myself,  merry."  " 

As  it  turned  out,  the  Londoners  who  had  staked  their 
money  on  the  faith  that  he  would  be  hanged,  lost  it;  for, 
in  January,  1776,  instead  of  gracing  a  halter  at  Tyburn,  he 
was,  with  other  prisoners,  put  on  board  an  English  frigate, 
and  was  thus  started  again  upon  his  long  and  painful  wan- 
derings over  land  and  sea,  being  now  in  the  harbor  of  Cape 
Fear,  and  now  in  New  York,  now  in  Halifax,  and  now 

1  "  Narrative,"  etc.  48.  9  Ibid.  46-47. 


236  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

again  in  New  York.  There,  at  last,  in  October,  1776,  he 
was  permitted  to  go  out  upon  parole,  within  the  limits  of 
the  city:  "  I  soon  projected  means  to  live  in  some  measure 
agreeably  to  my  rank,  though  I  was  destitute  of  cash.  My 
constitution  was  almost  worn  out  by  such  a  long  and  barbar- 
ous captivity.  The  enemy  gave  out  that  I  was  crazy  and 
wholly  unmanned ;  but  my  vitals  held  sound,  nor  was  I  de- 
lirious any  more  than  I  had  been  from  my  youth  up ;  but 
my  extreme  circumstances,  at  certain  times,  rendered  it 
politic  to  act  in  some  measure  the  mad  man." 

Coming  thus  to  the  headquarters  of  the  enemy  in  the 
midst  of  their  great  successes  upon  Long  Island,  in  New 
York  City,  and  elsewhere  in  that  neighborhood,  he  was  able 
to  speak  as  an  eye-witness  of  the  sufferings  of  the  American 
prisoners  there,  and  to  bear  some  testimony  well  fitted  to 
kindle  the  sympathy  and  the  undying  wrath  of  his  fellow- 
countrymen:  "  I  next  invite  the  reader  to  a  retrospective 
sight  and  consideration  of  the  doleful  scene  of  inhumanity 
exercised  by  General  Sir  William  Howe,  and  the  army  under 
his  command,  towards  the  prisoners  taken  on  Long  Island 
on  the  27th  day  of  August,  1776;  sundry  of  whom  were  in 
an  inhuman  and  barbarous  manner  murdered  after  they  had 
surrendered  their  arms  : — particularly  a  General  Odel,  or 
Woodhull,  of  the  militia,  who  was  hacked  to  pieces  with 
cutlasses,  when  alive,  by  the  light  horsemen ;  and  a  Captain 
Fellows,  of  the  continental  army,  who  was  thrust  through 
with  a  bayonet,  of  which  wound  he  died  instantly.  Sundry 
others  were  hanged  up  by  the  neck  till  they  were  dead,— 
five  on  the  limb  of  a  white-oak  tree,  and  without  any  reason 
assigned,  except  that  they  were  fighting  for  the  only  bless- 
ing worth  preserving.  And,  indeed,  those  who  had  the  mis- 
fortune to  fall  into  their  hands  at  Fort  Washington,  in  the 
month  of  November  following,  met  with  but  little  better 
usage,  except  that  they  were  reserved  from  immediate 
death,  to  famish  and  die  with  hunger.  In  fine,  the  word 

rebel,'  applied  to  any  vanquished  persons,  without  regard 

1  "  Narrative,"  etc.  77. 


ETHAN  ALLEN.  2tf 

to  rank,  who  were  in  the  continental  service  on  the  2/th  of 
August  aforesaid,  was  thought  by  the  enemy  sufficient  to 
sanctify  whatever  cruelties  they  were  pleased  to  inflict,  death 
itself  not  excepted."  "  The  private  soldiers  who  were 
brought  to  New  York,  were  crowded  into  churches,  and 
environed  with  slavish  Hessian  guards,  a  people  of  a  strange 
language,  who  were  sent  to  America  for  no  other  design  but 
cruelty  and  desolation  ;  and,  at  others,  by  merciless  Britons, 
whose  mode,  of  communicating  ideas  being  intelligible  in 
this  country,  served  only  to  tantalize  and  insult  the  helpless 
and  perishing;  but  above  all,  the  hellish  delight  and  triumph 
of  the  Tories  over  them,  as  they  were  dying  by  hundreds. 
This  was  too  much  for  me  to  bear  as  a  spectator;  for  I  saw 
the  Tories  exulting  over  the  dead  bodies  of  their  murdered 
countrymen.  I  have  gone  into  the  churches  and  seen  sun- 
dry of  the  prisoners  in  the  agonies  of  death,  in  consequence 
of  very  hunger,  and  others  speechless,  and  very  near  death, 
biting  pieces  of  chips;  others  pleading,  for  God's  sake,  for 
something  to  eat,  and  at  the  same  time  shivering  with  cold. 
Hollow  groans  saluted  my  ears,  and  despair  seemed  to  be 
imprinted  on  every  of  their  countenances.  The  filth  in 
these  churches  .  .  .  was  almost  beyond  description. 
I  have  seen  in  one  of  these  churches  seven  dead  at 
the  same  time,  lying  among  the  excrements  of  their  bodies. 
.  ..  .  The  provision  dealt  out  to  the  prisoners  was  by  no 
means  sufficient  for  the  support  of  life.  ...  I  saw  some 
of  them  sucking  bones  after  they  were  speechless ;  others, 
who  could  yet  speak  and  had  the  use  of  their  reason,  urged 
me  in  the  strongest  and  most  pathetic  manner,  to  use  my 
interest  in  their  behalf."  * 

1  "  Narrative,"  etc.  78-79. 

9  Ibid.  79-81.  A  good  example  of  Ethan  Allen's  power  in  robust  contro- 
versy may  be  seen  in  a  little  book  of  his  published  in  1779, — "A  Vindication 
of  the  Opposition  of  Vermont  to  the  Government  of  New  York."  As  a  con- 
troversial writer  whose  rage  in  assertion  was  unchastened  either  by  adequate 
knowledge,  or  by  any  suspicion  of  his  lack  of  it,  his  reputation,  doubtless,  rests 
on  a  work  published  in  1784,  under  this  entirely  characteristic  title  : — "  Reason 
the  Only  Oracle  of  Man  ;  or,  A  Compenduous  System  of  Natural  Religion. 


238  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

II. 

Another  authentic  and  very  stirring  specimen  of  this  sort 
of  prison-literature,  is  "  A  Narrative  of  the  Capture  and 
Treatment  of  John  Dodge,  by  the  English  at  Detroit," 
written  by  Dodge  himself  and  published  at  Philadelphia  in 
1779.  The  author,  a  native  of  Connecticut,  had  settled  as 
an  Indian  trader  at  Sandusky  in  1770;  had  acquired  much 
facility  in  the  Indian  dialects  thereabout,  and  much  influ- 
ence over  the  Indians  themselves;  and  having,  on  account 
of  his  stanch  and  too  competent  Americanism,  become  an 
object  of  suspicion  to  the  English  officers  in  that  region, 
had  been  pounced  upon  by  them  and  thrown  for  safe-keep- 
ing into  their  prison-den  at  Detroit,  where  the  most  barbar- 
ous treatment  awaited  him,  and  where  he  was  in  constant 
peril  of  murder.  Of  all  these  ugly  doings  and  sufferings, 
this  little  book  tells  the  story,  and  it  does  so  with  graphic 
simplicity  and  after  the  manner  of  a  man  who  is  speaking 
the  truth. 

III. 

Perhaps  all  American  prisoners  at  Montreal,  or  Dartmoor, 
at  Halifax,  or  Detroit,  had  some  right  to  deem  themselves 
the  very  children  of  good  luck,  by  comparison  with  any  of 
their  countrymen  in  captivity  who  chanced  to  form  an  ac- 
quaintance with  the  inside  of  the  British  prison-ships  in  the 
harbor  of  New  York.  Of  these  prison-ships  was  born  a 
very  considerable  literature,— a  literature  in  itself  most 
pathetic  and  implacable, — the  literature  of  a  realm  shut  away 
apparently  from  the  pity  of  God  or  man  and  given  over  to 
be  the  very  dwelling-place  of  rage  and  brutality,  of  filth, 
foul  air,  hunger,  thirst,  pestilence,  blasphemy,  madness. 

No  better  example  of  such  naive  chronicles  can  be  chosen, 
than  "  The  Old  Jersey  Captive,  or,  a  Narrative  of  the  Cap- 
Alternately  adorned  with  Confutations  of  a  Variety  of  Doctrines  incompatible 
with  it ;  Deduced  from  the  most  exalted  Ideas  which  we  are  able  to  form  of  the 
Divine  and  Human  Characters,  and  from  the  Universe  in  General." 


THOMAS  AXDROS.  239 

tivity  of  Thomas  Andros,  ...  on  Board  the  Old 
Jersey  Prison-Ship  at  New  York,  1781."  At  the  breaking 
out  of  hostilities  in  1775,  Thomas  Andros  was  but  a  lad  of 
sixteen,  laboring  on  a  farm  near  Plainfield  in  Connecticut, 
his  mother  being  then  a  widow  and  in  much  poverty.  As 
the  news  from  Lexington  and  Concord  passed  that  way, 
this  boy  enlisted  as  a  soldier,  and  thereafter  served  in  sev- 
eral campaigns.  In  1781,  having  taken  employment  on 
board  an  American  privateer,  and  being  one  of  a  crew  put 
in  charge  of  a  prize-vessel  which  they  were  to-  carry  into 
port,  he  and  all  his  mates  were  captured  by  the  enemy  on 
the  27th  of  August,  1781,  were  taken  to  New  York,  and 
were  there  cast  into  that  floating  prison,  the  ship  "  Old  Jer- 
sey," around  which  are  gathered  so  many  baleful  memories 
of  the  Revolution.  "  This  was,"  writes  Andros,  "  an  old 
sixty-four  gun  ship,  which  through  age  had  become  unfit 
for  further  actual  service.  She  was  stripped  of  every  spar 
and  all  her  rigging,  .  .  .  and  nothing  remained  but  an 
old,  unsightly,  rotten  hulk.  Her  dark  and  filthy  external 
appearance  perfectly  corresponded  with  the  death  and  de- 
spair that  reigned  within.  .  .  .  She  was  moored  about 
three  quarters  of  a  mile  to  the  eastward  of  Brooklyn  ferry 
near  a  tide-mill  on  the  Long  Island  shore.  The  nearest 
distance  to  land  was  about  twenty  rods.  And  doubtless  no 
other  ship  in  the  British  navy  ever  proved  the  means  of  the 
destruction  of  so  many  human  beings.  It  is  computed  that 
not  less  than  eleven  thousand  American  seamen  perished 
in  her.  But  after  it  was  known  that  it  was  next  to  certain 
death  to  confine  a  prisoner  here  the  inhumanity  and  wicked- 
ness of  doing  it  was  about  the  same  as  if  he  had  been  taken 
into  the  city  and  deliberately  shot  on  some  public  square. 
But  as  if  mercy  had  fled  from  the  earth,  here  we  were 
doomed  to  dwell.  And  never  while  I  was  on  board,  did 
any  Howard  or  angel  of  pity  appear  to  inquire  into  or  alle- 
viate our  woes.  Once  or  twice,  by  the  order  of  a  stranger 
on  the  quarter  deck,  a  bag  of  apples  were  hurled  promiscu- 
ously into  the  midst  of  hundreds  of  prisoners  crowded 


240  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

together  as  thick  as  they  could  stand,  and  life  and  limbs 
were  endangered  by  the  scramble.  This,  instead  of  com- 
passion, was  a  cruel  sport.  When  I  saw  it  about  to  com- 
mence, I  fled  to  the  most  distant  part  of  the  ship. 

"  On  the  commencement  of  the  first  evening,  we  were 
driven  down  to  darkness  between  decks,  secured  by  iron 
gratings  and  an  armed  soldiery.  And  now  a  scene  of  horror 
which  baffles  all  description  presented  itself.  On  every  side 
wretched,  desponding  shapes  of  men  could  be  seen.  Around 
the  well  room  an  armed  guard  were  forcing  up  the  prisoners 
to  the  winches,  to  clear  the  ship  of  water  and  prevent  her 
sinking,  and  little  else  could  be  heard  but  a  roar  of  mutual 
execrations,  reproaches,  and  insults.  During  this  opera- 
tion, there  was  a  small  dim  light  admitted  below,  but  it 
served  to  make  darkness  more  visible,  and  horror  more 
terrific.  In  my  reflections  I  said  this  must  be  a  complete 
image  and  anticipation  of  hell.  Milton's  description  of 
the  dark  world  rushed  upon  my  mind — 

'  Sights  of  woe,  regions  of  sorrow,  doleful 
Shades  where  peace  and  rest  can  never  dwell.' 

".  .  .  .  When  I  first  became  an  inmate  of  this  abode 
of  suffering,  despair,  and  death,  there  were  about  four  hun- 
dred prisoners  on  board,  but  in  a  short  time  they  amounted 
to  twelve  hundred.  And  in  proportion  to  our  numbers, 
the  mortality  increased.  All  the  most  deadly  diseases  were 
pressed  into  the  service  of  the  king  of  terrors,  but  his  prime 
ministers  were  dysentery-,  small  pox,  and  yellow  fever. 
.  .  .  The  diseased  and  the  healthy  were  mingled  to- 
gether in  the  main  ship.  In  a  short  time,  we  had  two  hun- 
dred or  more,  sick  and  dying,  lodged  in  the  fore  part  of  the 
lower  gun-deck,  where  all  the  prisoners  were  confined  at 
night.  Utter  derangement  was  a  common  symptom  of 
yellow  fever;  and  to  increase  the  horror  of  the  darkness 
that  shrouded  us  (for  we  were  allowed  no  light  betwixt 
decks)  the  voice  of  warning  would  be  heard—  Take  heed  to 


THOMAS  ANDROS.  241 

yourselves, — there  is  a  mad  man  stalking  through  the  ship 
with  a  knife  in  his  hand.'  .  .  .  While  so  many  were 
sick  with  raging  fever,  there  was  a  loud  cry  for  water,  but 
none  could  be  had  except  on  the  upper  deck,  and  but  one 
allowed  to  ascend  at  a  time.  The  suffering  then  from  the 
rage  of  thirst  during  the  night  was  very  great.  Nor  was  it 
at  all  times_safe  to  attempt  to  go  up.  Provoked  by  the 
continual  cry  for  leave  to  ascend,  when  there  was  already 
one  on  deck,  the  sentry  would  push  them  back  with  his 
bayonet.  ...  In  the  morning  the  hatchways  were 
thrown  open  and  we  were  allowed  to  ascend  all  at  once,  and 
remain  on  the  upper  deck  during  the  day.  But  the  first 
object  that  met  our  view  in  the  morning,  was  a  most  appal- 
ling spectacle, — a  boat  loaded  with  dead  bodies,  conveying 
them  to  the  Long  Island  shore,  where  they  were  very 
slightly  covered  with  sand.  .  .  .  Let  our  disease  be 
what  it  would,  we  were  abandoned  to  our  fate. 
No  English  physician,  or  any  one  from  the  city,  ever,  to 
my  knowledge,  came  near  us.  .  .  .  The  prisoners  were 
furnished  with  buckets  and  brushes  to  cleanse  the  ship,  and 
with  vinegar  to  sprinkle  her  inside.  But  their  indolence 
and  despair  were  such  that  they  would  not  use  them,  or 
but  rarely.  And,  indeed,  at  this  time  the  encouragement 
to  do  it  was  small.  For  the  whole  ship,  from  keel  to  the 
taffarel,  was  equally  affected,  and  contained  pestilence 
sufficient  to  desolate  a  world  :  disease  and  death  were 
wrought  into  her  very  timbers.  At  the  time  I  left,  it  is  to 
be  presumed  a  more  filthy,  contagious,  and  deadly  abode  for 
human  beings,  never  existed  among  a  Christianized  people. 
It  fell  but  little  short  of  the  Black  Hole  at  Calcutta.  .  .  . 
The  lower  hold  and  the  orlop  deck  were  such  a  terror,  that 
no  man  would  venture  down  into  them.  Humanity  would 
have  dictated  a  more  merciful  treatment  to  a  band  of 
pirates.  .  .  .  But  in  the  view  of  the  English,  we  were 
rebels  and  traitors:  we  had  risen  against  the  mother  country 
in  an  unjust  and  wanton  civil  war.  On  this  ground,  they 
considered  us  as  not  entitled  to  that  humanity  which  might 


242  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

be  expected  by  prisoners  taken  in  a  war  with  a  foreign  nation. 
As  to  religion,   I  do  not  remember  of  beholding 
any  trace   of   it   in   the  ship.     I   saw  no   Bible — heard  no 
1  prayer,  no  religious  conversation ;  no  clergyman  visited  us, 
1  though  no  set  of  afflicted  and  dying  men  more  needed  the 
!  light  and-consolations  of  religion.     ...     I  know  not  that 
I  God's  name  was  ever  mentioned,  unless  it  was  in  profane- 
ness  and  blasphemy.     ...     I  wish  it  to  be  understood 
that  what  I  have  said  of  this  horrid  prison,  relates  almost 
exclusively  to  the  time  I   was  on  board.     Of  what  took 
place  before  or  afterward,  I  say  little.     .     .     .     Nor  would 
I  heap  the  cruel  horrors  of  this  prison-ship  as  a  reproach 
upon  the  whole  nation  without  exception.     It  is  indeed  a 
blot  which  a  thousand  ages  cannot  eradicate  from  the  name 
of  Britain;    but  no  doubt,   when   the   pious  and  humane 
among   them  came  to  know  what   had   been   done,   they 
utterly  reprobated  such  cruelty."  * 

IV. 

A  piece  of  writing  having  such  worth  and  charm  as  to 
entitle  it  to  far  greater  fame  than  it  has  yet  had,  is  "  A 
Narrative  of  the  Capture  of  Henry  Laurens,  of  His  Confine- 
ment in  the  Tower  of  London,  and  So  Forth,  1780,  1781, 
1782,"  " — this  being  the  story  of  a  very  considerable  inter- 
national incident  as  told  by  the  principal  actor  and  sufferer 

1  "  The  Old  Jersey  Captive,"  8-20.  The  most  thrilling  part  of  this  strong 
narrative  is  that  which  tells  the  story  of  its  writer's  escape.  After  marvels  of 
suffering  and  adventure,  the  poor  fellow  at  last  got  home  to  his  mother  near 
Plainfield,  where  he  lay  dangerously  ill  a  long  time  ;  and  then,  as  an  offering  of 
conscience  and  gratitude,  he  devoted  himself  to  the  sacred  ministry— a  service  for 
which  he  fitted  himself  under  great  disadvantages,  and  in  which  he  achieved  a 
long  and  beneficent  career,  dying  at  the  age  of  eighty-six  in  the  town  of 
Berkeley  where  he  had  lived  as  minister  for  seven-and-fifty  years.  Interesting 
accounts  of  this  extraordinary  person  are  to  be  seen  in  Enoch  Sanford's  "  His- 
tory of  the  Town  of  Berkeley,"  9-27  ;  and  in  S.  H.  Emery's  "  Ministry  of 
Taunton,"  ii.  254-277.  In  a  note  to  page  262  of  the  latter  work  is  a  good, 
though  not  complete,  list  of  Andres's  many  published  sermons  and  other 
writings. 

3  "  Collections  of  the  South  Carolina  Historical  Society,"  i.  18-68. 


HENRY  LAUREN S.  243 

in  it,  and  told  with  simplicity,  sprightliness,  and  grace,  also./ 
with  a  sureness  of  intellectual  movement  born  of  the  splen- 
did sincerity,  virility,  wholesomeness,  and  competence  of 
this  man — himself  the  noblest  Roman  of  them  all — the 
unsurpassed  embodiment  of  the  proudest,  finest,  wittiest, 
most  efficient,  and  most  chivalrous  Americanism  of  his 
time. 

Henry  Laurens  was  of  Huguenot  ancestry,  and  was  born 
in  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  in  1723.  Early  in  life 'he 
was  placed  in  a  counting-house  in  his  native  town ;  after- 
ward he  was  transferred  to  a  similar  position  in  London, 
where  he  remained  several  years.  Returning  to  Charleston, 
he  engaged  in  business  on  his  own  account  and  met  with 
extraordinary  success;  he  became  one  of  the  merchant- 
princes  of  his  country,  the  possessor,  also,  of  large  wealth 
in  lands  and  in  slaves.1  Prior  to  the  final  asperities  of  the 
Revolution,  he  had  begun  to  take  a  high-spirited  part  in 
the  affairs  of  his  own  colony, — even  serving  in  a  campaign 
against  the  Cherokees.  In  1771,  he  retired  from  business, 
and  went  abroad  for  travel  and  for  the  education  of  his 
children.  In  1774,  being  in  London,  he  was  one  of  the 
thirty-eight  Americans  who  there  signed  a  petition  in- 
tended, if  possible,  to  dissuade  parliament  from  entering 
upon  the  harsh  colonial  policy  embodied  in  the  Boston  port 
bill.  With  the  final  failure  of  that  honest  American  effort 
to  save  the  mother  country  from  a  fatal  misjudgment  of  her 
American  children,  Henry  Laurens  came  back  to  his  own 
land  to  take  his  full  share  in  whatsoever  fate  might  be  in 

1  Yet  he  had  an  abhorrence  of  slave-holding  ;  and  one  of  the  noblest  passages 
in  early  anti-slavery  literature  is  that  portion  of  a  letter  which  was  written  by 
him  at  Charleston,  August  14,  1776,  informing  his  eldest  son,  the  gallant  John 
Laurens,  of  his  purpose,  at  whatever  cost,  to  emancipate  his  slaves.  "  Corre- 
spondence of  Henry  Laurens,"  19-21.  This  is  the  first  volume  of  "  Materials 
for  History  Printed  from  Original  Manuscripts,"  and  edited  by  Frank  Moore, 
for  the  Zenger  Club.  No  subsequent  volume  was  ever  issued.  In  1861 — at  a 
time  when  the  anti-slavery  testimony  of  this  illustrious  South  Carolinian  had  a 
singular  pertinence— his  letter  of  August,  1776,  was  separately  reprinted,  under 
the  title  of  "A  Protest  against  Slavery." 


244 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


store  for  it.  Being  elected  to  the  first  provincial  congress  of 
South  Carolina  in  1775,  he  drew  up  the  form  of  association 
to  be  signed  by  all  citizens  of  that  colony  who  were  resolute 
in  their  opposition  to  ministerial  encroachments.  Of  the 
council  of  safety — a  revolutionary  body  of  almost  unlimited 
power — he  became  president.  In  1776,  he  was  made  vice- 
president  of  the  new  State  of  South  Carolina.  In  1777,  he 
was  made  a  member  of  the  Continental  Congress.1  Com- 
ing at  last  upon  the  arena  of  national  politics,  he  was  soon 
recognized  for  what  he  was — a  trusty,  sagacious,  lofty,  im- 
perturbable character — a  man  whom  Washington  could  love 
and  lean  upon ;  of  whom  even  the  bitterest  of  the  Loyalists 
had  to  speak  with  admiration  and  forbearance.  Soon  after 
the  retirement  of  John  Hancock  from  the  presidency  of 
Congress,  Henry  Laurens  was  made  president  in  his  place, 
and  served  as  such  from  the  first  of  November,  1777,  until 
the  ninth  of  December,  1778.  In  the  latter  part  of  the  year 
1779,  he  was  chosen  by  Congress  as  its  commissioner  to 
negotiate  a  treaty  of  amity  and  commerce  with  Holland, 
and  to  procure  a  loan  in  that  country.8  For  the  perform- 
ance of  this  high  duty,  he  set  sail  from  Philadelphia,  August 
13,  1780,  in  the  brigantine,  "  Mercury  " — a  packet  belonging 
to  Congress ;  and  on  the  third  of  September,  the  ' '  Mercury  ' ' 
with  all  on  board  was  captured  by  Captain  Keppel  of  the 
British  frigate,  ' '  Vestal. ' '  Near  the  end  of  that  month,  Lau- 
rens arrived  in  England  as  a  prisoner  of  state  and  was  sent 
to  the  Tower.  There  he  remained  "  closely  confined  and 
inhumanly  treated  "  3  for  about  fifteen  months,  being  finally 
let  out  on  bail,  and  subsequently  set  free  in  exchange  for 
Lord  Cornwallis.  In  the  latter  part  of  his  incarceration,  a 
British  surgeon  remarked  to  the  prisoner  as  he  lay  ill  in 
bed,  that  "  it  was  very  difficult  to  put  a  man  to  death  in 

1  Elected  10  Jan. ,  1777.     He  took  his  seat  22  July.     ' '  Journals  of  the  Amer- 
ican Congress,"  ii.  44,  202. 

"  Secret  Journals  of  Congress,"  ii.  282-318  ;  especially  for  Oct.  21,  26,  30; 
Nov.  i,  5,  8,  1779  ;  and  for  June  20,  1780. 

1  "A  Narrative,"  etc.  57. 


HENRY  LAUREN S.  24$ 

this  country."  "  There  is,  however,  in  this  country,"  said 
Laurens  in  reply,  "  a  facility  in  murdering  a  man  by  inches: 
I  have  experienced  it  in  a  degree  not  to  be  paralleled  in 
modern  British  history."  ' 

All  this  hard  experience  of  his  as  a  prisoner  of  state  in  the 
hands  of  the  British,  was  borne  by  him  not  only  with  forti- 
tude, but  with  gayety,  and  with  a  quick  discomfiture  of  all 
devices  for  his  intimidation  or  corruption.  Such  experience, 
also,  furnished  the  subject  and  the  materials  for  his  "  Nar- 
rative, ' ' a — a  modest  and  fascinating  story  of  an  heroic  episode 
in  the  history  of  the  Revolution,  a  fragment  of  autobiogra- 
phy fit  to  become  a  classic  in  the  literature  of  a  people  ready 
to  pay  homage  to  whatever  is  magnanimous,  exquisite,  and 
indomitable  in  the  manly  character. 

1  "  A  Narrative,"  etc.  56. 

2  In  "  Collections  of  the  South  Carolina  Historical  Society,"  i.  69-83,  at  the 
end  of   the   "Narrative,"   is  given   an    "Appendix,    containing   Documents, 
Letters,  etc.,  relating  to  Mr.   Laurens's   Imprisonment  in  the  Tower."    In 
"The  Magazine  of  American  History"  for  December,  1884,  may  be  seen  a 
rebus  letter  written  by  Laurens  to  Lord  George  Gordon,  whom  he  knew  as  a 
fellow-prisoner  in  the  Tower. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

PHILIP    FRENEAU     AS    POET    AND    SATIRIST    IN   THE    WAR 
FOR  INDEPENDENCE:    1778-1/83. 

I. — Two  periods  of  Freneau's  activity  in  immediate  contact  with  the  Revolu- 
tion— The  first  period  embraces  the  latter  half  of  the  year  1775 — The 
second  period  extends  from  1778  to  1783 — Freneau's  abandonment  of  the 
country  in  1776  and  his  stay  in  the  West  Indies  till  1778 — His  poetic  work 
there— Denounces  slavery. 

II. — His  return  to  his  country,  and  to  literary  activity  in  its  service,  in  1778 — 
His  confidence  in  the  success  of  the  Revolution — "Stanzas  on  the  New 
American  Frigate  'Alliance'" — "America  Independent" — Fierce  on- 
slaughts upon  King  George  the  Third — His  invectives  against  Burgoyne 
and  the  American  Loyalists. 

III.— His  poem  "  To  the  Dog  Sancho." 

IV. — His  contributions  to  "  The  United  States  Magazine  "  in  1779 — Two  more 
attacks  on  the  King. 

V. — His  capture  and  imprisonment  by  the  British — He  is  stimulated  thereby  to 
new  and  fiercer  satires  against  the  enemy — "  The  British  Prison  Ship." 

VI. — His  principal  poems  for  the  years  1781,  1782,  and  1783. 

VII. — "  The  Political  Balance  ;  or,  The  Fates  of  Britain  and  America  Com- 
pared." 

VIII.—"  The  Prophecy." 

IX.— His  final  word  to  the  British  King. 

X. — Freneau's  proper  rank  as  a  poet — A  pioneer  in  the  reform  of  eighteenth- 
century  English  verse — The  first  American  poet  of  Democracy,  and  his 
fidelity  to  that  character. 

I. 

THE  work  of  Philip  Freneau  as  poet  and  satirist  in  direct 
contact  with  the  American  Revolution,  was  broken  into  two 
periods, — these  periods  being  separated  from  each  other  by 
an  interval  of  about  two  years.  The  first  period,  which 
has  been  dealt  with  in  a  former  part  of  this  work,1  embraces 
those  months  of  the  year  1775  wherein  his  own  fierce  pas- 

1  See  chapter  ix. 
246 


PHILIP  FRENEAU. 


247 


sions,  like  the  passions  of  his  countrymen,  were  set  aflame 
by  the  outbreak  of  hostilities.  Thereafter  occurred  a  mys- 
terious lapse  in  his  activity  as  a  writer  on  themes  connected 
with  the  great  struggle,  to  which  he  had  professed  his  undy- 
ing devotion ; — he  was  absent  from  the  country  until  some 
time  in  the  year  1778.  With  the  middle  of  the  year  1778 
began  the  second  period  of  his  work  as  Revolutionary  poet 
and  satirist,  and  it  did  not  come  to  an  end,  except  with 
the  end  of  the  Revolution  itself.  If  we  are  right  in  assign- 
ing to  the  later  months- of  the  year  1775  Freneau's  "  Mac- 
Swiggen,  a  Satire,"  we  shall  find  in  that  poem  some  clew 
to  the  mood  of  literary  disgust  and  discouragement  which 
seems  then  to  have  seized  him,  impelling  him  for  a  time  to 
leave  his  native  land : 

"  Long  have  I  sat  on  this  disastrous  shore, 
And,  sighing,  sought  to  gain  a  passage  o'er 
To  Europe's  towns,  where,  as  our  travellers  say, 
Poets  may  flourish — or  perhaps  they  may."  ' 

Not  to  Europe,  however,  did  the  down-hearted  political 
prophet  make  his  escape, — the  Tarshish  to  which  he  fled  was 
in  the  West  Indies: 

"  Sick  of  all  feuds,  to  Reason  I  appeal 
From  wars  of  paper,  and  from  wars  of  steel ; 
Let  others  here  their  hopes  and  wishes  end, 
I  to  the  sea  with  weary  steps  descend  ; 

In  distant  isles  some  happier  scene  I  '11  choose, 
And  court  in  softer  shades  the  unwilling  Muse."  * 

This  resolution,  which  seems  weak-spirited  enough  and 
wholly  unworthy  of  him,  Freneau  carried  out,  sailing  away 
to  the  tropics  some  time  in  the  year  1776,  and  remaining 
there,  probably,  during  the  remainder  of  that  year,  and  the 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  83.  *  Ibid.  87-88. 


248  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

year  1777,  and  even  a  part  of  the  year  1778.  Then  it  was 
that  he  wrote  some  of  his  longest  and  most  powerful  non- 
political  poems, — "  The  House  of  Night,"  '  "  The  Beauties 
of  Santa  Cruz,"  "  and  "  The  Jamaica  Funeral,"  " — the  latter 
notable  for  one  passage  of  scorching  satire  on  the  frivolity 
and  sensuality  then  so  often  to  be  met  with  in  the  clergy  of 
the  colonial  Church.  Even  in  his  remoteness  from  the  scene 
of  his  country's  danger  and  anguish,  he  could  not  forget 
either  that  anguish  or  that  danger;  and  his  fine  little  poem 
"  On  the  Death  of  Captain  Nicholas  Biddle,  Commander  of 
the  '  Randolph  '  Frigate,"  is  some  token  of  Freneau 's  con- 
tinued remembrance  of  the  cause  of  his  countrymen — whom, 
however,  he  seemed  to  have  abandoned.  There  is  one  stanza 
of  this  poem  over  which  the  reader  will  be  tempted  to  linger 
as  having  a  weird  beauty,  a  sort  of  spectral  suggestiveness, 
quite  characteristic  of  Freneau  in  his  nobler  work.  Refer- 
ring to  the  American  ship,  which  had  been  blown  up  and 
sunk  in  the  very  moment  of  its  victory  over  the  British 
cruiser,  he  says : 

"  The  '  Randolph  '  soon  on  Stygian  streams" 
Shall  coast  along  the  land  of  dreams, 

The  islands  of  the  dead  ! 
But  fate,  that  parts  them  on  the  deep, 
Shall  save  the  Briton,  still  to  weep 

His  ancient  honors  fled."  4 

Even  his  long  poem,  "The  Beauties  of  Santa  Cruz," 
wherein  he  tries  to  give  himself  up  to  the  delights  of  trop- 
ical nature,  is  not  without  some  touch  revealing  his  sorrow- 
ful consciousness  of  the  disasters  which,  in  the  summer  and 
autumn  of  that  year,  1776,  were  overwhelming  his  native 
land: 

"  Far  o'er  the  waste  of  yonder  surgy  field 
My  native  climes  in  fancied  prospect  lie, 

1 ' '  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  88-108.  *  Ibid.  1 1 7-133. 

3  Ibid.  109-117.  "Ibid.  147. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  249 

Now  hid  in  shades,  and  now  by  clouds  concealed, 
And  now  by  tempests  ravished  from  my  eye. 

"  There,  triumphs  to  enjoy,  are  Britain,  thine, 
There  thy  proud  navy  awes  the  pillaged  shore  ; 
Nor  sees  the  day  when  nations  shall  combine 
That  pride  to  humble,  and  our  rights  restore."  l 

Perhaps  it  was  in  mere  disgust,  perhaps  it  was  in  anger  and 
despair,  that  the  poet  had  been  able  to  persuade  himself  to 
leave  behind  him  what  he  calls  the  "  bloody  plains  "  and 
the  "  iron  glooms  "  of  his  country,  and,  as  he  says, 

"  Quit  the  cold  northern  star,  and  here  enjoy 
Beneath  the  smiling  skies,  this  land  of  love  "  ;  * 

yet  even  in  that  "  land  of  love  "  his  heart  was  scon  embit- 
tered by  sights  and  sounds  of  hate, — sights  and  sounds 
which  seemed  to  transform  that  paradise  into  a  pande- 
monium: 

"  If  there  exists  a  hell — the  case  is  clear — 
Sir  Toby's  slaves  enjoy  that  portion  here. 

Here  whips  on  whips  excite  a  thousand  fears, 
And  mingled  howlings  vibrate  on  my  ears  : 
Here  nature's  plagues  abound,  of  all  degrees, 
Snakes,  scorpions,  despots,  lizards,  centipees."8 

Chiefly,  the  ineffable  horrors  of  slavery  in  the  West  Indies 
gave  to  this  poet  of  liberty  such  sorrow  as  made  it  impos- 
sible for  him  there  to  enter  without  reserve  into  the  mere 
enjoyment  of  nature.  In  a  bit  of  noble  prose  with  which, 
three  years  afterward,  he  prefaced  his  poem  on  "  The  Beau- 
ties of  Santa  Cruz,"  he  said:  "  The  only  disagreeable  cir- 
cumstance attending  this  island,  which  it  has  in  common 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  131.  9  Ibid. 

3  "  Poems  on  Several  Occasions,"  391. 


250 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


with  the  rest,  is  the  cruel  and  detestable  slavery  of  the 
negroes.  .  .  .  No  class  of  mankind  in  the  known  world 
undergo  so  complete  a  servitude  as  the  common  negroes  in 
the  West  Indies.  It  casts  a  shade  over  the  native  charms 
of  the  country;  it  blots  out  the  beauties  of  the  eternal 
spring  which  Providence  has  there  ordained  to  reign ;  and 
amidst  all  the  profusion  of  bounties  which  nature  has  scat- 
tered,— the  brightness  of  the  heaven,  the  mildness  of  the 
air,  and  the  luxuriancy  of  the  vegetable  kingdom, — it  leaves 
me  melancholy  and  disconsolate,  convinced  that  there  is  no 
pleasure  in  this  world  without  its  share  of  pain.  And  thus 
the  earth,  which,  were  it  not  for  the  lust  of  pride  and 
dominion,  might  be  an  earthly  paradise,  is,  by  the  ambition 
and  overbearing  nature  of  mankind,  rendered  an  eternal 
scene  of  desolation,  woe,  and  horror:  the  weak  goes  to  the 
wall,  while  the  strong  prevails  ;  and  after  our  ambitious 
frenzy  has  turned  the  world  upside  down,  we  are  contented 
with  a  narrow  spot,  and  leave  our  follies  and  cruelties  to  be 
acted  over  again  by  every  succeeding  generation. ' '  ' 

II. 

Even  though  lacking  other  biographical  data,  we  can  find 
in  Freneau's  verse  sufficient  evidence  that  he  was  at  home 
again  by  the  middle  of  the  year  1778, — his  return  to  his 
native  land  having  been  signalized  by  his  return  to  the  most 
vigorous  literary  activity  in  its  service : 

"  Returned  a  prisoner  to  my  native  shore, 
How  changed  I  find  those  scenes  that  pleased  before  ! 
How  changed  those  groves  where  fancy  loved  to  stray, 
When  spring's  young  blossoms  bloomed  along  the  way. 
From  every  eye  distils  the  frequent  tear, 
From  every  mouth  the  doleful  tale  I  hear  ! 
Some  mourn  a  father,  brother,  husband,  friend  ; 
Some  mourn,  imprisoned  in  their  native  land, 

1  First  printed  in  "The  United  States  Magazine,"  1779.  These  sentences 
are  given  in  "  Poems  relating  to  the  American  Revolution  by  Philip  Freneau, 
with  an  Introductory  Memoir  by  Evert  A.  Duyckinck,"  xiii-xiv. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  2$ I 

In  sickly  ships  what  numerous  hosts  confined — 
At  once  their  lives  and  liberties  resigned  !  " ' 

Notwithstanding  this  tone  of  sadness  over  the  havoc 
wrought  by  the  war,  there  rings  through  the  three  or  four 
poems  which  he  wrote  during  the  latter  half  of  the  year 
1778,  a  note  of  absolute  confidence — of  exultant  and  even 
of  jeering  confidence — in  the  success  of  the  American  cause, 
all  to  be  accomplished  through  American  capacity  and  valor 
backed  by  the  aid  of  France.  It  is  to  the  one  great  event 
of  this  year,  the  French  alliance — to  the  king  and  the  peo- 
ple of  France,  our  old  foes,  our  new  friends — that  he  now 
pays  many  a  jubilant  and  grateful  tribute.  Perhaps  no 
finer  expression  of  this  new  note  of  exultation  is  to  be  met 
with,  than  in  his  "  Stanzas  on  the  new  American  Frigate 
'  Alliance,'  "  wherein  he  represents  Neptune  as  looking 
abroad  over  his  watery  dominions  toward  the  west,  and 
with  such  surprise  as  a  god  may  be  capable  of,  seeing  there 
a  mighty  war-ship  that  was  altogether  new  to  him: 

"  As  nearer  still  the  monarch  drew, — 
Her  starry  flag  displayed  to  view, — 
He  asked  a  Triton  of  his  train, 
'  What  flag  was  this  that  rode  the  main  ? — 

' '  A  ship  of  such  a  gallant  mien 
This  many  a  day  I  have  not  seen  ; 
To  no  mean  power  can  she  belong, 
So  swift,  so  warlike,  stout,  and  strong  ! '  "a 

In  reply  to  this  enquiry  of  the  sea-god,  the  Triton  proceeds 
to  give  Neptune  some  valuable  information  about  the  latest 
phases  of  mundane  politics, — explaining,  especially,  that 
this  ship  belongs  to  a  new  nation  which  had  just  been 
formed  in  the  far  West,  and  which,  in  resentment  for 
wrongs  inflicted  by  Britain,  is  now  victoriously  confronting 
that  arrogant  power  even  on  the  sea — on  the  sea  where 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  141.  8  Ibid.  144. 


252  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Britain  has  been  accustomed  to  think  of  itself  as  without  a 
rival.  In  the  last  stanza,  this  admirable  Triton  manages  to 
compress  the  neatest  possible  compliment  to  the  spirit  of  the 
people  who  have  sent  forth  this  fine  ship.  Apostrophizing 
the  most  famous  vessel  of  antiquity,  he  exclaims: 

"  Not,  Argo,  in  thy  womb  was  found 
Such  hearts  of  brass  as  here  abound  : 
They  for  their  golden  fleece  did  fly — 
These  sail  to  vanquish  tyranny."  l 

The  poet's  assurance  of  the  success  of  the  American  cause 
breathes  a  sort  of  ferocious  exultation  through  the  longest 
and  strongest  of  the  poems  produced  by  him  in  1778, — 
"  America  Independent,  and  Her  Everlasting  Deliverance 
from  British  Tyranny  and  Oppression:  " 

"  'T  is  done  !  and  Britain  for  her  madness  sighs  ! 
Take  warning  tyrants,  and  henceforth  be  wise  : 
If  o'er  mankind  man  gives  you  legal  sway, 
Take  not  the  rights  of  human  kind  away. 
When  God  from  chaos  gave  this  world  to  be, 
Man  then  he  formed,  and  formed  him  to  be  free ; 
In  his  own  image  stampt  the  favorite  race — 
How  dar'st  thou,  tyrant,  the  fair  stamp  deface  ? "  * 

Thus  assuming  that  the  contest  was  then  entirely  over 
and  the  British  already  expelled  from  the  land,  he  proceeds 
to  doom  them  at  once  to  infamy  and  to  insignificance 
among  the  peoples  of  the  earth  : 

This  be  their  doom,  in  vengeance  for  the  slain, 
To  pass  their  days  in  poverty  and  pain  ; 

And  to  their  insect  isle  henceforth  confined, 
No  longer  lord  it  o'er  the  human  kind."  s 

"  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  146.  8  Ibid.  134-135. 

3  Ibid.  135. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  253 

According  to  this  poet,  nothing  good  can  be  said  for  kings 
in  general,  even  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  both  Solomon  and 
David  belonged  to  that  order  of  men ;  for, 

"  Though  one  was  wise,  and  one  Goliath  slew, 
Kings  are  the  choicest  curse  that  man  e'er  knew."  1 

But  for  George  the  Third  of  Britain  it  was  left  to  exhibit 
to  the  world  to  what  extremes  of  hypocrisy,  tyranny,  and 
stupidity  even  a  king  might  attain : 

"  In  him  we  see  the  depths  of  baseness  joined — 
Whate'er  disgraced  the  dregs  of  human  kind  ; 
Cain,  Nimrod,  Nero — fiends  in  human  guise — 
Herod,  Domitian — these  in  judgment  rise  ; 
And,  envious  of  his  deeds,  I  hear  them  say, 
None  but  a  George  could  be  more  vile  than  they. 

Yet  he  to  arms,  and  war,  and  blood,  inclined, 

A  fair-day  warrior  with  a  feeble  mind, 

Fearless,  while  others  meet  the  shock  of  fate, 

And  dare  that  death  which  clips  his  thread  too  late, — 

He  to  the  fane — O  hypocrite  ! — would  go 

While  not  an  angel  there  but  was  his  foe  ; 

There  did  he  kneel,  and  sigh,  and  sob,  and  pray — 

Yet  not  to  lave  his  thousand  sins  away. 

Far  other  motives  swayed  his  spotted  soul  ; 

'T  was  not  for  those  the  secret  sorrow  stole 

Down  his  pale  cheek — 't  was  vengeance  and  despair 

Dissolved  his  eye,  and  planted  sorrow  there  ! 

How  could  he  hope  to  bribe  the  impartial  sky 

By  his  base  prayers,  and  mean  hypocrisy  ? 

What  were  his  prayers  ? — his  prayers  could  be  no  more 
Than  a  thief's  wishes  to  recruit  his  store  !  " '' 

Possibly,  however,  the  bitterest   invective  contained   in 
this  most  bitter  poem,  is  in  the  passages  which  are  devoted 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  136.  »  Ibid.  136-13?. 


254 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


to  Burgoyne,  and  especially,  as  in  the  following  lines,  to 
the  poet's  own  countrymen,  the  Tories: 

"  So  vile  a  crew  the  world  ne'er  saw  before, 
And,  grant,  ye  pitying  heavens,  it  may  no  more  ! 
If  ghosts  from  hell  infest  our  poisoned  air, 
Those  ghosts  have  entered  these  base  bodies  here. 
Murder  and  blood  is  still  their  dear  delight — 
Scream  round  their  roofs,  ye  ravens  of  the  night  ! 
Whene'er  they  wed,  may  demons  and  despair 
And  grief  and  woe  and  blackest  night  be  there  ; 
Fiends  leagued  from  hell  the  nuptial  lamp  display, 
Swift  to  perdition  light  them  on  their  way, 
Round  the  wide  world  their  devilish  squadrons  chase — 
To  find  no  realm  that  grants  one  resting  place."  * 

But  though  these  people,  driven  out  from  America,  are  to 
find  in  all  the  world  no  real  resting-place,  there  is,  the  poet 
tells  us,  at  least  one  spot  of  earth  sufficiently  hideous  and 
desolate  to  be  their  proper  place  of  abode.  Perhaps  the 
very  climax  of  Freneau's  power,  both  in  description  and 
in  execration,  is  reached  in  the  passage  wherein  he  assigns 
to  Burgoyne  and  to  the  American  Tories  their  future 
earthly  home : 

"  Far  to  the  north,  on  Scotland's  utmost  end, 
An  isle  there  lies,  the  haunt  of  every  fiend  ; 
There  screeching  owls  and  screaming  vultures  rest, 
And  not  a  tree  adorns  its  barren  breast. 
No  sheperds  there  attend  their  bleating  flocks, 
But  withered  witches  rove  among  the  rocks  ; 
Shrouded  in  ice,  the  blasted  mountains  show 
Their  cloven  heads,  to  fright  the  seas  below  ; 
The  lamp  of  heaven  in  his  diurnal  race 
Here  scarcely  deigns  to  unveil  his  radiant  face, 
Or  if  one  day  he  circling  treads  the  sky, 
He  views  this  island  with  an  angry  eye  ; 

"  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  139. 


PHILIP   FRENEAU.  25$ 

Or  ambient  fogs  their  broad  moist  wings  expand, 
Damp  his  bright  ray,  and  cloud  the  infernal  land  ; 
The  blackening  wind,  incessant  storms  prolong, 
Dull  as  their  night,  and  dreary  as  my  song. 
When  stormy  winds  with  rain  refuse  to  blow, 
Then  from  the  dark  sky  drives  the  unpitying  snow  | 
When  drifting  snows  from  iron  clouds  forbear, 
Then  down  the  hailstones  rattle  through  the  air  ; 
No  peace,  no  rest,  the  elements  bestow, 
But  seas  forever  rage,  and  storms  forever  blow. 

"  Here,  miscreants,  here  with  Loyal  hearts  retire, 
Here  pitch  your  tents,  and  kindle  here  your  fire  ; 
Here  desert  nature  will  her  stings  display, 
And  fiercest  hunger  on  your  vitals  prey  ; 
And  with  yourselves  let  John  Burgoyne  retire 
To  reign  the  monarch  whom  your  hearts  admire  !  "* 

III. 

From  these  savageries  of  satire,  it  is  a  relief  to  turn  for  a 
moment  to  a  playful  and  gracious  little  poem — also  a  pro- 
duct of  the  year  1778 — a  poem  in  which  Freneau,  while  still 
not  forgetful  of  the  vices  which  make  so  many  human  beings 
detestable  to  him,  shews  both  admiration  and  tenderness  for 
the  virtues  which  adorn  the  dog — that  humble  and  faithful 
friend  of  man.  In  the  circumstances  that  gave  occasion  for 
his  poem  "  To  the  Dog  Sancho,"  one  gets  some  glimpse  of 
the  lawlessness  and  violence  which  the  barbarities  of  war 
had  by  that  time  made  rampant  among  us,  especially  on 
the  outer  edges  of  our  civilization.  Sometime  in  that  year, 
1778,  a  lonely  cabin  occupied  by  Freneau,  near  the  Never- 
sink  Hills  in  New  Jersey,  was  attacked  at  midnight  by  rob- 
bers, who  came  armed  with  a  musket  and  a  cutlass,  which 
they  used  with  almost  fatal  effect  on  poor  Sancho,  he  having 
courageously  challenged  their  right  to  be  there.  The  easy 
and  playful  movement  of  this  poem  well  suits  its  humanity 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  139-140. 


256  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

of  tone, — the  affability,  in  fact,  of  the  poet's  ways  toward 
a  companion  so  truly  loved  and  respected  by  him : 

"  The  world,  my  dear  Sancho,  is  full  of  distress, 
And  you  have  your  share,  I  allow  and  confess  ; 
For  twice  with  a  musket,  and  now  a  cutteau — 
You  had  nearly  gone  off  to  dog-heaven  below. 

"  Was  this  your  reward,  to  be  slashed,  to  be  cut, 
For  defending  at  midnight  the  door  of  a  hut  ? 
You  had  little  to  fight  for,  had  little  to  win, 
Yet  you  boldly  held  out,  till  the  robbers  broke  in. 

"  The  blade  which  was  meant  the  bold  robber  to  face, 
To  guard  a  fair  lady,  or  serve  in  the  chase, 
Was  drenched  in  the  blood  of  an  innocent  cur, 
Who  said  in  dog  language,  '  What  want  you,  good  Sir  ? ' 

"  Poor  fellow,  I  pity  your  pitiful  case  ! 
In  fact  they  have  ruined  the  round  of  your  face  ; 
And  die  when  you  will,  be  it  early  or  late, 
You  will  go  to  your  grave  with  a  scar  on  your  pate. 

"  If  ever  a  dog  be  permitted  to  pass 
Where  folks  I  could  mention,  have  fixed  on  a  place, 
(But  which,  I  suspect,  they  will  hardly  attain 
While  rights  of  pre-emption  in  Satan  remain.) 

"  Good  Sancho  had  merit  to  put  in  his  plea, 
And  claim  with  the  claimants  a  portion  in  fee, 
On  the  ground,  that  in  life  he  was  one  of  the  few 
Who,  in  watching  and  barking,  were  trusty  and  true. 

"  To  warn  us  of  danger,  he  ventured  his  beef, 
And,  in  his  own  lingo,  cried—'  Robber  and  Thief ! ' 
So  now,  in  return  for  the  good  he  has  done, 
For  the  vigils  he  kept,  and  the  battles  he  won, 


PHILIP   FRENEAU.  2$? 

"J  '11  give  him  a  verse  with  the  great  of  the  age, 
And  if  he  quite  dies,  he  must  die  in  my  page  ; 
And  long  may  he  live  in  despite  of  the  mob, 
And  the  fools  who  his  master,  a  poet,  would  rob  ! 

"  Wherever  I  take  up  my  evening  retreat, 
Dear  Sancho,  I  '11  have  you  to  lie  at  my  feet ; 
And  whether  at  home  or  in  regions  remote, 
For  a  bed,  I  '11  allot  you  the  skirt  of  a  coat. 

"  With  my  dog  at  my  feet,  and  my  gun  at  my  head, 
I  am  equally  safe  in  a  fort  or  a  shed  ; 
From  a  snap  of  his  teeth  and  the  shot  of  a  gun, 
Thrice  happy  the  thief  that  is  able  to  run  !  " ' 

IV. 

For  the  year  1779,  Freneau's  most  characteristic  work 
found  expression  in  the  pages  of  "  The  United  States  Mag- 
azine," of  which  his  classmate,  Brackenridge,  was  the  edi- 
tor, and  to  which  he  contributed  much  both  in  prose  and 
verse,  particularly  two  of  the  long  poems  written  by  him 
during  his  recent  abode  in  the  West  Indies.2  There,  also, 
appeared  his  two  satires  on  the  ever-enticing  topic  of  King 
George  the  Third:  "A  Dialogue  between  his  Britannic 
Majesty  and  Mr.  Fox,  supposed  to  have  passed  about  the 
time  of  the  approach  of  the  combined  fleets  of  France  and 
Spain  to  the  British  coasts,  August,  1779  "  5*  anc*  "  George 
the  Third  His  Soliloquy  for  1779."  4  In  both  of  these 
satires,  the  king  is  made  to  bewail  with  grotesque  frankness 
the  desperate  plight  into  which  he  has  fallen  through  his 
zeal  to  suppress  the  spirit  of  liberty  in  America: 

1  Freneau,  "  Poems  Written  and  Published  during  the  Revolutionary  War," 
i.,  260-261. 

*  Paul  Leicester  Ford,   "Check-List  of  American  Magazines  printed  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,"  7  ;  Albert  H.  Smyth,  "  The  Philadelphia  Magazines  and 
their  Contributors  1741-1850,"  60-61  ;  Evert  A.   Duyckinck,  in  "  Introductory 
Memoir"  to  Freneau's  "  Poems  relating  to  the  American  Revolution,"  xii.-xv. 

*  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  156-164.  4  Ibid.  151-153. 

VOL.    II.-    17. 


258  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  France  aids  them  now,  a  desperate  game  I  play, 
And  hostile  Spain  will  do  the  same,  they  say. 
My  armies  vanquished  and  my  heroes  fled, 
My  people  murmuring,  and  my  commerce  dead, 
My  shattered  navy  pelted,  bruised,  and  clubbed, 
By  Dutchmen  bullied  and  by  Frenchmen  drubbed, 
My  name  abhorred,  my  nation  in  disgrace, 
How  should  I  act  in  such  a  mournful  case  ! 
My  hopes  and  joys  are  vanished  with  my  coin, 
My  ruined  army,  and  my  lost  Burgoyne  !  " ' 

V. 

It  is  possible  that  the  discontinuance  of  "  The  United 
States  Magazine,"  which  occurred  with  the  close  of  the 
year  1779,  may  have  left  Freneau  without  definite  literary 
employment ;  and  for  this  reason  or  some  other  he  resolved 
to  leave  the  country  once  more,  setting  sail  early  in  1780 
upon  a  voyage  from  Philadelphia  to  St.  Eustacia.  The 
voyage  was  both  a  brief  and  a  disastrous  one.  While  just 
off  the  Capes  of  the  Delaware,  the  ship  was  captured  by  a 
British  cruiser  and  was  carried  to  New  York.  Then  it  was 
that  the  poet  entered  upon  the  most  tragic  and  the  most 
deplorable  experience  of  his  life — an  experience  of  personal 
indignity  and  suffering  as  a  prisoner  in  the  hands  of  the 
enemy — an  experience  which  had  the  natural  effect  of  stim- 
ulating to  almost  inconceivable  proportions  his  hatred  of 
them,  and  thus  of  qualifying  him  to  write  the  most  ener- 
getic and  the  most  envenomed  of  all  his  satires.  Though  but 
a  passenger  on  the  captured  vessel,  he  was  thrown  into  one 
of  those  celebrated  prison-ships  which  then  lay  in  New  York 
harbor, — a  loathsome  hulk  called  the  "  Scorpion,"  where, 
by  reason  of  the  combined  horrors  of  foul  air,  foul  food, 
foul  water,  and  foul  treatment,  he  soon  fell  violently  ill  of  a 
fever, — in  consequence  of  which  he  was  transferred  to  a  so- 
called  hospital  ship,  the  "  Hunter."  This  change  of  place 
proved  to  be  but  a  change  of  miseries — not  an  amelioration 

"  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  152. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  259 

of  them.  After  a  time,  he  succeeded  in  making  his  escape 
from  these  floating  hells  ;  and  then,  without  waiting  to 
regain  his  bodily  strength,  but  using  the  strength  of  his 
great  wrath,  he  addressed  himself  to  the  work  of  vengeance 
by  writing,  before  the  close  of  the  year  1780,  his  most 
savage  satire,  "  The  British  Prison-Ship," — a  satire  actually 
writhing  and  scorching  with  a  hatred  which  no  one  will  be 
likely  to  consider  as  either  artificial  or  feigned : 

"  The  various  horrors  of  these  hulks  to  tell, — 
These  Prison  Ships  where  pain  and  horror  dwell, 
Where  Death  in  tenfold  vengeance  holds  his  reign, 
And  injured  ghosts,  yet  unavenged,  complain, — 
This  be  my  task  !     Ungenerous  Britons,  you 
Conspire  to  murder  those  you  can't  subdue  ! 

"  Weak  as  I  am,  I  '11  try  my  strength  to-day, 
And  my  best  arrows  at  these  hell-hounds  play  ; 
To  future  years  one  scene  of  death  prolong, 
And  hang  them  up  to  infamy,  in  song  !  " l 

As  originally  published,  in  1781,  the  poem  was  in  four 
cantos,  afterward  recast  into  three.  Of  these,  the  least 
effective  is  the  first,  which  tells  the  story  of  his  capture.  It 
is  in  the  second  and  third  cantos,  wherein  he  describes  the 
horrors  of  the  prison-ship  and  of  the  hospital,  that  he  finds 
his  supreme  opportunity  for  satire  and  invective: 

"  Remembrance  shudders  at  this  scene  of  fears  : 
Still  in  my  view  some  English  brute  appears — 
Some  base-born  Hessian  slave  walks  threat'ning  by — 
Some  servile  Scot,  with  murder  in  his  eye, 
Still  haunts  my  sight,  as  vainly  they  bemoan 
Rebellions  managed  so  unlike  their  own  ! 

"  Oh  may  I  never  feel  the  poignant  pain. 
To  live  subjected  to  such  fiends  again, — 
Stewards  and  mates  that  hostile  Britain  bore, 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  170-171. 


26O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION, 

Cut  from  the  gallows  on  thei:  native  shore  ; 
Their  ghastly  looks  and  vengeance-beaming  eyes 
Still  to  my  view  in  dismal  colors  rise. 
Oh  may  I  ne'er  review  these  dire  abodes, 
These  piles  for  slaughter,  floating  on  the  floods  ! 
And  you  that  o'er  the  troubled  ocean  go, 
Strike  not  your  standards  to  this  miscreant  foe. 
Better  the  greedy  wave  should  swallow  all, 
Better  to  meet  the  death-conducted  ball, 
Better  to  sleep  on  ocean's  deepest  bed, 
At  once  destroyed  and  numbered  with  the  dead, 
Than  thus  to  perish  in  the  face  of  day — 
Where  twice  ten-thousand  deaths  one  death  repay. 

Hunger  and  thirst  to  work  our  v/oe  combine, 
And  mouldy  bread,  and  flesh  of  rotten  swine, 
The  mangled  carcase,  and  the  battered  brain, 
The  doctor's  poison,  and  the  captain's  cane, 
The  soldier's  musket,  and  the  steward's  debt, 
The  evening  shackle,  and  the  noon-day  threat !  " 

One  of  the  most  harrowing  passages  of  the  poem  is  that 
in  which  he  tells  how,  at  the  close  of  every  day,  they  were 
driven  from  the  hot  and  crowded  decks  down  into  the  hold 
— still  hotter  and  still  more  crowded : 

"  Swift  from  the  guarded  decks  we  rushed  along, 
And  vainly  sought  repose — so  vast  our  throng. 
Three  hundred  wretches  here,  denied  all  light, 
In  crowded  mansions  pass  the  infernal  night  ; 
Some  for  a  bed  their  tattered  vestments  join, 
And  some  on  chests,  and  some  on  floors  recline. 
Shut  from  the  blessings  of  the  evening  air, 
Pensive  we  lay  with  mangled  corpses  there  ; 
Meagre  and  wan,  and  scorched  with  heat,  below, 
We  loomed  like  ghosts,  ere  death  had  made  us  so  !  " a 

It  is,  however,  in  individual  portraiture — it  is  in  the  tributes 
of  choice  and  vitriolic  execration  which  he  pays  to  three  or 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  172-173,  175.  *  Ibid.  173. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  26 1 

four  of  the  officers  whom  he  had  the  unhappiness  to  en- 
counter on  board  these  horrid  ships — that  the  power  of  this 
artist  is  best  shewn.  One  of  these  detested  men  was  the 
mate  of  the  "  Hunter," — 

"  That  wretch  who,  banished  from  the  navy  crew, 
Grown  old  in  blood,  did  here  his  trade  renew. 
His  serpent's  tongue,  when  on  his  charge  let  loose, 
Uttered  reproaches,  scandal,  and  abuse, 
Gave  all  to  hell  who  dared  his  king  disown, 
And  swore  mankind  were  made  for  George  alone. 
Ten  thousand  times,  to  irritate  our  woe, 
He  wished  us  foundered  in  the  gulph  below ; 
Ten-thousand  times  he  brandished  high  his  stick, 
And  swore,  as  often,  that  we  were  not  sick — 
And  yet  so  pale  !  that  we  were  thought  by  some 
A  freight  of  ghosts  from  Death's  dominion  come."  * 

Another  creature  on  whom  the  poet  here  bestows  his 
attentions  is  a  Hessian  doctor,  the  assistant-surgeon  of  the 
hospital  ship : 

"  Fair  Science  never  called  the  wretch  her  son, 
And  Art  disdained  the  stupid  man  to  own  ; 

Yet  still  he  doomed  his  genius  to  the  rack, 

And,  as  you  may  suppose,  was  owned  a  quack  ! 

He  on  his  charge  the  healing  work  begun 

With  antimonial  mixtures —  by  the  tun  ; 

Ten  minutes  was  the  time  he  deigned  to  stay, — 

The  time  of  grace  allotted  once  a  day, — 

He  drenched  us  well  with  bitter  draughts,  't  is  true, 

Nostrums  from  Hell,  and  cortex  from  Peru  ; 

Some  with  his  pills  he  sent  to  Pluto's  reign, 

And  some  he  blistered  with  his  flies  of  Spain  ; 

His  Cream  of  Tartar  walked  its  deadly  round, 

Till  the  lean  patient  at  the  potion  frowned, 

And  swore  that  hemlock,  death,  or  what  you  will, 

Were  nonsense  to  the  drugs  that  stuffed  his  bill. 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  176. 


262  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

On  those  refusing,  he  bestowed  a  kick, 

Or  menaced  vengeance  with  his  walking-stick  ; 

Here,  uncontrolled,  he  exercised  his  trade, 

And  grew  experienced  by  the  deaths  he  made  ; 

By  frequent  blows  we  from  his  cane  endured, 

He  killed  at  least  as  many  as  he  cured, 

On  our  lost  comrades  built  his  future  fame, 

And  scattered  fate  where'er  his  footsteps  came. 

Some  did  not  seem  obedient  to  his  will, 

And  swore  he  mingled  poison  with  his  pill ; 

But  I  acquit  him  by  a  fair  confession — 

He  was  no  Englishman — he  was  a  Hessian  ! 

Although  a  dunce,  he  had  some  sense  of  sin, 

Or  else — the  Lord  knows  where  we  now  had  been, — 

Perhaps  in  that  far  country  sent  to  range 

Where  never  prisoner  meets  with  an  exchange  !  " ' 

But  "  this  dog  of  Hesse,"  as  the  poet  calls  him,  is  but  a 
subordinate  officer  of  the  medical  staff,  and  has  for  his  one 
redeeming  quality  that  he  is  not  an  Englishman.  Not  even 
so  much  as  that  can  be  said  on  behalf  of  the  man  who  stood 
above  him,  as  surgeon-in-chief : 

"  One  master  o'er  the  murdering  tribe  was  placed, — 
By  him  the  rest  were  honored  or  disgraced. 
Once,  and  but  once,  by  some  strange  fortune  led, 
He  came  to  see  the  dying  and  the  dead  ; 
He  came — but  anger  so  deformed  his  eye, 
And  such  a  faulchion  glittered  on  his  thigh, 
And  such  a  gloom  his  visage  darkened  o'er, 
And  two  such  pistols  in  his  hand  he  bore, 
That,  by  the  gods  !— with  such  a  load  of  steel 
He  came,  we  thought,  to  murder,  not  to  heal  ! 
Hell  in  his  heart,  and  mischief  in  his  head, 
He  gloomed  destruction,  and  had  smote  us  dead, 
Had  he  so  dared — but  fate  withheld  his  hand  : 
He  came — blasphemed — and  turned  again  to  land  !  "  * 

"  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  178-179.  2  Ibid.  179. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  263 

VI. 

From  the  time  of  Freneau's  deliverance  from  imprison- 
ment until  the  ratification  of  the  treaty  of  peace,  there 
seems  to  have  been  for  him  no  interval  of  inactivity  in  his 
work  as  a  satirist;  and  one  now  finds  the  years  1781,  1782, 
and  1783  thickly  strown  with  his  keen  and  poisoned  verses. 
Indeed,  a  running  commentary  on  the  writings  of  this  poet 
during  the  last  three  or  four  years  of  the  Revolution,  would 
be  a  running  commentary  on  the  most  important  aspects  of 
our  history  during  those  years.  Even  the  titles  of  his  chief 
poems  for  that  time  have  a  value,  as  helping  us  to  form 
some  rude  notion  of  the  variety  and  range  of  the  subjects 
with  which  he  then  dealt:  "  On  the  Memorable  Victory 
obtained  by  the  Gallant  Captain  Paul  Jones,  of  the  '  Good 
Man  Richard,'  over  the  '  Seraphis,'  etc.  under  the  com- 
mand of  Captain  Pearson";1  "To  the  Memory  of  the 
Brave  Americans,  under  General  Greene,  who  fell  in  the 
Action  of  September  8,  1781  ";a  "  To  his  Excellency  Gen- 
eral Washington  ";'  "  Dialogue  between  the  Lords  Dun- 
more  and  Mansfield";*  "  To  Lord  Cornwallis,  at  York, 
Virginia,  October  8,  I78i";6  "An  Epistle  from  Lord 
Cornwallis  to  Sir  Henry  Clinton  "  ; '  "  On  the  Fall  of  Gen- 
eral Earl  Cornwallis";7  "  Copy  of  an  Intercepted  Letter 
from  a  New  York  Tory  to  his  Friend  in  Philadelphia";9 
"  The  Tenth  Ode  of  Horace's  Book  of  Epodes  Imitated," 
for  the  departure  of  Benedict  Arnold  from  New  York,  in 
December,  1781;'  "A  Speech  that  should  have  been 
spoken  by  the  King  of  the  Island  of  Britain  to  his  Parlia- 
ment," at  the  close  of  the  campaign  of  1781  ; 10  "  Sir  Harry's 
Call";11  "  Lord  Dunmore's  Petition  to  the  Legislature  of 
Virginia  "  ; 1S  "  Epigram  occasioned  by  the  Title  of  Riving- 
ton's  Royal  Gazette  being  Scarcely  Legible  "  ;  "  "  Song  on 

"  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  183-187.  *  Ibid.  203-204. 


Ibid.  187-189.  4  Ibid.  192-193.  5 Ibid.  191-192. 

Ibid.  194-195.  7 Ibid.  197-203.  8  Ibid.  190-191. 

Ibid.  257-258.  10  Ibid.  217-219.  "  Ibid.  232-233. 

1  Ibid.  213-214.  13  Ibid.  215. 


264  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Captain  Barney's  Victory  over  the  Ship  'General  Monk  '  "  ;* 
"  On  Sir  Henry  Clinton's  Recall  " ; 2  "  Sir  Guy  Carleton's 
Address  to  the  Americans  "  ;3  "  Lines  Occasioned  by  Gen- 
eral Robertson's  Proclamation  ";4  "  Satan's  Remonstrance 
Occasioned  by  Mr.  Rivington's  Late  Apology  for  Lying  "  ; " 
"  Rivington's  Reflections,  December,  1782";'  "Stanzas 
Occasioned  by  the  Departure  of  the  British  from  Charles- 
ton "; T  "  Hugh  Gaine's  Account  of  His  Life";8  "  The 
New  York  Refugees'  Petition  to  Sir  Guy  Carleton  "  ;'  "  A 
New  York  Tory's  Epistle  to  One  of  his  Friends  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, written  previous  to  his  Departure  for  Nova  Scotia  "  ; J0 
and  "  Rivington's  Confessions,  Addressed  to  the  Whigs  of 
New  York,"  "  December  31,  1783. 

VII. 

In  addition  to  the  poems  thus  named  as  Freneau's  chief 
productions  for  the  last  few  years  of  the  Revolution,  are 
three  others  belonging  to  the  same  period,  but  so  remark- 
able for  their  satiric  quality,  so  rich  in  their  interpretations 
of  the  later  moods  of  the  Revolutionist  party,  as  to  claim  in 
this  place  our  more  particular  consideration.  The  first, 
which  probably  was  written  in  the  year  1780,  or  in  the  first 
half  of  the  year  1781,  is  entitled  "  The  Political  Balance, 
or,  the  Fates  of  Britain  and  America  Compared,"  "  and,  for 
imaginative  force  and  delicacy,  for  humor,  for  pungent  wit, 
for  spontaneity  and  liveliness  of  action,  and  for  its  easy 
mastery  of  the  technique  of  comic  verse,  may  be  accounted 
as  the  most  brilliant  of  all  this  author's  writings. 

At  the  outset,  the  reader  gets  from  the  couplet  which 
forms  its  motto,  a  fair  hint  of  the  purpose  and  method  of 
this  sprightly  composition : 

"  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  241-244.  2  Ibid.  244-247. 

3  Ibid.  247-249.  *  Ibid.  255-256.  B  Ibid.  264-265. 

6  Ibid.  275-280.  '  Ibid.  291-293.  8  Ibid.  281-291. 

'  Ibid.  269-270.          10  Ibid.  295-298.          "  Ibid.  299-302  ;  305-309. 

18  Ibid.  224-232. 


PHILIP   FRENEAU.  26$ 

"  Deciding  fates,  in  Homer's  style,  I  shew, 
And  bring  contending  gods  once  more  to  view." 

It  is,  indeed,  what  its  author  calls  it,  "  A  Tale," — a  merry 
mock-classic  tale  in  verse,  wherein  the  principal  gods  of 
Olympus  make  a  sudden  and  unexpected  irruption  into  the 
sphere  of  modern  and  western  life,  and,  looking  down  with 
sovereign  derision  upon  its  strutting  and  vulgar  pretensions 
to  greatness,  proclaim  judgments  which,  for  the  insurgent 
Americans  of  that  time,  must  have  had  the  effect  of  the 
most  delicious  paradox — upsetting  all  those  tests  and  stand- 
ards of  personal  or  national  value  then  imposed  upon  the 
world — particularly  upon  the  American  world — by  the  im- 
mense predominance  of  Great  Britain : 

"  As  Jove,  the  Olympian,  (who  both  I  and  you  know, 
Was  brother  to  Neptune,  and  husband  to  Juno) 
Was  lately  reviewing  his  papers  of  state, 
He  happened  to  light  on  the  records  of  Fate. 

"  In  alphabet  order  this  volume  was  written, 
So  he  opened  at  B.,  for  the  article  '  Britain.' 
'  She  struggles  so  well,'  said  the  god,  '  I  will  see 
What  the  sisters  in  Pluto's  dominions  decree ! ' 

"  And  first  on  the  top  of  a  column  he  read — 
'  Of  a  king  with  a  mighty  soft  place  in  his  head, 
Who  should  join  in  his  temper  the  ass  and  the  mule, 
The  Third  of  his  name,  and  by  far  the  worst  fool : 

' '  His  reign  shall  be  famous  for  multiplication, 
The  sire  and  the  king  of  a  whelp  generation  ; 
But  such  is  the  will  and  the  purpose  of  Fate, 
For  each  child  he  begets  he  shall  forfeit  a  state. 

" '  In  the  course  of  events,  he  shall  find  to  his  cost 
That  he  cannot  regain  what  he  foolishly  lost  ; 
Of  the  nations  around  he  shall  be  the  derision, 
And  know  by  experience  the  rule  of  division.' 


266  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  Sw  Jupiter  read — a  god  of  first  rank — 
And  still  had  read  on,  but  he  came  to  a  blank  ; 
For  the  Fates  had  neglected  the  rest  to  reveal — 
They  either  forgot  it,  or  chose  to  conceal."  ! 

Naturally  annoyed  at  this  neglect  or  refusal  of  the  Fates 
to  provide  him  with  further  information  about  the  future  of 
Great  Britain,  especially  in  its  contention  with  America, 
Jupiter  determines  to  obtain  the  information  for  himself,  by 
just  weighing  the  two  contending  parties  in  a  huge  pair  of 
"  Scales  "  which  he  knows  of  as  existing  somewhere  in  his 
sky.  Accordingly,  summoning  Vulcan,  he  orders  him  at 
once  to  make  a  globe,  with  the  several  portions  of  the 
earth  so  adjusted  to  it  that  he  could  take  them  out  one  by 
one,  and  put  them  into  the  balance : 

"  How  else  should  I  know  what  the  portions  will  weigh, 
Or  which  of  the  combatants  carry  the  day  ?  " 

With  Jove's  command,  the  ingenious  blacksmith  at  once 
proceeded  to  comply : 

"  Made  centre  and  circles  as  round  as  a  pancake, 
And  here  the  Pacific,  and  there  the  Atlantic. 

"  An  axis  he  hammered,  whose  ends  were  the  Poles, 
(On  which  the  whole  body  perpetually  rolls) 
A  brazen  meridian  he  added  to  these, 
On  which  were  engraven  twice  ninety  degrees. 

"  I  am  sure  you  had  laughed  to  have  seen  his  droll  attitude, 
When  he  bent  round  the  surface  the  circles  of  latitude, 
The  zones,  and  the  tropics,  meridians,  equator, 
And  other  fine  things  that  are  drawn  on  salt  water. 

"  Away  to  the  southward— instructed  by  Pallas — 
He  placed  in  the  ocean  the  Terra  Australis, 
New  Holland,  New  Guinea  and  so  of  the  rest — 
America  lay  by  herself  in  the  west. 

"  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  224-225. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  267 

"  Adjacent  to  Europe  he  struck  up  an  island, 
One  part  of  it  low,  but  the  other  was  high  land, 
With  many  a  comical  creature  upon  it, 
And  one  wore  a  hat,  and  another  a  bonnet. 

"  Like  emmets  or  ants  in  a  fine  summer's  day, 
They  ever  were  marching  in  battle  array, 
Or  skipping  about  on  the  face  of  the  brine 
Like  witches  in  egg-shells, — their  ships  of  the  line. 

"  These  poor  little  creatures  were  all  in  a  flame, 
To  the  lands  of  America  urging  their  claim, 
Still  biting,  or  stinging,  or  spreading  their  sails, — 
For  Vulcan  had  formed  them  with  stings  in  their  tails 

"  So  poor  and  so  lean,  you  might  count  all  their  ribs,1 
Yet  were  so  enraptured  with  crackers  and  squibs, 
That  Vulcan  with  laughter  almost  split  asunder — 
'  Because  they  imagined  their  crackers  were  thunder.' 

"  Due  westward  from  these,  with  a  channel  between, 
A  servant  to  slaves,  Hibernia  was  seen, 
Once  crowded  with  monarchs,  and  high  in  renown, — 
But  all  she  retained  was  the  Harp  and  the  Crown  ! 

"  Her  genius,  a  female,  reclined  in  the  shade, 
And,  merely  for  music,  so  mournfully  played, 
That  Jove  was  uneasy  to  hear  her  complain, 
And  ordered  his  blacksmith  to  loosen  her  chain. 

"  At  length,  to  discourage  all  stupid  pretensions, 
Jove  looked  at  the  globe,  and  approved  its  dimensions, 
And  cried  in  a  transport — '  Why  !  what  have  we  here  ? 
Friend  Vulcan,  it  is  a  most  beautiful  sphere  ! 

1 '  Now,  while  I  am  busy  in  taking  apart 
This  globe  that  is  formed  with  such  exquisite  art, 
Go,  Hermes,  to  Libra — you  're  one  of  her  gallants — 
And  ask,  in  my  name,  for  the  loan  of  her  Balance.' 

1  "  Their  national  debt  being  above  .£200,000,000  sterling."     Frenetu. 


268  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  Away  posted  Hermes  as  swift  as  the  gales, 
And  as  swiftly  returned  with  the  ponderous  Scales, 
And  hung  them  aloft  to  a  beam  in  the  air, 
So  equally  poised  they  had  turned  with  a  hair."  ' 

Thus,  having  all  things  in  readiness,  Jove  undertakes  alone 
to  lift  "  Columbia  "  into  its  scale,  but  to  his  amazement  he 
finds  that  even  his  Olympian  strength  is  unequal  to  the 
task.  Accordingly,  "  turning  about  to  their  godships,"  he 
bids  them  all  to  join  forces  with  him,  and  together  to  try  to 
hoist  the  mighty  mass : 

"  So  to  it  they  went,  with  handspikes  and  levers, 
And  upward  she  sprung,  with  her  mountains  and  rivers, 
Rocks,  cities,  and  islands,  deep  waters  and  shallows, 
Ships,  armies,  and  forests,  high  heads  and  fine  fellows  ! 

"  '  Stick  to  it,'  cries  Jove,  '  now  heave  one  and  all  ! 
At  least  we  are  lifting  one  eighth  of  the  Ball ! 
If  backward  she  tumbles,  then  trouble  begins, 
And  then  have  a  care,  my  dear  boys,  of  your  shins  ! ' 

"  When  gods  are  determined,  what  project  can  fail  ? 
So  they  gave  a  fresh  shove,  and  she  mounted  the  scale  ; 
Suspended  aloft,  Jove  viewed  her  with  awe — 
And  the  gods  for  their  pay,  had  a  hearty  huzza  !  "  * 

At  the  mere  appearance  of  an  intention  on  Jove's  part  to 
do  so  preposterous  a  thing  as  to  put  Britain  into  the  scale 
opposite  that  which  held  the  enormous  mass  of  Columbia, 
Neptune,  who  seems  to  have  been  standing  by,  perhaps 
without  lending  a  hand,  rudely  bawls  out— saluting  his 
august  brother  as  "  a  noddy!  "  Whereupon, 

Away  to  your  waters,  you  blustering  bully,' 
Said  Jove,  '  or  I  '11  make  you  repent  of  your  folly  ! 
Is  Jupiter,  sir,  to  be  tutored  by  you  ? — 
Get  out  of  my  sight,  for  I  know  what  I  do  !  ' 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  225-228.  2  Ibid.  228-229. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  269 

"  Then  searching  about  with  his  fingers  for  Britain, 
Thought  he,  '  This  same  island  I  cannot  well  hit  on  ; 
The  devil  take  him  who  first  called  her  the  Great ! 
If  she  was — she  is  vastly  diminished  of  late.' 

"  Like  a  man  that  is  searching  his  thigh  for  a  flea, 
He  peeped,  and  he  fumbled,  but  nothing  could  see  ; 
At  last  he  exclaimed — '  I  'm  surely  upon  it — 
I  think  I  have  hold  of  a  highlander's  bonnet.' 

"  But  finding  his  error  he  said  with  a  sigh, 
'  This  bonnet  is  only  the  island  of  Skie  ! ' 
So  away  to  his  namesake,  the  planet,  he  goes, 
And  borrowed  two  moons  to  hang  on  his  nose  : 

"  Through  these,  as  through  glasses,  he  saw  her  quite  clear, 
And  in  raptures  cried  out — '  I  have  found  her — she  's  here  ! 
If  this  be  not  Britain,  then  call  me  an  ass — 
She  looks  like  a  gem  in  an  ocean  of  glass  ; 

41 '  But,  faith,  she  's  so  small  I  must  mind  how  I  shake  her—- 
In a  box  I  '11  inclose  her,  for  fear  I  should  break  her  : 
Though  a  god,  I  might  suffer  for  being  aggressor, 
Since  scorpions,  and  vipers,  and  hornets  possess  her. 

"  '  The  white  cliffs  of  Albion  are  full  in  my  view — 
And  the  hills  of  Plinlimmon  I  think  I  could  shew  ; 
But,  Vulcan,  inform  me  what  creatures  are  these, 
That  smell  so  of  onions  and  garlick  and  cheese?' 

"  Old  Vulcan  replied—'  Odds  splutter  a  nails  ! 
Why  these  are  the  Welsh,  and  the  country  is  Wales ! 
When  Taffy  is  vexed,  no  devil  is  ruder — 
Take  care  how  you  handle  the  offspring  of  Tudor  ! 

" '  On  the  crags  of  the  mountains  hur  living  hur  seeks, 
Hur  country  is  planted  with  garlic  and  leeks  ; 
So  great  is  hur  choler,  beware  how  you  tease  hur, 
For  these  are  the  Britons — unconquered — by  Caesar  ! ' 


270  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

11  Jove  peeped  through  his  moons,  and  examined  their  features, 
And  said,  '  By  my  troth,  they  are  wonderful  creatures  ! — 
The  beards  are  so  long  they  encircle  their  throats, 
That — unless  they  are  Welshmen — I  swear  they  are  goats. 

" '  But  now,  my  dear  Juno,  pray  give  me  my  mittens — 
The  insects  I  am  going  to  handle  are  Britons — 
I  '11  draw  up  their  isle  with  a  finger  and  thumb, 
As  the  doctor  extracts  an  old  tooth  from  your  gum.' 

"  Then  he  raised  her  aloft — but  to  shorten  our  tale — 
She  looked  like  a  clod  in  the  opposite  scale, 
Britannia  so  small,  and  Columbia  so  large — 
A  ship  of  first  rate,  and  a  ferryman's  barge  !  " 

Of  course,  the  result  of  this  grotesque  experiment  was  only 
too  obvious;  and  as  he  put  back  into  their  proper  places 
the  two  contending  sections  of  his  globe, 

"  said  Jove  with  a  smile, 
'  Columbia  shall  never  be  ruled  by  an  isle  ; 
But  vapors  and  darkness  around  her  shall  rise, 
And  tempests  conceal  her  awhile  from  our  eyes. 

Then  cease  your  endeavors,  ye  vermin  of  Britain ' — 
And  here  in  derision  their  island  he  spit  on — 
*  'T  is  madness  to  seek  what  you  never  can  find, 
Or  think  of  uniting  what  nature  disjoined  ; 

'  But  still  you  may  flutter  awhile  with  your  wings, 
And  spit  out  your  venom,  and  brandish  your  stings  ; 
Your  hearts  are  as  black  and  as  bitter  as  gall— 
A  curse  to  yourselves,  and  a  blot  on  the  Ball ! '"  ' 

VIII. 

Some  months  after  the  American  victory  at  Yorktown 
had  made  it  plain  to  all  the  world  that  the  war,  even  though 
it  should  be  still  further  prolonged,  was  certainly  to  end  at 

"  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  229-332. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  2J\ 

last  in  American  Independence,  Freneau  sent  forth  the  sec- 
ond of  the  three  poems  to  which  special  attention  has  here 
been  called, — a  capital  jeu  d'esprit,  called  "  The  Prophecy," 
— a  prophecy  which,  in  mock  imitation  of  an  ancient  oracle, 
is  expressed  in  mystic  terms,  initials—and  other  transparent 
disguises, — a  prophecy,  also,  which  is  written  in  that  safest 
of  all  prophetic  ways,  namely,  after  the  occurrence  of  the 
chief  events  which  it  assumes  to  foretell.  Within  the 
twenty-three  lines  of  this  delightful  trifle,  as  in  a  poetic 
microcosm,  one  finds  the  whole  American  Revolution,  in  its 
great  successive  stages,  humorously  summed  up  and  con- 
cluded, from  the  Whig  point  of  view: 

"  When  a  certain  great  king,  whose  initial  is  G, 
Shall  force  stamps  upon  paper,  and  folks  to  drink  tea  ; 
When  these  folks  burn  his  tea  and  stampt  paper,  like  stubble, 
You  may  guess  that  this  king  is  then  coming  to  trouble. 
But  when  a  petition  he  treads  under  his  feet, 
And  sends  over  the  ocean  an  army  and  fleet  ; 
When  that  army,  half-starved,  and  frantic  with  rage, 
Shall  be  cooped  up  with  a  leader  whose  name  rhymes  to  cage  ; 
When  that  leader  goes  home  dejected  and  sad, 
You  may  then  be  assured  the  king's  prospects  are  bad. 
But  when  B  and  C  with  their  armies  are  taken, 
This  king  will  do  well  if  he  saves  .his  own  bacon. 
In  the  year  seventeen  hundred  and  eighty  and  two,1 
A  stroke  he  shall  get  that  will  make  him  look  blue  ; 
In  the  years  eighty-three,  eighty-four,  eighty-five, 
You  hardly  shall  know  that  the  king  is  alive  ; 
In  the  year  eighty-six  the  affair  will  be  over, 
And  he  shall  eat  turnips  that  grow  in  Hanover. 
The  face  of  the  Lion  shall  then  become  pale, 
He  shall  yield  fifteen  teeth,  and  be  sheared  of  his  tail. 

0  king,  my  dear  king,  you  shall  be  very  sore  ; 

I    The  Stars  and  the  Lily  shall  run  you  on  shore, 

And  your  Lion   shall  growl — but  never  bite  more  !  "" 

1  Perhaps  alludes  to  the  provisional  articles  for  a  treaty  of  peace,  recognizing 
American  Independence. 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  223. 


2/2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

IX. 

Not,  however,  in  jest  or  playfulness,  but  in  uttermost 
sincerity  of  scorn,  in  the  ruthlessness  of  unforgiving  hate, 
was  this  poet  of  alienated  America  to  say  his  last  word  to 
the  unfortunate  monarch  whose  blundering  conscientious- 
ness in  king-craft,  whose  well-intentioned  and  prayerful 
obstinacy  in  baleful  leadership,  had  at  last  brought  to  Eng- 
land the  loss  of  her  most  valuable  dependency,  and  to  the 
English-speaking  race  a  disruption  that  should  bear  for 
unborn  millions  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  a  legacy,  per- 
haps an  endless  legacy,  of  mutual  ill-will.  Freneau's  last 
word  to  King  George  of  England — a  poet's  ban  and  male- 
diction upon  him  and  his  people — was  spoken  in  March, 
1783,  on  the  news  of  "  the  King's  Speech,  recommending 
Peace  with  the  American  States  "  : 

"  Grown  sick  of  war,  and  war's  alarms, 

Good  George  has  changed  his  note  at  last — 

Conquest  and  Death  have  lost  their  charms  ; 
He  and  his  nation  stand  aghast 

To  see  what  horrid  lengths  they  've  gone, 

And  what  a  brink  they  stand  upon. 


"  Let  jarring  powers  make  war  or  peace, 

Monster  ! — no  peace  shall  greet  thy  breast 
Our  murdered  friends  shall  never  cease 

To  hover  round  and  break  thy  rest ! 
The  Furies  shall  thy  bosom  tear, 
Remorse,  Distraction,  and  Despair, 
And  Hell  with  all  its  fiends,  be  there ! 

"  Curs'd  be  the  ship  that  e'er  set  sail 

Hence,  freighted  for  thy  odious  shore  ; 
May  tempests  o'er  her  strength  prevail, 

Destruction  round  her  roar  ! 
May  Nature  all  her  aids  deny, 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  2f$ 

The  sun  refuse  his  light, 
The  needle  from  its  object  fly, 
No  star  appear  by  night, 

Till  the  base  pilot,  conscious  of  his  crime, 
Directs  the  prow  to  some  more  grateful  clime. 

"  Genius  !  that  first  our  race  designed, 

To  other  kings  impart 
The  finer  feelings  of  the  mind, 

The  virtues  of  the  heart ! 
When'er  the  honors  of  a  throne 

Fall  to  the  bloody  and  the  base, 
Like  Britain's  monster,  pull  them  down  !-— 

Like  his,  be  their  disgrace  ! 

"  Hibernia,  seize  each  native  right  ! 

Neptune,  exclude  him  from  the  main  ; 
Like  her  that  sunk  with  all  her  freight, 
The  '  Royal  George,'  take  all  his  fleet, 

And  never  let  them  rise  again  ; 
Confine  him  to  his  gloomy  isle, 

Let  Scotland  rule  her  half  ; 
Spare  him  to  curse  his  fate  awhile, 

And  Whitehead — thou  to  write  his  epitaph  !  " l 

X. 

After  a  considerate  inspection  of  the  writers  and  the 
writings  of  our  Revolutionary  era,  it  is  likely  that  most 
readers  will  be  inclined  to  name  Philip  Freneau  as  the  one 
American  poet  of  all  that  time  who,  though  fallen  on  evil 
days  and  driven  from  his  true  course  somewhat  by  stormy 
weather,  yet  had  a  high  and  questionless  vocation  for 
poetry.  Of  his  own  claim  to  recognition  he  was  proudly 
conscious,  as  sometimes  appeared  when,  in  blunt  and  face- 
tious fashion,  he  was  retorting  upon  some  of  his  literary 
brethren  who  both  robbed  and  calumniated  him : 

1  "  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  293-295. 

VOL.    11.— 18 


2/4  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  The  sun  's  in  the  west, 

And  I  am  opprest 

With  fellows  attempting  to  blacken  my  muse, 
I  Who  hardly  have  genius  to  blacken  my  shoes."  ' 

.  Nor  was  he  unconscious  of  all  that  was  malign  to  his  poetic 
i  destiny,  both  in  the  time  and  in  the  place  on  which  his  lot 
was  cast  : 

"  What  doom  the  Fates  intend,  is  hard  to  say, — 
Whether  to  live  to  some  far-distant  day, 
Or,  sickening  in  your  prime, 
In  this  bard-baiting  clime, 
Take  pet,  make  wings,  say  prayers,  and  flit  away."* 

Even  in  the  larger  relations  which  an  American  poet  in 
the  eighteenth  century  might  hold  to  the  development  of 
English  poetry  everywhere,  Freneau  did  some  work,  both 
early  and  late,  so  fresh,  so  original,  so  unhackneyed,  so 
defiant  of  the  traditions  that  then  hampered  and  deadened 
English  verse,  so  delightful  in  its  fearless  appropriation  of 
common  things  for  the  divine  service  of  poetry,  as  to  entitle 
him  to  be  called  a  pioneer  of  the  new  poetic  age  that  was 
then  breaking  upon  the  world,  and  therefore  to  be  classed 
with  Cowper,  Burns,  Wordsworth,  and  their  mighty  com- 
rades,— those  poetic  iconoclasts  who,  entering  the  temple  of 
eighteenth-century  English  verse,  broke  up  its  wooden 
idols,  rejected  its  conventionalized  diction,  and  silenced  for- 
ever its  pompous,  monotonous,  and  insincere  tune. 

Finally,  of  Freneau,  it  remains  to  be  said  that,  in  a  cer- 
tain eminent  sense,  he  was  the  first  American  poet  of 
Democracy;  and  that  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  his 
career,  and  in  spite  of  every  form  of  temptation,  he  re- 
mained true — fiercely,  savagely  true — to  the  conviction, 
that  his  part  and  lot  in  the  world  was  to  be  a  protagonist 
on  behalf  of  mere  human  nature,  as  against  all  its  assailants 

"  The  Poems  of  Philip  Freneau,"  155. 
!  "  Poems  on  Several  Occasions,"  39.4. 


PHILIP  FRENEAU.  2?$ 

whether  in  church  or  state.  In  the  year  1795 — during 
Washington's  second  term  in  the  presidency — this  combat- 
loving  poet  sent  forth  a  second  and  an  enlarged  edition  of 
his  poems,  which  had  been  first  issued  seven  years  before ; 
and  in  some  verses  which  he  therein  inserted,  entitled  "  To 
My  Book,"  one  may  still  hear  the  proud  voice  with  which 
he  claimed  for  himself  that,  whether  in  other  ways  success- 
ful or  not,  he  was  at  least  a  poet  militant — ever  doing  battle 
on  the  people's  side : 

"  Seven  years  are  now  elapsed,  dear  rambling  volume,1 
Since,  to  all  knavish  wights  a  foe, 
I  sent  you  forth  to  vex  and  gall  'em, 
Or  drive  them  to  the  shades  below, — 

1  "  Poems  on  Several  Occasions,"  394-395.  It  does  not  come  within  the 
scope  of  this  book  to  deal  with  the  literary  work  of  Freneau  after  1783  ;  but  as 
some  of  his  publications  after  that  date  included  work  done  by  him  during  the 
Revolution,  it  maybe  proper  to  mention  that  in  1788,  at  Philadelphia,  was  pub- 
lished "  Miscellaneous  Works  of  Mr.  Philip  Freneau,  Containing  his  Essays  and 
Additional  Poems."  The  only  copy  of  this  book  which  I  have  ever  met  with, 
formerly  belonged  to  George  Ticknor,  and  by  his  gift  is  now  the  property  of 
the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society.  It  has  prose  and  verse  intermingled, — 
some  of  it,  doubtless,  produced  during  the  Revolution.  Freneau  was  the  master 
of  a  delightful  prose  style,  easy,  sinewy,  touched  with  delicate  humor,  crisp, 
and  keen-edged.  As  good  examples  of  his  work,  I  noted  in  this  volume  "Ad- 
vice to  Authors,  by  the  late  Robert  Slender,"  42-48  ;  "  Robert  Slender's  Idea 
of  the  Human  Soul,"  87-91  ;  "The  Market  Man,"  93-94;  "The  Debtor," 
9^-97;  "  Rules  and  Directions  How  to  Avoid  Creditors,  Sheriffs,  Constables, 
etc."  97-106;  "The  City  Poet,"  111-119;  "  Directions  for  Courtship,"  133- 
140.  In  1809,  at  Philadelphia,  was  published  in  two  volumes,  the  third  edition 
of  his  collected  poems,  entitled  "  Poems  Written  and  Published  During  the 
American  Revolutionary  War,  and  now  Republished  from  the  Original  Manu- 
scripts, interspersed  with  Translations  from  the  Ancients,  and  other  Pieces  not 
heretofore  in  Print."  There  is  need  of  a  thorough  life  of  Freneau,  based  upon 
letters  of  his  and  other  materials  never  yet  used.  We  ought,  also,  to  have  a 
carefully  edited  collection  of  his  writings  in  prose  and  verse.  At  present,  we 
have  only  sketches  of  him, — as  by  John  W.  Francis,  in  Duyckinck's  "  Cyclo- 
paedia of  American  Literature,"  i.  332-333  ;  in  the  "  Introduction  "  to  the  Lon- 
don reprint  of  his  "  Poems,"  A.D.  1861 ;  in  Evert  A.  Duyckinck's  "  Introductory 
Memoir"  to  Freneau's  "  Poems  Relating  to  the  American  Revolution  "  ;  and 
by  Edward  F.  DeLancey,  in  "  Philip  Freneau  the  Huguenot  Patriot-Poet  of 
the  Revolution  and  his  Poetry." 


276  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

With  spirit  still  of  Democratic  proof, 

And  still  despising  Shylock's  cankered  hoof. 

For  seven  years  past,  a  host  of  busy  foes 

Have  buzzed  about  your  nose, 

White,  black,  and  grey,  by  night  and  day, 

Garbling,  lying,  singing,  sighing. 

These  eastern  gales  a  cloud  of  insects  bring 

That,  fluttering,  snivelling,  whimpering,  on  the  wing, 

And  wafted  still  as  Discord's  demon  guides, 

Flock  round  the  flame  that  yet  shall  singe  their  hides. 

"  Well ! — let  the  Fates  decree  whate'er  they  please  : 
Whether  you  're  doomed  to  drink  Oblivion's  cup, 
Or  Praise-God-Barebones  eats  you  up, 
This  I  can  say,  you  've  spread  your  wings  afar, 
Hostile  to  garter,  ribbon,  crown,  and  star, — 
Still  on  the  People's,  still  on  Freedom's  side, 
With  full  determined  aim,  to  baffle  every  claim 
Of  well-born  wights  that  aim  to  mount  and  ride." 


CHAPTER  XXXV. 

PULPIT-CHAMPIONS  OF  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

I. — The  tradition  of  leadership  inherited  by  the  pulpit  of  the  Revolution— The 
political  power  of  the  preachers  as  recognized  by  Otis  and  others — Public 
occasions  for  political  discourse  from  the  pulpit. 

II. — Charles  Chauncy's  services  to  the  Revolution  as  preacher,  author,  and 
political  monitor — His  special  enjoyment  of  theological  controversy. 

III. — Sermon  before  the  Revolutionary  assembly  of  Massachusetts,  May  31, 
!775i  by  Samuel  Langdon,  president  of  Harvard  College. 

IV. — Our  first  national  Fast  Day,  July  20,  1775,  as  the  occasion  for  sermons  in 
all  the  colonies  on  the  political  and  military  crisis — At  the  camp  in  Rox- 
bury,  by  Ezra  Sampson — At  Philadelphia,  by  Thomas  Coombe,  assistant 
rector  of  Christ  Church  and  St.  Peter's. 

V. — The  first  national  Fast  Day  as  observed  by  Congress  at  Philadelphia — 
The  sermon  by  Jacob  Duche — His  history  and  character — His  brilliant 
oratory — "  The  first  prayer  in  Congress" — The  eclat  of  his  various  ser- 
vices for  the  Revolutionary  cause— Under  the  military  reverses  of  the 
summer  of  1776,  he  loses  heart,  and  advises  Washington  to  stop  the  war — 
Duche's  retreat  to  England,  and  popularity  there — His  "  Discourses  on 
Various  Subjects,"  1777 — His  once  famous  "  Caspipina's  Letters." 

VI. — Jacob  Green,  a  preacher  of  Revolutionary  politics,  in  New  Jersey. 

VII. — Pulpit  warnings  against  the  moral  and  spiritual  dangers  of  the  times — 
Oliver  Hart,  of  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  preaches  against  the  sin  of 
dancing — Israel  Evans  preaches  to  the  troops  in  Pennsylvania  against  the 
religious  apathy  and  immorality  then  prevalent. 

VIII. — Hugh  Henry  Brackenridge  as  chaplain  in  Washington's  army  in  1777 — 
His  previous  career  as  student,  teacher,  and  poet — His  "Six  Political  Dis- 
courses Founded  on  Scripture" — His  chant  of  patriotic  hatred  and  ven- 
geance— His  prophetic  woes  on  the  enemies  of  American  peace  and  freedom. 

IX. — Samuel  Cooper  of  Boston — His  unusual  influence  in  letters,  society,  and 
affairs — His  political  essays — His  published  discourses. 

X. — Sermon  by  Nathan  Fiske  of  Brookfield,  on  the  capture  of  Lord  Cornwallis. 

XI. — Zabdiel  Adams's  election  sermon  in  Massachusetts,  1782. 

XII. — Nathaniel  Whitaker  of  Salem— His  sermons  in  imprecation  of  the 
Tories. 

XIII.— Sermons  on  the  day  of  national  Thanksgiving  for  Independence  and 
Peace,  December  u,  1783 — By  Eliphalet  Porter,  at  Roxbury — By  David 
Osgood  at  Medbury — By  John  Rodgers  in  New  York, 

XIV.— George  Duffield  of  Philadelphia— His  career — His  prominence  as  a 
political  preacher— Extolled  by  John  Adams,  in  1775  and  1776 — His  ser- 
vices as  army  chaplain — As  a  mark  for  Odell's  satire — His  sermon  on  the 
advent  of  Peace. 

277 


2/8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

I. 

"  IN  America,  as  in  the  Grand  Rebellion  in  England," 
said  a  Loyalist  writer  of  our  Revolutionary  time,  "  much 
execution  was  done  by  sermons."  '  Had  it  been  otherwise, 
there  would  now  be  cause  for  wonder.  Indeed,  the  preach- 
ers were  then  in  full  possession  of  that  immense  leadership, 
intellectual  and  moral,  which  had  belonged  to  their  order, 
in  America  ever  since  its  settlement,  in  England  ever  since 
the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century;  and  though  this  tradi- 
tion of  leadership  was  beginning  to  suffer  under  the  rivalry 
of  the  printing-press  and  under  the  ever-thickening  blows 
of  rationalism,  yet,  when  aroused  and  concentrated  upon 
any  object,  they  still  wielded  an  enormous  influence  over 
the  opinions  and  actions  of  men, — even  as  to  the  business  of 
this  world.  Without  the  aid  "  of  the  black  regiment,"  as 
James  Otis  facetiously  called  them,  he  declared  his  inability 
to  carry  his  points.8  Late  in  the  year  1774  the  Loyalist, 
Daniel  Leonard,  in  an  essay  accounting  for  the  swift  and 
alarming  growth  of  the  spirit  of  resistance  and  even  of  revo- 
lution in  America,  gave  a  prominent  place  to  the  part  then 
played  in  the  agitation  by  "  our  dissenting  ministers." 

What  effect  must  it  have  had  upon  the  audience,"  said 
he,  "  to  hear  the  same  sentiments  and  principles,  which 
they  had  before  read  in  a  newspaper,  delivered  on  Sundays 
from  the  sacred  desk,  with  a  religious  awe,  and  the  most 
solemn  appeals  to  heaven,  from  lips  which  they  had  been 
taught  from  their  cradles,  to  believe  could  utter  nothing 
but  eternal  truths!  "  ' 

The  literary  history  of  the  pulpit  of  the  American  Revo- 
lution is  virtually  a  history  of  tjie  pulpit-champions  of  that 
movement;  since  those  preachers  who  were  not  its  cham- 
pions could  seldom  find  a  printer  bold  enough  to  put  their 
sermons  to  press,  or  even  an  opportunity  to  speak  them 

1  J.  Boucher,  "Autobiography"  in  "  Notes  and  Queries,"  $th  Series,  vi.  142. 
s  Tudor,  "  Life  of  Otis,"  492  n. 
"'Nov.  and  Massachusettensis, "  151. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY.  279 

from  the  pulpit.1  Nor  was  it  necessary  that  ministers 
should  seem  to  go  out  of  their  way  in  order  to  discourse 
upon  those  bitter  secular  themes :  indeed,  they  would  have 
been  forced  to  go  out  of  their  way  in  order  to  avoid  do- 
ing so.  Fast  days,  thanksgiving  days,  election  days,  the 
anniversaries  of  battles  and  of  important  acts  of  Congress 
and  of  other  momentous  events  in  the  progress  of  the 
struggle,  brought  such  topics  to  the  very  doors  of  their 
studies,  and  even  laid  them  upon  the  open  Bibles  in  their 
pulpits.  Moreover,  if  any  clergyman  held  back  from  polit- 
ical preaching,  he  was  not  likely  to  escape  som^reminder, 
more  or  less  gentle,  as  to  what  was  expected  of  him  *in  sirclT 
a  time  of  awful  stress  and  peril.  "  Does  Mr.  Wibird  preach 
against  oppression  and  the  other  cardinal  vices  of  the 
time  ?  "  wrote  John  Adams  to  his  wife,  from  Philadelphia, 
shortly  after  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill.  "  Tell  him,  the 
clergy  here  of  every  denomination,  not  excepting  the  Epis- 
copalian, thunder  and  lighten  every  Sabbath.  They  pray 
for  Boston  and  the  Massachusetts.  They  thank  God  most 
explicitly  and  fervently  for  our  remarkable  successes.  They 
pray  for  the  American  army."  a 

II. 

One  of  the  purest  and  most  undaunted  public  characters 
to  confront  us  on  the  threshold  of  this  period,  is  Charles 
Chauncy,3  pastor  of  the  First  Church  in  Boston,  who  as 
preacher,  author,  and  political  monitor  brought  to  the 
service  of  the  Revolution  a  keen  and  a  ripe  intellect,  un- 
bounded courage,  and  the  prestige  of  long  and  manifold 

1  In  Chapter  xiv.  of  the  present  work,  Jonathan  Boucher  is  taken  as  the  rep- 
resentative of  the  Loyalist  preachers  of  the  Revolution  ;  even  as  Jonathan 
Mayhew  is  dealt  with  in  Chapter  vi.  as  the  representative  of  the  preachers  who, 
in  the  first  years  of  the  Revolution,  educated  public  opinion  for  its  bold 
doctrines  and  duties. 

3  "  Letters  of  John  Adams,  Addressed  to  His  Wife,"  i.  50. 

3  His  character,  and  his  career  as  a  writer  prior  to  the  American  Revolu- 
tion, are  dealt  with  by  me  in  "A  History  of  American  Literature  during  the 
Colonial  Time,"  ii.  199-203. 


28o  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

literary  industry.  He  brought  to  the  service  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, also,  an  invincible  confidence  in  its  final  triumph.  "Our 
cause  is  so  just,"  said  he  again  and  again,  "that  if  human  ef- 
forts should  fail, a  host  of  angels  would  be  sent  to  support  it. " ' 
With  the  Revolutionary  movement,  in  every  stage  and 
phase  of  it,  particularly  as  interpreted  by  the  radical  politi- 
cians of  New  England,  he  was  in  perfect  sympathy.  Per- 
haps his  most  characteristic  contribution  to  its  development 
was  made  through  the  part  he  took  in  that  violent  contro- 
versy which  raged  during  the  earliest  years  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, over  the  projected  introduction  of  Anglican  bishops 
into  America,2 — a  controversy  which  had  no  little  effect  in 
creating  and  inflaming  American  suspicion  as  to  trie  danger- 
ous and,  in  fact,  damnable  designs  of  the  British  government 
for  a  universal  suppression  of  human  rights  in  America. 
From  year  to  year,  however,  during  this  whole  period,  there 
was  scarcely  an  aspect  of  the  moving  scene,  upon  which  this 
apostle  of  civic  righteousness  and  fortitude  did  riot  utter 
some  notable  comment,  giving  to  his  imperiled  countrymen 
the  most  ample  help  in  the  form  of  counsel,  warning,  and 
reproof.  Thus,  in  1766,  he  published  "  A  Discourse  on 
4  the  Good  News  from  a  Far  Country,'  "  delivered  on  the 
day  of  public  thanksgiving  for  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act, 
and  discussing  the  whole  problem  of  Anglo-American  rela- 
tions, with  the  tone  of  a  man  of  affairs  as  well  as  of  a 
cloistered  thinker  and  a  divine.3  In  1770,  he  sounded  his 

1  Tudor,  "  The  Life  of  James  Otis,"  148. 

J  The  titles  of  his  publications  touching  the  Episcopal  controversy,  which  are 
too  numerous  for  mention  in  the  text,  may  be  easily  found  by  those  who  have 
the  curiosity  therefor,  in  any  one  of  the  several  extant  lists  of  his  published  writ- 
ings for  his  entire  career,  as  follows  : 

(1)  John   Clarke,   "  A  Discourse     ...     at   the   Interment   of  the   Rev. 
Charles  Chauncy,"  etc.,  Boston  :   1707. 

(2)  Sprague,  "Annals,"  etc.,  viii.  10-11. 

(3)  William  Chauncey  Fowler,  "  Memorials  of  the  Chaunceys,"  51-54. 

(4)  Sabin,  "A  Dictionary  of  Books  relating  to  America,"  iii.  546-553. 

(5)  Paul  Leicester  Ford,  "  Bibliotheca  Chaunciana."     The  last  is  by  far  the 
most  complete  and  the  most  accurate. 

3  A  reprint  of  this  sermon  may  be  seen  in  John  Wingate  Thornton,  "The 
Pulpit  of  the  American  Revolution,"  105-146. 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY.  28 1 

usual  high  note  of  political  courage,  in  a  sermon  entitled 
"  Trust  in  God  the  Duty  of  a  People  in  a  Day  of  Trouble." 
In  1774,  he  published  "  A  Letter  to  a  Friend,"  giving  an 
account  "  of  the  hardships  and  sufferings  the  town  of 
Boston  .  .  .  must  undergo  in  consequence  of  the  late 
act  of  the  British  parliament."  In  1778,  he  published  a 
sermon  against  "  sordid  avarice  "  as  "  the  accursed  Thing  " 
which  "  must  be  taken  away  from  among  a  people,  if  they 
would  reasonably  hope  to  stand  before  their  enemies." 

When,  at  last,  the  triumph  of  the  Revolution  doomed  in 
clear  vision  just  before  him,  this  master  and  lover  of  debate 
was  quite  free  to  give  himself  up  to  the  bliss  of  a  new  theo- 
logical controversy — more  lively,  if  possible,  than  the  politi- 
cal and  military  one  then  drawing  to  its  end — a  controversy 
over  the  doctrine  of  future  punishment.  Upon  this  ques- 
tion Chauncy,  who  took  the  less  glowing  but  more  genial 
side,  published,  i'n  1782,  a  little  book  entitled,  "  Salvation 
of  All  NMen,  Illustrated  and  Vindicated  as  a  Scripture 
Doctrine  " ;  in  1783,  a  little  book  entitled,  "  Divine  Glory 
brought  to  View,  in  the  Final  Salvation  of  All  Men  "  ;  in 
1784,  a  large  book  entitled,  "  The  Mastery  hid  from  Ages 
and  Generations,  made  manifest  by  the  Gospel-Revelation ; 
or,  the  Salvation  of  All  Men  the  Grand  Thing  aimed  at  in 
the  Scheme  of  God."  In  setting  forth  his  own  optimistic 
faith  as  to  the  divine  management  of  the  universe,  he  had 
sometimes  a  sparkling  and  a  grimly  playful  zest,  as  when, 
for  example,  he  opposed  his  own  view  to  that  of  an  antago- 
nist who  had  laid  down  the  doctrine,  that  the  everlasting 
misery  of  a  portion  of  the  human  race  "  was  consistent 
with  the  justice  of  God,  and  essential  to  His  glory."  "  I 
have  such  a  veneration  for  my  Creator,"  says  Chauncy, 
"  as  to  suppose  He  needs  no  foil  to  set  off  His  perfections  ; 
such  an  opinion  of  the  Saints,  as  to  imagine  they- could 
relish  their  felicity,  without  being  spectators  of  the  misery 
of  the  damned.  I  place  such  a  value  upon  the  merits  and 
death  of  my  Redeemer,  as  to  conclude  all  will  be  happy  for 
whom  He  suffered  on  the  Cross.  And  I  pay  such  a  regard 


282  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

to  the  positive  declarations  of  Scripture,  as  to  anticipate  the 
restitution  of  all  things,  when  the  ruins  of  the  Fall  shall  be 
more  than  repaired,  and  the  creature  which  now  groans  shall 
groan  no  more."  He  is  but  too  glad,  also,  to  admit  that 
the  God  whom  he  serves,  is  4<  very  unlike  "  the  God  of  his 
antagonist:  "'  The  God  to  whom  you  pay  your  religious 
homage,  needs  the  introduction  of  sin  and  misery,  in  order 
to  illustrate  His  own  character,  and  display  His  divine  per- 
fections.. I  bow  my  knee  to  a  Power  intrinsically  excellent, 
who  can^shine  without  contrast,  whose  glory  is  essential, 
whose  happiness  is  immutable,  and  who  would  be  the  ad- 
miration of  His  creatures,  even  were  guilt  and  suffering 
banished  the  universe.  You  expect  to  look  down  from 
Heaven  upon  numbers  of  wretched  objects,  confined  in  the 
Pit  of  Hell,  and  blaspheming  their  Creator  forever.  I  hope 
to  see  the  prison-doors  opened,  and  to  hear  those  tongues 
which  are  now  profaning  the  name  of  God,  chaunting  His 
praise.  In  one  word,  you  imagine  the  Divine  Glory  will  be 
advanced  by  immortalizing  sin  and  misery:  I,  by  extermi- 
nating both  natural  and  moral  evil,  and  introducing  universal 
happiness.  Whichjof  our  systems  is  best  supported,  let 
reason  and  Scripture  determine."  ' 

III. 

On  the  thirty-first  of  May,  1775, — in  the  grim  interval  be- 
tween Concord  and  Bunker  Hill, — there  was  convened  at  the 
village  of  Watertown,  a  few  miles  west  of  Cambridge,  an 
assemblage  of  delegates  from  the  several  towns  of  Massa- 
chusetts, to  act  as  a  provisional  government  for  the  colony 
in  place  of  their  General  Court  which,  under  the  circum- 
stances, could  not  be  held.  It  was  the  anniversary  of  the 
day  fixed  by  royal  charter  for  the  election,  by  the  lower 
house,  of  the  members  of  the  colonial  council:  a  day  on 
which,  for  nearly  a  century  and  a  half,  it  had  been  customary 
for  the  members  of  the  legislature  to  go  in  a  body  to  the 

"  Divine  Glory  brought  to  View,"  etc.,  3-4. 


SAMUEL  LANGDON.  283 

house  of  worship  and  listen  to  a  sermon  from  some  eminent 
preacher  expressly  chosen  for  the  purpose.  The  stately 
and  venerable  associations  of  the  day  were  not  forgotten 
by  those  sturdy  representatives  at  Watertown ;  and  though 
a  rude  intermission  had  then  befallen  their  regular  govern- 
ment, they  determined  to  keep  alive  as  many  as  possible  of 
its  ancient  forms.  Accordingly  on  this  day,  having  pro- 
ceeded to  the  old  village  meeting-house,  they  were  ad- 
dressed by  Samuel  Langdon,  president  of  Harvard  College, 
who,  in  the  very  first  sentences  of  his  discourse,  gave  voice 
to  the  stern  grief,  the  indignation,  the  undaunted  purpose 
that  were  in  all  their  hearts.  "  On  this  day,"  said  he,  "  the 
people  have  from  year  to  year  assembled  from  all  our  towns, 
in  a  vast  congregation,  with  gladness  and  festivity,  with 
every  ensign  of  joy  displayed  in  our  metropolis,  which  now, 
alas,  is  made  a  garrison  of  mercenary  troops,  the  stronghold 
of  despotism !  But  how  shall  I  now  address  you  from  this 
desk,  remote  from  the  capital,  and  remind  you  of  the  im- 
portant business  which  distinguished  this  day  in  our  calen- 
dar, without  spreading  a  gloom  over  this  assemblage  by 
exhibiting  the  melancholy  change  made  in  the  face  of  our 
public  affairs  ?  We  have  lived  to  see  the  time  when  British 
liberty  is  just  ready  to  expire;  when  that  constitution  of 
government  which  has  so  long  been  the  glory  and  strength 
of  the  English  nation,  is  deeply  undermined  and  ready  to 
tumble  into  ruins;  when  America  is  threatened  with  cruel 
oppression,  and  the  arm  of  power  is  stretched  out  against 
New  England,  and  especially  against  this  colony,  to  compel 
us  to  submit  to  the  arbitrary  acts  of  legislators  who  are  not 
our  representatives,  and  who  will  not  themselves  bear  the 
least  part  of  the  burdens  which  without  mercy  they  are  lay- 
ing upon  us.  The  most  formal  and  solemn  grants  of  kings 
to  our  ancestors  are  deemed  by  our  oppressors  as  of  little 
value ;  and  they  have  mutilated  the  charter  of  this  colony  in 
the  most  essential  parts,  upon  false  representations  and  new- 
invented  maxims  of  policy,  without  the  least  regard  to  any 
legal  process.  We  are  no  longer  permitted  to  fix  our  eyes  on 


284  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

the  faithful  of  the  land,  and  trust  in  the  wisdom  of  their 
counsels  and  the  equity  of  their  judgment;  but  men  in 
whom  we  can  have  no  confidence — whose  principles  are  sub- 
versive of  our  liberties  .  .  .  men  who  are  ready  to  serve 
any  master  and  execute  the  most  unrighteous  decrees,  for 
high  wages — whose  faces  we  never  saw  before,  and  whose 
interests  and  connections  may  be  far  divided  from  us  by  the 
wide  Atlantic — are  to  be  set  over  us  as  councilors  and 
judges,  at  the  pleasure  of  those  who  have  the  riches  and 
power  of  the  nation  in  their  hands,  and  whose  noblest  ptan 
is  to  subjugate  the  colonies  first,  and  then  the  whole  nation, 
to  their  will." 

IV. 

In  view  of  the  "  critical,  alarming,  and  calamitous  state  " 
of  America,  after  the  battles  of  Lexington  and  Concord, 
the  2oth  of  J  uly ,  1 775,  had  been  appointed  by  the  Continental 
Congress  "  for  alF  the  English  colonies  on  this  continent  as 
a  day  of  public  humiliation,  fasting,  and  prayer  "  ; 5  and  in 
at  least  thirteen  of  those  colonies  the  day  was  observed  ac- 
cordingly,— being,  indeed,  "  the  first  general  fast  ever  kept 
on  one  day  since  the  settlement"  of  the  country;3  and 
being,  likewise,  a  notable  proof  that  these  same  American 
colonies  had  finally  passed  from  the  stage  of  local  separatism 
into  the  stage  of  incipient  national  unity.  On  that  day, 
therefore,  from  New  Hampshire  to  Georgia,  the  pulpit  be- 
came the  organ  of  this  new  national  consciousness — of  this 
universal  alarm  and  pain  and  hate  and  aspiration ;  it  then 
spoke  out  in  every  tone  natural  to  Englishmen,  to  freemen, 
and  to  Christians. 

On  that  day,  at  the  camp  at  Roxbury,  Massachusetts,  a 
most  stirring  sermon  4  was  preached  to  the  officers  and  men 
of  Colonel  Cotton's  regiment  by  the  youthful  pastor  of  the 
Congregational  Church  at  Plympton,  Ezra  Sampson,  a 
graduate  of  Yale,  a  man  of  abilities  so  remarkable  that  he 

"  A  Sermon,"  etc.,  5-7.  3  A   Holmes,  "Annals,"  etc.,  ii.  215. 

8  "  Journals  of  the  Am.  Cong.,"  i.  81-82.    4  Published  at  Watertown  :  1775- 


NATIONAL  FAST  DAY.  285 

was  described  by  one  of  his  classmates  "  as  being  both 
Sampson  by  name  and  Sampson  by  nature."  *  "  It  is  re- 
corded of  a  Turkish  general,"  exclaimed  the  preacher, 
"  that  being  called  to  engage  a  Christian  army  which  had 
broken  through  the  most  solemn  ties,  he  stood  up  at  the 
head  of  his  troops,  and  then  taking  out  the  treaty  that  they 
had  violated  and  holding  it  up  to  view,  thus  addressed  the 
Throne  of  Heaven :  '  O  Almighty  Being,  if  thou  art,  as  they 
say  thou  art,  these  Christians'  God,  thou  lovest  what  is 
right  and  hatest  perfidy.  Look  down,  therefore,  and  be- 
hold this  treaty  which  they  have  broken ;  and  as  thou  canst 
not  favor  what  is  wrong,  render  their  arms  successless,  and 
make  mine  victorious.'  He  ended.  Immediately  the  sword 
was  drawn ;  the  two  parties  vigorously  engaged,  and  the 
perfidious  Christians  were  beaten  off  the  field.  And  may 
not  we  also  hold  up  a  broken  charter,  the  cruel  port  bill, 
and  the  most  impious  and  infamous  Quebec  bill,  adding  to 
these  the  inhuman,  unequaled  treachery  exercised  toward 
the  distressed  inhabitants  of  Boston,  as  witnesses  of  the 
perfidy  of  our  enemies  and  what  their  designs  upon  us 
are?"8 

On  that  day,  Thomas  Coombe,  assistant  minister  of  Christ 
Church  and  St.  Peter's  in  Philadelphia,  an  orator  trained 
to  a  most  flowing  and  impressive  pulpit-style,  preached  a 
sermon 3  suitable  to  the  time ;  for  though  afterward  he 

1  Letter  of  Edward  Robinson,  in  Sprague,  "Annals,"  ii.  124. 

9  "A  Sermon,"  etc.,  19-20.  This  preacher  lived  to  the  year  1823,  and  be- 
came well  known,  not  only  for  his  published  sermons  but  for  his  numerous 
articles  in  "  The  Balance  "  and  in  the  "  Connecticut  Courant,"  and  for  several 
books,  namely,  "  The  Beauties  of  the  Bible,"  "  The  Historical  Dictionary," 
and  "  The  Brief  Remarker."  His  is  another  example  of  the  strong  impulse 
given  to  literary  activity  at  Yale  College  during  the  decade  immediately  pre- 
ceding the  Declaration  of  Independence. 

8  Published  in  Philadelphia  in  1775.  In  the  year  previous,  he  had  also  pub- 
lished the  substance  of  two  sermons  on  "  The  Harmony  between  the  Old  and 
New  Testament  respecting  the  Messiah."  He  was  also  a  writer  of  verse.  Thus 
he  published  in  Philadelphia  in  1775,  "Edwin  or  the  Emigrant,  an  Eclogue," 
wherein  Edwin  sings  of  "Auburn's  vale,"  of  his  own  deceased  wife  Emma,  and 
of  other  poetic  subjects — all  in  strains  melodiously  mixed  ol  Goldsmith  and 


286  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

shrank  back  from  the  proposition  for  Independence,  he 
fully  justified  the  course  of  the  colonists  thus  far  in  their 
opposition  to  ministerial  encroachments.  Moreover,  in  this 
sermon  preached  upon  an  occasion  of  state,  he  did  not  fail 
to  point  out  the  frequent  and  fatal  connection  between 
public  calamity  and  private  misdoing.  In  the  very  year  in 
which  the  physical  conflict  of  the  Revolution  began,  in  the 
very  city  in  which  that  conflict  was  officially  directed  on  be- 
half of  the  Revolutionists,  this  preacher  saw  reason  to 
lament  over  the  frivolity,  the  self-indulgence,  the  gross  and 
sordid  vices  of  the  people :  ' '  What  a  rage  for  pleasure, 
what  extravagance  in  dress  and  dissipation,  what  an  un- 
worthy pride  of  going  beyond  each  other  in  splendor  of 
appearance.  .  .  .  O  Philadelphia,  dear  native  city! 
.  thy  inhabitants,  like  those  of  ancient  Babylon, 
dwell  carelessly  in  their  habitations;  .  .  .  thy  young 
men  have  far  exceeded  the  bounds  of  decent  or  honorable 
amusement,  and  scarce  any  are  to  be  found  of  either  sex 
stemming  the  general  corruption."  ' 

V. 

On  the  morning  of  the  day  thus  set  apart  for  a  solemn 
consideration  by  the  American  people  of  their  sins,  dangers, 
duties,  the  members  of  Congress  took  the  trouble  to  con- 
form to  their  own  recommendation  by  assembling  at  half- 
past  nine  o'clock,  at  their  usual  place  of  meeting,  and  going 
thence  in  a  body  "  to  attend  divine  service  at  Mr.  Duche's 
church/' "  where,  as  was  expected,  the  sermon  was  preached 

water.  I  have  seen  a  copy  of  this  poem  published  likewise  in  Philadelphia, 
but  without  date  and  under  a  title  somewhat  altered,  namely  "  The  Peasant  of 
Auburn,  or  the  Emigrant.  A  Poem."  This  alteration  has  led  to  the  mistake 
that  these  two  titles  stand  for  two  different  poems.  For  example,  "Appletons" 
Cyclopaedia  of  Am.  Biog.,"  sub.  nom. 

1  "A  Sermon,"  etc.,  13. 

8  These  words,  as  if  from  some  official  minutes  which  he  does  not  designate, 
are  cited  by  E.  D.  Neill,  in  "  The  Pa.  Mag.  of  Hist,  and  Biog.,"  ii.  66.  In 
my  copy  of  the  "  Journals  of  the  Am.  Cong.,"  i.  120,  the  entry  of  their  agree- 
ment "  to  attend  divine  service  "  does  not  mention  the  church  to  which  they 
are  to  go. 


JACOB  DUCHE.  287 

by  Mr.  Duch£  himself.  Representing  America  as  a  vine 
still  united  to  the  parent-stalk  of  Britain,  the  preacher  gave 
them  a  vivid  and  impassioned  discourse,  wherein,  doubtless, 
every  radical  Revolutionary  politician  in  Congress  had  the 
gratification  of  hearing  his  own  opinions  proclaimed,  with 
melodious  fervor,  by  the  most  eloquent  and  fashionable 
Anglican  clergyman  in  the  land.  The  orator  spoke  of  him- 
self and  his  countrymen  as  "  injured  and  oppressed,"  and 
as  "  unmeriting  the  harsh  and  rigorous  treatment  "  they 
were  receiving  from  the  mother  country ;  and  he  thrilled  his 
hearers  with  fresh  indignation  and  horror  at  the  unnatural- 
ness  of  this  severity:  "  'T  is  not  now,"  he  exclaimed,  "  a 
foreign  enemy,  or  the  savages  of  our  own  wilderness,  that 
have  made  the  cruel  and  unrighteous  assault ;  but  it  is  even 
thou,  Britain,  that  with  merciless  and  unhallowed  hands 
wouldst  cut  down  and  destroy  this  branch  of  thine  own 
vine."  ' 

The  preacher  who  spoke  these  flaming  words,  was  the 
Reverend  Jacob  Duche,  rector  of  the  united  parishes  of 
Christ  Church  and  St.  Peter's,  himself  at  that  time  thirty- 
eight  years  of  age,  of  an  old  and  influential  family  in  Penn- 
sylvania, a  member  of  the  first  class  graduated  from  the 
College  of  Philadelphia,  a  man  noted  for  his  affectionate 
and  generous  nature,  and  for  his  high  cultivation, — his 
many  brilliant  and  captivating  gifts  being  made  still  more 
captivating  by  the  extraordinary  sweetness  of  his  voice  and 
his  own  rather  wonderful  mastery  of  it."  Alas,  as  the  event 
proved,  it  was  the  misfortune  of  this  pleasant  gentleman, 
that,  living  in  times  which  called  for  virile  and  stern  quali- 
ties— sound  sense,  toughness,  tenacity,  the  power  to  resist 
flattery  and  to  take  blows— he  lacked  all  these,  and  yet  pos- 

1  "  The  American  Vine,"  20-21.  A  Sermon  preached  before' Congress,  20 
July,  1775.  Philadelphia  :  1775. 

5  The  first  Bishop  of  Pennsylvania  considered  Whitefield  as  the  best  reader 
of  the  Prayer  Book  he  had  ever  heard,  and  next  to  Whitefield,  Jacob  Duche. 
He  also  attributed  much  of  Duche's  popularity  as  a  preacher  to  his  "  remark- 
ably fine  voice  and  graceful  action."  Bird  Wilson,  "  Mem.  of  Bishop  White," 
28  ;  and  Sprague,  "Annals,"  etc.,  v.  185. 


288  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

sessed  exactly  the  sort  of  talent  to  fender  his  lack  of  them 
conspicuous  and  lamentable. 

Nearly  a  year  before  the  time  of  Duche"s  fast-day  sermon, 
he  had  come  into  great  prominence  before  the  country  by 
an  act  of  devout  patriotism  which,  indeed,  at  once  endeared 
him  to  all  friends  of  the  Revolution,  and  which  made  him 
the  central  figure  in  a  noble  and  pathetic  scene  still  cele- 
brated in  our  history:  he  it  was  who  uttered  "  the  first 
prayer  in  Congress." 

That  illustrious  body  had  met  for  the  first  time  in  its 
existence  on  Monday,  the  fifth  of  September,  1774.  On 
the  day  following,  Gushing  of  Massachusetts  had  moved 
that  their  daily  sessions  should  be  opened  with  prayer.  To 
this  proposal  an  objection  was  made  by  Jay  of  New  York 
and  by  Rutledge  of  South  Carolina,  on  the  ground  that, 
proper  as  the  act  would  be,  it  was  rendered  impracticable 
by  their  diversity  in  religious  sentiments  and  usages — some 
of  the  members  being  Congregationalists,  some  Presby- 
terians, some  Anabaptists,  some  Episcopalians,  some  Quak- 
ers. Whereupon  the  sturdy  Puritan,  Samuel  Adams,  stood 
up  in  his  place  and  said,  that  while  he  was  a  Congregation- 
alist,  "  he  was  no  bigot,  and  could  hear  a  prayer  from  a 
gentleman  of  piety  and  virtue,  who  was  at  the  same  time  a 
friend  to  his  country.  He  was  a  stranger  in  Philadelphia, 
but  had  heard  that  Mr.  Duche"  deserved  that  character;  and 
therefore  he  moved  that  Mr.  Duch£,  an  Episcopal  clergy- 
man, might  be  desired  to  read  prayers  to  the  Congress 
to-morrow  morning."  '  Under  this  gust  of  magnanimous 
feeling,  the  motion  prevailed;'  and,  accordingly,  the  clergy- 
man thus  mentioned,  having  been  waited  on  in  person  by 
Peyton  Randolph,  the  President  of  Congress,  graciously 
consented  to  their  wishes.  It  happened,  likewise,  almost  at 
the  very  moment  when  Randolph  was  laying  before  Duche" 
the  invitation  of  Congress,  that  the  whole  town  was  thrown 
into  consternation  by  the  news  which,  happily,  turned  out 

'  "  Letters  of  John  Adams,"  etc.,  i,  23. 
8  "Journals  of  the  Am.  Congress,"  i.  8. 


JACOB  DUCHE.  289 

to  be  false — that  the  British  forces  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Boston  had  opened  fire  upon  that  beleagured  and  distressed 
city.  Under  such  circumstances  it  was,  that  on  the  follow- 
ing morning,  Wednesday,  the  seventh  of  September,  the 
rector  of  Christ  Church  and  St.  Peter's  arrived  aj  the  door 
of  Carpenter's  Hall.  "  He  appeared  with  his  clerk  and  in 
his  pontificals,"  as  John  Adams  wrote  in  a  letter  a  few  days 
afterward,  "  and  read  several  prayers  in  the  established 
form,  and  then  read  the  collect '  for  the  seventh  day  of 
September,  which  was  the  thirty-fifth  Psalm.  You  must 
remember,  this  was  the  next  morning  after  we  heard  the 
horrible  rumor  of  the  cannonade  of  Boston.  I  never  saw  a 
greater  effect  upon  an  audience.  It  seemed  as  if  Heaven 
had  ordained  that  Psalm  to  be  read  on  that  morning.  After 
this,  Mr.  Duche,  unexpectedly  to  everybody,  struck  out 
into  an  extemporary  prayer,  which  filled  the  bosom  of  every 
man  present.  I  must  confess,  I  never  heard  a  better  prayer, 
or  one  so  well  pronounced.  .  .  .  Dr.  Cooper  himself 
never  prayed  with  such  fervor,  such  ardor,  such  earnestness 
and  pathos,  and  in  language  so  elegant  and  sublime,  for 
America,  for  the  Congress,  for  the  province  of  Massachu- 
setts Bay,  and  especially  the  town  of  Boston.  It  has  had 
an  excellent  effect  upon  everybody  here.  .  ,.  .  Mr. 
Duch6  is  one  of  the  most  ingenious  men,  and  best  charac- 
ters, and  greatest  orators,  in  the  Episcopal  order  upon  this 
continent — yet  a  zealous  friend  of  liberty  and  his  country."  * 
Outside  of  Congress,  also,  the  eclat  of  this  performance 
was  very  great ;  and  thenceforward  throughout  the  remain- 
der of  that  year,  and  throughout  the  years  1775  and  1776, 
Duche"  was  a  burning  and  a  shining  light  among  American 

1  As  John  Adams's  devotions  had  not  been  of  a  kind  to  make  him  familiar 
with  the  Prayer  Book,  he  may  be  easily  pardoned  for  calling  the  Psalter  for  the 
day,  its  "collect."  He  mentions  the  thirty-fifth  Psalm  only;  but  the  Psalter 
for  the  seventh  day  of  the  month  includes  the  thirty-sixth  Psalm  also,  which 
was  undoubtedly  read  by  Duche,  and  which  must  have  increased  the  impression 
of  the  astonishing  applicability  of  the  portion  of  ancient  Scriptures  ages  before 
set  apart  for  that  particular  day. 

s  '4  Letters  of  John  Adams,"  etc.,  i.  23-24. 

VOL.    II. — IQ. 


290 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


civilians  and  soldiers  then  engaged  in  making  resistance  to 
the  colonial  policy  of  England,  and  finally  in  throwing  off 
her  authority  altogether.  Thus,  in  a  fiery  sermon  preached 
by  him  within  the  walls  of  Christ  Church,  about  a  fortnight 
after  the  kattle  of  Bunker  Hill,  he  exhorts  the  first  battalion 
of  Philadelphia  troops  there  present,  to  remember  the  duty 
of  standing  fast  in  their  spiritual  and  temporal  liberties — of 
standing  fast  even  in  that  terrific  conflict  which  England,  in 
her  jealousy,  as  he  says,  of  the  rising  greatness  of  America, 
was  then  forcing  upon  her  American  children.  "  Stand 
fast,"  cried  out  this  surpliced  Captain  Bobadil  to  a  throng 
of  men  then  banded  and  weaponed  for  an  enterprise  that 
was  likely  to  prove  a  very  serious  one  to  them,  "  stand  fast 
by  a  steady  constancy  and  perseverance.  Difficulties  un- 
looked  for  may  yet  arise,  and  trials  present  themselves 
sufficient  to  shake  the  utmost  firmness  of  human  fortitude. 
Be  prepared,  therefore,  for  the  worst.  Suffer  not  your 
spirits  to-  evaporate  by  too  violent  an  ebullition  now.  Be 
not  too  eager  to  bring  matters  to  an  extremity,  lest  you 
should  be  wearied  out  by  a  continued  exertion,  and  your 
constancy  should  fail  you  at  the  most  important  crisis. 
Coolly  and  deliberately  wait  for  those  events  which  are  in 
the  hands  of  Providence;  and  depend  upon  Him  alone  for 
strength  and  expedients  suited  to  your  necessities.  In  a 
word,  my  brethren,  though  the  worst  should  come,  though 
we  should  be  deprived  of  all  the  conveniences  and  elegan- 
cies of  life,  though  we  should  be  cut  off  from  all  our  usual 
sources  of  commerce,  and  constrained,  as  many  of  our  breth- 
ren have  already  been,  to  abandon  our  present  comfortable 
habitations,  let  us,  nevertheless,  stand  fast  as  the  guardians 
of  liberty."  Brave  advice  was  this,  and  bravely  spoken; 
and  probably  no  man  needed  it  more,  or  violated  it  sooner, 
than  the  man  himself  from  whose  quivering  lips  it  fell  upon 
that  rapt  congregation. 

A  few  days  after  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  Duch£ 

1  This  sermon,  dedicated  to    Washington,   was  published  in   1775  both   in 
Philadelphia  and  in  London.     The  words  Quoted  are  on  pages  23-2,1. 


JACOB  DUCHE.  391 

was  officially  notified  that,  in  consideration  of  his  "  piety  " 
as  well  as  of  his  "  uniform  and  zealous  attachment  to  the 
rights  of  America,"  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  had 
appointed  him  their  chaplain,  and  would  be  pleased  to  have 
him  attend  on  them  every  morning  at  nine  o'clock.1  At- 
tend on  them,  accordingly,  he  did,  every  morning  for  the 
next  three  months,  and  prayed  most  fervently  for  the 
Divine  blessing  upon  their  acts  in  rejection  of  the  authority 
of  the  king  and  in  resistance  of  his  power:  "  Look  down  in 
mercy,  we  beseech  Thee,  on  these  our  American  States, 
who  have  fled  to  Thee  from  the  rod  of  the  oppressor,  and 
thrown  themselves  on  Thy  gracious  protection,  desiring  to 
be  henceforth  dependent  only  on  Thee.  To  Thee  have 
they  appealed  for  the  righteousness  of  their  cause ;  to  Thee 
do  they  now  look  up  for  that  countenance  and  support 
which  Thou  alone  canst  give.  Take  them,  therefore, 
Heavenly  Father,  under  Thy  nurturing  care.  Give  them 
wisdom  in  council,  and  valor  in  the  field;  defeat  the  mali- 
cious designs  of  our  cruel  adversaries ;  convince  them  of 
the  unrighteousness  of  their  cause;  and  if  they  still  persist 
in  their  sanguinary  purposes,  oh!  let  the  voice  of  Thine 
own  unerring  justice,  sounding  in  their  hearts,  constrain 
them  to  drop  the  weapons  of  war  from  their  unnerved  hands 
in  the  day  of  battle."2  Not  long,  however,  after  this 
prayer  had  been  first  uttered,  the  cause  on  behalf  of  which 
it  was  made  began  to  suffer  that  series  of  military  reverses 
which  brought  on  the  times  that  tried  men's  souls — times 
in  which  the  soul  of  poor  Duche  was  tried,  and  found  want- 
ing. For  when,  at  last,  these  reverses  to  the  American 
cause  culminated  in  the  possession  of  Philadelphia  by  the 
British,  Duche  promptly  turned  the  political  coat  which  he 
wore  under  his  surplice;  and  opening  his  church  for  the  use 

1  John  Hancock's  letter  notifying  Duche  of  the  appointment  is  given  by 
Neill,  in  "  Pennsylvania  Mag.,"  etc.,  ii.  67.  The  appointment  was  made 
9  July,  1776.  "  Jour.  Am.  Cong.,"  i.  402.  An  error  seems  to  have  crept  into 
the  date  of  Hancock's  letter,  in  Neill's  copy. 

5  The  whole  prayer  is  given  in  Sabine,  "  Loyalists  of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  i.  389. 


2Q2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

of  those  "  cruel  adversaries  "  against  whom  he  had  prayed 
with  so  much  energy,  he  at  once  restored  to  the  service 
such  portions  of  the  Prayer  Book  as  he  had  latterly  omitted,1 
and  especially  gave  to  the  prayers  for  the  king  and  the 
royal  family  the  benefit  of  his  most  sympathetic  and  thrill- 
ing vocal  expression.  Soon  after  that  feat  of  moral  versa- 
tility, Duch£  did  almost  the  only  logical  thing  that  was  left 
for  him  to  do — he  addressed  a  letter  to  his  friend,  the  com- 
mander-in-chief  of  the  American  army,  exhorting  him  by 
all  that  was  sacred  and  prudent,  "  to  represent  to  Congress 
the  indispensable  necessity  of  rescinding  the  hasty  and  ill- 
advised  Declaration  of  Independency."  "  Your  interposi- 
tion and  advice,  I  am  confident,  would  meet  with  a  favorable 
reception  from  the  authority  under  which  you  act;  if  it 
should  not,  you  have  an  infallible  recourse  still  left — nego- 
tiate for  your  country  at  the  head  of  your  army."  ' 

Certainly,  as  soon  as  these  facts  got  abroad,  this  country 
could  hardly  be  expected  to  afford  a  comfortable  habitation 
for  the  Reverend  Jacob  Duche\  Indeed,  a  few  weeks  after 
his  letter  to  Washington,  the  newspapers  appropriately 
announced  his  departure  for  England,  in  the  distinguished 
company  of  Lord  Cornwallis,  General  Cliveland,  and  Sir 
George  Osborne.  Moreover,  the  country  which,  in  its  dire 
distress,  Duche  thus  abandoned,  he  never  saw  again — he 
was  never  permitted  to  see  again— until,  in  1792,  being  then 
old,  paralytic,  and  harmless,  he  appeared  once  more  in  the 

"  Pennsylvania  Mag.,"  etc.,  ii.  69. 

8  "  The  Duche  Letter  to  General  Washington,"  n.  p.  ;  n.  d.,  6-7.  This  re- 
print seems  to  have  been  made  from  a  copy  found  among  the  Duche  MSS. 
offered  for  sale  in  Philadelphia  in  1893.  »  The  very  letter  which  was  sent 
to  Washington  by  Duche  is  now  in  the  Department  of  State,  and  an  exact  re- 
print of  it  has  been  issued  by  Worthington  Chauncey  Ford,  in  his  collection  of 
eight  letters  from  and  to  Washington  and  relating  to  Duche's  political  attitude 
during  the  Revolution  ;  "  The  Washington-Duche  Letters."  Between  Ford's 
version  and  the  one  given  in  Sparks,  "  Corr.  of  the  Am.  Rev.,"  i.  448-458,  are 
many  variations.  The  Philadelphia  copy,  from  which  I  have  quoted  above,  is 
almost  identical  with  the  text  of  Sparks's  version.  Neither,  therefore,  is  quite 
so  valid  as  Ford's  version,  which  I  had  not  at  hand  at  the  time  of  making  my 
citations. 


JACOB  DUCH&.  293 

city  of  his  birth,  where  it  was  given  him  to  witness  the 
stately  beginnings  of  the  national  life  of  the  young  Repub- 
lic under  the  presidency  of  that  very  General  whom,  in  its 
dark  days,  he  had  exhorted  to  betray  both  himself  and  it  to 
the  enemy.  Six  years  afterward,  his  body  was  laid  by  the 
side  of  his  wife's  in  the  churchyard  of  St.  Peter's. 

As  to  Duche's  part  in  the  literature  of  the  Revolution,  it 
may  be  mentioned,  that  besides  the  occasional  sermons 
which  he  sent  to  the  press  before  he  took  leave  of  his  coun- 
try, he  published  in  London,  in  1779,  two  beautiful  volumes 
entitled  "  Discourses  on  Various  Subjects," — these  dis- 
courses being  products  of  his  long  career  in  Philadelphia, 
each  volume,  also,  being  adorned  with  a  frontispiece  from 
a  painting  by  the  former  Philadelphian,  Benjamin  West. 
In  1790,  this  work  had  passed  to  its  third  edition. 

By  far  the  most  notable  contribution  made  by  him  to  our 
literature,  was  a  little  book  commonly  known  as  "  Caspi- 
pina's  Letters,"  first  published  in  Philadelphia,  1774; 
republished  in  Bath,  1777,  in  London,  1791,  and  in  Dublin, 
1792.  It  was  also  translated  into  German  and  published  at 
Leipsic  in  1778.'  Its  exact  title  is  "  Observations  on  a 
Variety  of  Subjects,  Literary,  Moral,  and  Religious,  in  a 
Series  of  original  Letters  written  by  a  Gentleman  of  For- 
eign Extraction,  who  resided  some  Time  in  Philadelphia." 
The  hypothetical  writer  of  these  letters  is  a  young  Eng- 
lishman, bearing  the  astounding  name  of  Tamoc  Caspi- 
pina,"  a  student  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  who,  having 
been  sent  to  America  for  a  couple  of  years,  helps  him- 
self to  kill  the  time  by  giving  an  account  of  the  country 
and  its  people,  in  letters  to  such  very  desirable  corre- 

1  For  these  dates,  excepting  for  the  first  one,  I  depend  on  Sabin.  To  the 
first  English  reprint,  was  added  a  life  of  William  Penn  ;  and  it  was  from  this 
reprint  that  the  German  translation  was  made  :  "  Briefe,  welche  Beobachtungen 
iiber  verschiedene  Gegenstande  der  Literatur,  Religion,  und  Moral  enthalten, 
nebst  dem  Leben  des  Herren  Penn.  Aus  dem  Englischen.  Leipzig:  1778." 

**  An  acrostic  upon  the  full  title  of  the  office  which  Duche  then  held  :  "  The 
Assistant  Minister  of  Christ  Church  and  St.  Peter's  in  Philadelphia  in  North 
America." 


294  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

spondents  as  "  The  Right  Honorable  Lord  Viscount  P.," 

"  Lady  Caroline  S.,"  and  "  The  Lord  Bishop  of  B 1." 

The  prevailing  tone  of  the  letters  is  one  of  refinement, 
gentility,  devoutness;  of  unswerving  deference  to  the 
English  Church  and  the  English  aristocracy;  with  a  genial 
forbearance  towards  almost  everything  in  America — except 
Methodism.  This  precious  and  mealy-mouthed  Caspipina 
seems  to  be  a  well-developed  prig;  his  observations  are 
wholly  without  keenness,  depth,  or  force ;  and  though 
treating  of  personal  and  social  topics  in  a  new  country,  it 
seems  never  to  occur  to  him  that  the  grandiose  solemnity 
of  his  platitudes  might  sometimes  be  qualified  by  a  stroke 
of  satire,  or  a  ripple  of  mirth. 

VI. 

Jacob  Green,  a  graduate  of  Harvard  College  in  1744,  was 
molded  for  the  Christian  ministry  under  the  influence  of 
Whitefield  and  Gilbert  Tennent,  and  for  the  last  forty-five 
years  of  his  life  was  pastor  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in 
Hanover,  New  Jersey.  An  early  and  a  fearless  champion 
of  the  doctrine  of  American  Independence,  he  not  only 
preached  it  from  his  pulpit,  but  published  a  pamphlet '  in 
support  of  it — at  a  time,  too,  when  any  general  approval  of 
the  doctrine  was  doubtful.  His  parish  held  an  exposed 

1  I  state  this  on  the  testimony  of  his  son,  Ashbel  Green,  in  Sprague,  "An- 
nals," etc.,  iii.  138,  where  he  does  not  mention  the  title  of  the  pamphlet. 
Elsewhere,  however,  he  attempts  to  give  the  title  from  memory,  but  without 
being  confident  of  his  own  accuracy,  as  "  Observations  on  the  Present  Contro- 
versy between  Great  Britain'and  Her  American  Colonies."  Quoted  in  Hilde- 
burn,  "  Issues  of  the  Pennsylvania  Press,"  ii.  91,  as  from  "  Life  of  Ashbel 
Green,"  46.  Hildeburn  suggests  that  the  pamphlet  referred  to,  may  have  been 
the  one  published  at  Philadelphia,  in  1769,  entitled.  "The  Controversy  be- 
tween Great  Britain  and  her  Colonies  Reviewed,"  etc.  On  the  other  hand, 
Mr.  Franklin  Burdge  has  suggested  that  Green's  pamphlet  may  be  the  one 
published  in  Philadelphia,  in  1776,  entitled  "  Observations  on  the  Reconcilia- 
tion of  Great  Britain  and  the  Colonies."  From  internal  evidence,  as  I  think, 
neither  of  these  pamphlets  could  have  been  by  Jacob  Green  ;  neither  takes  the 
side  of  the  controversy  which  his  son  declares  that  he  took. 


OLIVER  HART.  295 

situation ;  yet  through  the  entire  period  of  the  war,  and 
amid  many  perils  and  hardships,  he  remained  undauntedly 
at  his  post ;  and  in  all  that  time  of  anguish,  even  as  before 
and  afterward,  he  wrought  strongly,  according  to  the  light 
that  was  in  him,  on  behalf  of  every  interest  of  man.  His 
most  notable  publication  was  "  A  Vision  of  Hell:  and  a 
Discovery  of  Some  of  the  Consultations  and  Devices  there, 
in  the  Year  1767."'  In  spite  of  what  might  be  inferred 
from  its  title,  this  little  book  has  no  immediate  reference  to 
earthly  politics,  being,  in  fact,  a  very  animated  report  of  a 
conference,  apparently  overheard  by  the  writer,  between 
Satan  and  the  other  big  devils,  touching  the  outlook  for 
their  business  in  this  world,  especial  emphasis  being  laid  by 
them  on  the  impediments  just  then  presented  to  their 
favorite  work  of  catching  souls. 

VII. 

To  some  of  the  patriotic  preachers  it  seemed  a  shocking 
impiety  that  people  in  so  hard  a  stress  of  toil  and  danger  as 
were  the  Americans,  should  have  any  disposition  to  indulge 
in  the  frivolous  and  baleful  device  of  dancing.  For  exam- 
ple, Oliver  Hart,  for  thirty  years  pastor  of  the  Baptist 
Church  in  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  was  stirred  to  indig- 
nation and  grief  that  in  his  own  city,  enveloped  as  it  then 
was  by  storm-clouds  of  calamity,  this  saltatory  abomination 
was  not  only  "  revived,"  but  was  "  attended  to  in  a  frantic 
manner,  at  a  time  when  everything  in  Providence  is  calling 
us  to  different  exercises.  The  judgments  of  God  are  now 
opened  over  the  land,  and  the  inhabitants  ought  to  learn 
righteousness.  The  alarm  of  war,  the  clangor  of  arms,  the 
garments  rolled  in  blood,  the  sufferings  of  our  brethren  in 
the  Northern  States  and  of  others  in  a  state  of  captivity, 
together  with  the  late  dreadful  conflagration  in  this  town, 

1  The  true  authorship  of  this  brochure  is  disguised  under  the  pseudonym  of 
Theodorus  Van  Shermain.  I  found  a  copy  of  it  in  the  Congregational  Library, 
Boston. 


296  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

are  so  many  loud  calls  to  repentance,  reformation  of  life, 
and  prayer  that  the  wrath  of  God  may  be  turned  away  from 
us.  Instead  of  which,  we  are  smothered  up  in  pleasure  and 
dissipation.  It  will  hardly  be  credited  that  the  fire  was 
scarcely  extinguished  in  Charleston,  before  we  had  balls, 
assemblies,  and  dances  in  every  quarter,  and  even  in  some 
of  those  houses  which  miraculously  escaped  the  flames. 
Is  it  thus  we  requite  the  Lord  for  our  deliverance  ? 
The  monumental  ruins  of  the  town  will  rise  up  in  judgment 
against  the  inhabitants,  and  condemn  them  for  such  im- 
pieties. ...  I  am  no  prophet,  nor  the  son  of  a  prophet, 
and  yet  will  venture  to  predict  that  other  and  perhaps 
greater  judgments  will  yet  light  upon  us  unless  we  repent."  ' 
Accordingly,  on  the  22d  of  March,  1778,  he  preached  a 
sermon,  blazing  with  the  pure  old  Puritan  fire,  entitled 
"  Dancing  Exploded:  a  Sermon  shewing  the  Unlawfulness, 
Sinfulness,  and  Bad  Consequences  of  Balls,  Assemblies,  and 
Dances  in  General." 

In  October,  1779,  the  eloquent  army  chaplain,  Israel 
Evans,  preaching  at  Easton,  Pennsylvania,  to  a  great  throng 
of  soldiers  just  back  from  a  campaign  against  the  Six 
Nations,  spoke  out,  like  an  old  Hebrew  prophet,  against 
the  apathy  and  immorality  then  so  prevalent  among  his 
own  countrymen,  and  their  appalling  decline  in  patriotism : 
"  Alas,  the  spirit  of  liberty  is  now  rather  struggling  with 
the  vicious  manners  and  the  selfish  principles  of  the  times, 
than  with  the  tyrant  of  Britain.  The  love  of  wealth  and 
the  pursuit  of  pleasure  have  almost  extinguished  that  flame 
of  patriotism  which  blazed  forth  with  such  ardor  at  the  be- 
ginning of  this  war.  Virtue  and  patriotism,  the  guardians 
of  liberty,  are  in  many  places  and  by  many  men  made  the 
subject  of  scorn  and  contempt,  and  that  by  those  who 
would  be  esteemed  wise  politicians  and  friends  to  their 
country.  ...  A  republic  without  virtue  is  an  absurdity 

1  Part  of  the  Preface  to  his  sermon,  "  Dancing  Exploded,"  1778.  My  quota- 
tion is  made  from  the  reprint  given  in  "  The  Patriot  Preachers  of  the  American 
Rev.,"  232-257. 


HUGH  HENR  Y  BRA  CKENRIDGE.  297 

in  politics,  and  can  no  more  stand  than  a  building  when  the 
foundation  is  removed."  ' 

VIII. 


Upon  the  opening  of  the  military  campaign  under  Wash- 
ington in  the  spring  of  1777,  there  appeared  among  the 
Pennsylvania  troops  a  young  chaplain  named  Hugh  Henry 
Brackenridge,8  tall  and  commanding  in  person,  with  the 
voice,  the  eye,  and  the  soul  of  an  orator:  so  penetrated, 
likewise,  by  the  passion  of  rage  against  the  enemy  and  of 
zeal  to  destroy  him,  that  his  sermons — so  far  as  now  known 
to  us — seem  to  have  breathed  almost  every  sort  of  senti- 
ment excepting  such  as  would  remind  one  of  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount. 

The  personal  history  of  this  young  chaplain  had  already 
been  an  interesting  one,  and  was  characteristic  of  the  fiery, 
aspiring,  and  indomitable  spirit  within  him.  Born  in  Scot- 
land in  1748,  he  was  brought  to  America  when  but  five 
years  of  age.  So  poor  were  his  parents  that  the  cost  of  the 
sea-voyage  had  taken  their  last  penny ;  and  on  leaving  the 
ship  the  father  had  sold  the  very  coat  from  off  his  back  in 
order  to  buy  bread  and  procure  conveyance  out  into  the 
woods  of  York  County,  Pennsylvania,  beyond  the  Susque- 
hanna.  This  little  boy,  Hugh,  not  at  all  lacking  in  the 
usual  boy-appetite  for  bread,  very  soon  gave  evidence  of  an 
unusual  appetite  for  knowledge  and  of  a  marvelous  pre- 
cocity and  indefatigableness  in  acquiring  it.  He  would 
sometimes  trudge  thirty  miles  to  Fogg's  Manor  to  procure 
a  book,  and  on  coming  home  would  read  it  in  the  long  win- 
ter evening,  by  the  light  of  burning  chips  and  splinters. 

1  "  A  Discourse,"  etc.,  25-26.  • 

*  In  his  earliest  acknowledged  publication,  and  in  an  advertisement  of  his 
school  in  1778,  his  middle  name  was  given  as  Montgomery.  Subsequently,  he 
dropped  this  name,  and  took  that  of  Henry.  The  best  biographical  account  of 
him  which  I  have  met  with  is  by  his  son,  Henry  Marie  Brackenridge,  origi- 
nally printed  in  "  The  Southern  Literary  Messenger"  ;  reprinted  in  the  elder 
Brackenridge's  prose  satire,  "  Modern  Chivalry,"  ed.  1846,  Appendix. 


298  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

He  bargained  with  a  neighboring  clergyman  for  lessons  in 
Latin  and  Greek,  in  return  for  personal  labor.  Afterward 
he  bargained  with  a  young  man  near  by  for  lessons  in  math- 
ematics, in  return  for  his  own  lessons  in  Latin  and  Greek. 
Thus,  by  the  time  he  had  reached  the  age  of  fifteen  years, 
he  was  ready  to  set  up  as  a  public  teacher  of  those  several 
branches  of  knowledge.  After  due  examination,  he  was 
given  the  appointment  of  teacher  to  a  free-school  at  Gun- 
powder Falls  in  Maryland, — a  school  having  in  it  a  number 
of  young  men  older  and  bigger  than  himself.  Of  these,  one 
very  soon  came  to  think  that  it  would  be  fine  to  try  issues 
with  their  stripling-pedagogue,  and,  accordingly  offering 
him  some  impertinence,  defied  his  authority.  Of  course, 
to  young  Brackenridge  it  was  quite  plain  that  that  particular 
question  of  authority  was  the  very  one  which  needed  to  be 
settled  then  and  there  to  the  satisfaction  of  all  concerned ; 
and  without  waste  of  time  or  words,  he  seized  a  burning 
stick  from  the  fire,  and  with  it  smote  his  hulk  of  an  antago- 
nist such  a  blow  as  felled  him  to  the  floor — thereby  con- 
vincing him  and  the  rest  of  the  school  that  their  new  master 
had  valid  credentials  to  teach  and  to  rule  in  that  place. 
After  a  peaceful  reign  among  them  for  several  years, 
Brackenridge  gathered  up  his  small  earnings,  and  marched 
away  to  Princeton  College,  where  President  Witherspoon 
had  just  entered  upon  his  duties,  and  where  the  young 
man  was  enabled  to  arrange  for  a  part  payment  of  costs,  by 
himself  undertaking  to  teach  classes  in  the  college  for  two 
hours  a  day.  While  giving  to  the  President  some  account 
of  his  own  life  thus  far,  he  happened  to  quote  the  familiar 
words  of  Juvenal : 

"  Haud  facile  emergunt,  quorum  virtutibus  obstat 
Res  angusta  domi  "  ; ' 

whereupon  Witherspoon  finely  replied,—"  There  you  are 
wrong,  young  man!  it  is  only  your  '  res-angusta-domi  '- 
men  that  do  emerge." 

1  Juvenalis  Saturarum  Liber  Primus,  iii.  164-165. 


HUGH  HENRY  BRACKENRIDGE.  299 

Having  among  his  classmates  James  Madison  and  Philip 
Freneau — with  whom  his  friendship  seems  to  have  become 
a  life-long  influence — he  took  his  bachelor's  degree  at 
Princeton  in  1771.  There,  also,  he  remained  for  some 
time  after  graduation,  serving  as  college-tutor,  studying 
divinity,  receiving  likewise  his  license  as  a  preacher.  He 
then  went  back  to  Maryland  and  took  charge  of  an  academy 
on  the  Eastern  Shore ;  and  it  was  while  thus  engaged  that, 
in  1776,  he  wrote  for  his  pupils  the  tragedy  of  "  The  Battle 
of  Bunker's  Hill."1  As  public  disasters  thickened,  and 
the  paths  of  the  fighting-men  became  more  and  more  beset 
with  bafflement  and  anguish,  it  was  not  unlike  Brackenridge 
to  turn  his  back  upon  his  far-off  school,  and  make  his  way 
to  the  camp — there  to  partake  with  the  troops  in  all  the 
allotments  of  fate,  to  the  endurance  of  which  they  were  to 
be  helped  by  his  strong  and  thrilling  speech  and  his  un- 
daunted bearing. 

Then  it  was  that  he  composed  for  them  the  "  Six  Polit- 
ical Discourses  Founded  on  the  Scripture,"  which,  in  1778, 
were  given  forth  in  print  to  all  who  cared  to  read  them ;  the 
range  and  method  of  which  may  partly  be  guessed  from 
their  titles:  "The  Bloody  Vestiges  of  Tyranny,"  "The 
Nature  and  Artifice  of  Toryism,"  "  The  Fate  of  Tyranny 
and  Toryism,"  "  The  Agency  of  Heaven  in  the  Cause  of 
Liberty,"  "  The  Blasphemy  of  Gasconade  and  Self-De- 
pendence  in  a  Certain  General,"  "  The  Great  Wrath  of  the 
Tyrant  and  the  Cause  of  it."  These  discourses  do  indeed 
announce  themselves  as  "  Founded  on  the  Scripture."  It 
may  be  so;  but  it  is  chiefly  to  Old  Testament  Scripture 
that  the  reference  must  be  meant,  and  particularly  to  those 
portions  of  it  which  recite  the  slaughter  of  the  Canaanites 
by  Joshua,  the  pitiless  deed  of  Jael  the  wife  of  Heber,  the 
imprecations  of  the  Psalmist  David,  the  fierce  valor  and 
terribleness  of  the  Maccabees. 

1  Published  in  1776,  and  followed  in  1777  by  his  tragedy  of  "  The  Death  of 
General  Montgomery."  For  an  account  of  these  tragedies,  the  reader  is 
referred  to  Chapter  xxxii.  on  "  The  Dramatic  Literature  of  the  Revolution" 


300  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Thus,  the  first  discourse,  entitled  "  The  Bloody  Vestiges 
of  Tyranny,"  was  written  and  spoken  just  after  the  rout 
and  slaughter  of  our  men  at  the  battle  of  Brandywine,  and 
is  a  weird  rhythmic  chant  of  rage  and  patriotic  hate  and 
vengeance.  Taking  for  his  text  a  part  of  the  eleventh  of 
Jude:  "  Woe  unto  them,  for  they  have  gone  in  the  way  of 
Cain,"  he  proceeds  to  name  one  by  one  the  several  re- 
nowned successors  of  him  who  was  "  first  in  the  line  of 
murderers"1 — Nimrod,  Pharaoh,  Ahab,  the  Alexanders, 
the  Jenghis  Khans,  the  Tamerlanes.  These  he  then  passes 
by.  "  I  leave  behind  me,"  he  adds,  "  all  that  is  related  of 
the  Hun,  the  Vandal,  or  the  Goth,  and  all  the  cruel,  perse- 
cuting, and  bloody  princes  and  people  in  more  modern 
times,  when  Europe  floated  as  one  sea  of  blood.  I  pass 
them  by,  and  hasten  on,  for  I  have  an  object  of  greater 
wickedness  in  view, — an  object  of  such  accomplished  fraud, 
perfidy,  and  murder,  that  every  one  heretofore  mentioned 
is  lost  and  disappears.  I  mean  him  of  England — the  fierce, 
cruel,  unrelenting,  and  bloody  king  of  Britain."11  Thus, 
arraigning  that  poor,  dull-witted,  obstinate,  conscientious 
and  religious  George  the  Third,  as  the  ultimate  and  supreme 
successor  of  the  first  murderer  and  the  first  fratricide,  he 
goes  on  to  sketch,  with  tremendous  power  both  in  outline 
and  in  color,  a  picture  of  the  havoc  upon  human  nature 
wrought  in  America  by  this  wicked  king's  messengers: 
"  Let  the  town  of  Boston  be  witness  to  their  cruelty, — the 
town  of  Boston,  with  the  cries  of  infants,  and  the  groans  of 
distressed  mothers.  .  .  .  Let  the  heights  of  Canada, 
and  the  environs  of  Quebec,  call  to  mind,  and  publish,  the 
bloody  vestiges  of  tyranny  in  that  unhappy  country.  .  *•  i.- 
From  the  heights  of  Canada  to  the  distant  barrier  of  Fort 
Sullivan,  let  the  intermediate  States  give  in  remembrance 
to  remotest  times,  what  they  have  suffered  from  the  Hes- 
sian ravisher,  and  from  the  inroad  of  the  cruel  Englishman 
wasting  their  plantations.  Let  the  Jersey  State  be  witness 
to  their  vestiges!  Let  the  blood  of  Haslet  on  the  plain  of 

1  "  Six  Political  Discourses,"  5-6.  *  Ibid.  7. 


HUGH  HENRY  BRACKENRIDGE.  30 1 

Princeton  cry  aloud  to  God  for  a  day  of  retribution.  Let 
the  fourteen  wounds  of  Mercer  with  the  bayonet  point,  on 
the  same  victorious  eminence,  open  their  dumb  mouths 
afresh,  and  cry  aloud  for  justice."1  But  the  cruelties  of 
these  invaders  "  are  now  transacted  on  our  own  plains. 
They  have  landed — they  have  traveled  through  a  part  of 
the  adjacent  country — they  have  burned  dwelling  houses — 
they  have  destroyed  provision  and  the  means  of  life — they 
have  tortured  for  money  those  whom  they  suspected  of 
possessing  it — they  have  driven  the  peaceful  inhabitants 
from  their  places  of  abode — they  have  violated  the  chastity 
of  women  who  fell  into  their  hands — they  are  bending  on 
and  breathing  slaughter  to  the  whole  state.  They  meditate 
destruction  at  the  risk  of  their  own  lives.  It  is  their  deter- 
mination to  destroy  or  to  perish.  Rather  than  suffer  us  to 
live,  they  will  cease  to  live  themselves.  .  .  .  Can  any- 
thing be  more  diabolical,  .  .  .  more  in  the  spirit  of  the 
first-born  Cain  ?  "  a 

And  this  voice  of  the  prophet,  as  it  begins  with  words  of 
imprecation  denounced  upon  the  enemies  of  American 
peace  and  freedom,  how  shall  it  do  otherwise  than  end  in 
the  same  manner  ?  "  Woe  unto  them,  for  they  have  re- 
jected the  frequency  and  humility  of  our  petitions.  They 
have  rejected  them  with  a  fierce  disdain.  They  have  been 
deaf  to  all  entreaty,  and  the  softest  words  of  soft  expostu- 
lation. They  have  pursued,  without  remorse,  the  dire 
intention  to  destroy  us.  They  have  pursued  it  in  a  cruel 
manner.  They  have  warred  with  a  rage  unknown  to  civil- 
ized nations.  They  have  mangled  the  bodies  of  our  heroes 
on  the  field  of  battle.  They  have  defaced  our  colleges  and 
schools  of  learning.  They  have  burned  houses  of  religious 
worship.  They  have  stabbed  and  shed  the  blood  of  an 
unarmed  and  supplicating  clergyman.  This  they  have  done 
to  persons  of  the  same  language  and  religion  with  them- 
selves. Woe  unto  them,  for  they  have  shed  a  brother's 
blood.  They  have  gone  in  the  way  of  Cain."  Moreover, 

l"  Six  Political  Discourses,"  12.  *  Ibid.  13.  *  Ibid.  13-15. 


302  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

"  let  us  be  careful  to  recollect  and  commemorate  their  con- 
duct. Let  every  class  of  men  join  to  execrate  the  tyrant, 
and  the  tyranny,  and  to  rank  the  George  of  England  with 
the  Cains  and  the  murderers  of  mankind.  Let  fathers  teach 
their  sons  the  degenerate  nature, — and  the  name  of  English- 
men,— let  mothers  still  with  this  the  children  on  the  breast, 
and  make  the  name  a  bugbear.  In  thought,  in  word,  let 
indignation  have  a  place;  but  chiefly  in  our  actions,  let 
strong  resentment  shew  itself.  Let  the  aged  father  send 
his  son  to  battle,  with  cheerfulness  and  resignation.  Let 
the  wife  permit  her  husband,  and  perplex  him  not  with 
womanish  exclamation,  or  with  tears.  Let  the  soldier  in 
the  field — and  to  such  I  principally  address  myself — let  the 
soldier  in  the  field  behave  with  fortitude.  Let  him  forget 
the  effeminacy  of  a  tender  and  luxurious  life.  Let  him 
summon  up  the  blood — give  indignation  to  the  visage — and 
let  the  spirit  of  resentment  flash  from  the  enraged  eye.  Let 
him,  in  obedience  to  his  orders,  shew  himself  steady — in 
execution  of  them  prompt — in  every  enterprise  undaunted. 
Let  the  arm  be  stretched  with  vigor,  and  give  full  revenge 
its  scope.  Duty,  honor,  and  the  love  of  virtue  calls  to  bat- 
tle. A  bleeding  and  a  ravished  country  calls  to  battle. 
The  wounded  soldier  and  the  dying  hero  calls  to  battle. 
The  voice  of  the  brigades -so  lately'  injured  by  superior 
numbers,  calls  to  battle.  The  happiness  and  glory  of  the 
rising  generations,  calls  to  battle.  Let  every  man  give 
audience  to  the  voice.  Let  every  man  become  a  soldier. 
Let  every  soldier  acquit  himself  as  valiant.  Let  him  deter- 
mine victory  or  death.  Let  him  be  of  the  mind  to  fight 
from  hill  to  hill,  from  vale  to  vale,  and  on  every  plain,  until 
the  enemy  is  driven  back,  and  forced  to  depart, — until  the 
tyrant  shall  give  up  his  claim,  and  be  obliged  to  confess 
that  free  men,  that  Americans,  are  not  to  be  subdued."  ' 

IX. 

Probably  no  other  American  preacher  of  the  Revolution- 
ary  time  united  in  so  high  a  degree  the  talents  and  accom- 

1  At  Brandy  wine.  a  "  Six  Political  Discourses,"  15-16. 


SAMUEL    COOPER.  303 

plishments  suited  to  his  sacred  calling,  with  those  suited  to 
the  clever  man  of  the  world,  as  did  Samuel  Cooper,  born  in 
Boston  in  1724,  and  from  1744  until  his  death  in  1783,  pas- 
tor of  the  Brattle  Street  Church.1  Of  a  noble  commanding 
person,  with  a  voice  of  great  melody  and  power,  a  manner 
of  speech  full  of  animation  and  grace,  with  personal  ways  at 
once  courtly,  genial,  and  captivating,  he  acquired  almost 
from  his  youth  an  extraordinary  hold  upon  the  admiration 
and  confidence  of  the  community  to  which  he  ministered, — 
a  community  then  swayed  by  the  traditions  of  clerical  leader- 
ship. In  his  day,  also,  he  had  great  distinction  on  account 
of  his  literary  gifts;  and  to  his  contemporaries,  it  seemed 
no  exaggeration  to  say,  that  by  his  "  accurate  taste,  the 
brilliancy  of  his  imagination,  and  the  clearness  of  his  judg- 
ment," he  had  "  adorned  and  enriched  the  republic  of  let- 
ters." *  It  comported  with  his  character,  likewise,  for  him 
to  be  intimate  with  men  prominent  in  all  the  great  doings 
of  the  world — in  science,  letters,  commerce,  politics,  war; 
to  have  an  active  part  in  managing  the  affairs  of  his  own 
country,  both  before  and  during  the  Revolution ;  to  repre- 
sent his  own  city,  likewise,  in  gracious  attentions  to  distin- 
guished visitors;  in  short,  to  be  guide,  philosopher,  and 
friend  to  all  men,  both  for  this  world  and  for  the  next. 

According  to  the  fashion  of  the  time  among  men  of  posi- 
tion and  influence,  he  was  a  constant  writer  for  the  news- 
papers, dealing  with  current  topics  in  every  sphere  of  interest. 
Perhaps  nothing  that  he  did  in  this  way  is  more  commonly 
cited  than  an  essay  called  "  The  Crisis,"  published  in  1754, 
in  opposition  to  a  proposal  for  a  colonial  excise.*  During 

1  The  best  accounts  of  Cooper  I  have  met  with,  are  by  two  of  his  contem- 
poraries :  John  Clarke,  in  a  sermon  preached  at  his  funeral,  published  in  Boston, 
1784;  and  John  Eliot,  in  "A  Biographical  Dictionary,"  129-133.  Other 
sources  of  information  concerning  him  are  given  in  Sprague,  "  Annals,"  etc., 
i.,  440-444,  especially  in  note  to  page  440. 

*  John  Clarke,  "  Sermon  at  Interment  of  Cooper,"  16-17. 

8  After  all,  the  most  notable  thing  about  this  pamphlet  of  Cooper's,  is  that  it 
anticipates  the  title  made  renowned  by  Thomas  Paine  twenty-two  years  later. 
Oddly  enough,  Gushing,  in  "  Anonyms,"  attributes  to  Cooper  the  English  pam- 
phlet called  "  The  Crisis,"  published  in  London  in  1766,  which,  I  think,  was 


304  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

the  controversies  of  the  Revolution,  he  is  said  to  have  writ- 
ten for  the  "  Boston  Gazette  "  many  of  the  most  trenchant 
articles  that  appeared  in  that  fearless  and  influential  journal. 
His  published  discourses,1  though  not  so  numerous  as  those 
of  several  of  his  contemporaries,  are  sufficient  to  preserve  for 
us  his  chief  traits  as  a  sermon-writer:  affluence  and  grace  of 
diction,  sincerity  of  tone,  vivacity,  impressiveness,  the  note 
of  social  amenity  and  of  worldly  wisdom,  with  frequent 
applications  of  his  thought  to  the  great  political  and  mili- 
tary events  of  the  day.  Of  these  discourses,  by  far  the 
ablest  is  the  one  preached  by  him,  in  1780,  before  the  gov- 
ernor and  legislature  of  Massachusetts,  on  the  inauguration 
of  the  new  government  of  that  State  under  its  first  written 
constitution, — an  occasion  worthy  of  the  speech  of  a  polit- 
ical philosopher.  Cooper  uses  it  like  one ;  and  while  he  is 
not  lacking  in  the  congratulations  and  compliments  de- 
manded by  the  great  fact  which  had  brought  together  that 
assemblage,  he  ministers  to  them  something  always  more 
needful  than  congratulations  or  compliments.  "  Nations 
who  are  jealous  of  their  own  liberties,"  he  warns  them, 
"  often  sport  with  those  of  others."  *  Exultant  and  proud 
aspirations  for  national  greatness, — so  natural  among  any 
people  near  the  victorious  close  of  a  vast  and  perilous 
struggle  such  as  theirs  had  been, — he  does  not  discourage 
among  his  countrymen.  Nay,  he  insists  upon  such  aspira- 
tions; but  he  likewise  requires  of  his  countrymen  a  high  con- 
ception of  the  nature  and  of  the  obligations  of  that  national 
greatness  to  which  he  would  have  them  aspire.  "It  is 

never  before  spoken  of  as  Cooper's  ;  but  fails  to  mention  this  American  pam- 
phlet called  "  The  Crisis,"  which,  I  think,  has  always  been  understood  to  be 
Cooper's. 

1  I  have  made  note  of  only  eight  discourses  by  Samuel  Cooper,  all  of  which 
I  examined  at  the  Congregational  Library,  Boston :— Artillery  Sermon,  1751  ; 
Industry  Sermon,  1753;  Election  Sermon,  1756;  Quebec  Sermon,  1759;  Or- 
dination Sermon,  1760  ;  Sermon  on  Death  of  George  II.,  1761  ;  Dudleian  Lec- 
ture, 1773  ;  Sermon  at  Inauguration  of  the  new  government  of  Massachusetts, 
1780. 

*  "A  Sermon,"  etc.,  15. 


SAMUEL    COOPER.  305 

laudable,"  he  tells  them,  "  to  lay  the  foundations  of  our 
republics  with  extended  views.  .  .  .  Conquest  is  not 
indeed  the  aim  of  these  rising  States — sound  policy  must 
ever  forbid  it.  We  have  before  us  an  object  more  truly 
great  and  honorable.  We  seem  called  by  Heaven  to  make 
a  large  portion  of  this  globe  a  seat  of  knowledge  and 
liberty,  of  agriculture,  commerce  and  arts,  and,  what  is 
more  important  than  all,  of  Christian  piety  and  virtue. 
Our  mountains,  our  rivers  and  lakes,  have  a  sin- 
gular air  of  dignity  and  grandeur.  May  our  conduct  corre- 
spond to  the  face  of  our  country.  At  present,  an  immense 
part  of  it  lies  as  nature  hath  left  it ;  and  human  labor  and  art 
have  done  but  little,  and  brightened  only  some  small  specks 
of  a  continent  that  can  afford  ample  means  of  subsistence 
to  many,  many  millions  of  the  human  race.  It  remains 
with  us  and  our  posterity  ...  to  establish  the  honor 
and  happiness  of  this  new  world,  as  far  as  it  may  be  justly 
our  own,  and  to  invite  the  injured  and  oppressed,  the 
worthy  and  the  good,  to  these  shores,  by  the  most  liberal 
governments,  by  wise  political  institutions,  by  cultivating 
the  confidence  and  friendship  of  other  nations,  and  by  a 
sacred  attention  to  that  Gospel  that  breathes  '  peace  on 
earth,  and  good  will  towards  men.'  Thus  will  our  country 
resemble  the  new  city  which  St.  John  saw  '  coming  down 
from  God  out  of  Heaven,  adorned  as  a  bride  for  her  hus- 
band.' Is  there  a  benevolent  spirit  on  earth  or  on  high, 
whom  such  a  prospect  would  not  delight  ?  But  what  are 
those  illustrious  forms  that  seem  to  hover  over  us  on  the  pres- 
ent great  occasion,  and  to  look  down  with  pleasure  on  the 
memorable  transactions  of  this  day  ?  Are  they  not  the 
founders  and  law-givers,  the  skilful  pilots  and  brave  defend- 
ers of  free  states,  .  .  .  who  thought  no  toils  or  vigilance 
too  great  to  establish  and  protect  the  rights  of  human  nature, 
no  riches  too  large  to  be  exchanged  for  them,  no  blood  too 
precious  to  be  shed  for  their  redemption  ?  But  who  ate 
they  who  seem  to  approach  nearer  to  us,  and  in  whose 
countenances  we  discern  a  peculiar  mixture  of  gravity  and 


306  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

joy  upon  this  solemnity  ?  Are  they  not  the  venerable 
Fathers  of  the  Massachusetts,  who  though  not  perfect 
while  they  dwelt  in  flesh,  were  yet  greatly  distinguished  by 
an  ardent  piety,  by  all  the  manly  virtues,  and  by  an  un- 
quenchable love  of  liberty, — they  who,  to  form  a  retreat  for 
it,  crossed  the  ocean,  through  innumerable  difficulties,  to  a 
savage  land, — they  who  brought  with  them  a  broad  charter 
of  liberty,  over  which  they  wept  when  it  was  wrenched  from 
them  by  the  hand  of  power,  and  an  insidious  one  placed  in 
its  room  ?  With  what  pleasure  do  they  seem  to  behold 
their  children,  like  the  ancient  seed  of  Abraham,  this  day 
restored  to  their  original  foundations  of  freedom, — their 
governor  '  as  at  the  first,  and  their  counselors  as  at  the 
beginning  '  ?  Do  they  not  seem  to  call  upon  us  to  defend 
these  foundations  at  every  hazard,  and  to  perpetuate  their 
honor  in  the  liberty  and  virtue  of  the  state  they  planted  ?  "  ! 


X. 


On  the  I4th  of  November,  1781,  the  people  of  Brook- 
field,  Massachusetts,  came  together  in  formal  assemblage  to 
express  their  joy  over  "  the  capture  of  Lord  Cornwallis  and 
his  whole  army";  and,  as  was  fitting,  their  own  pastor, 
Nathan  Fiske,  a  man  of  uncommon  literary  gifts,  stood 
forth  and  spoke  to  them  at  large  of  the  great  event.  "  What 
a  radiance  will  this  struggle  for  liberty,  which  has  produced 
such  exertions  of  genius  and  prowess,  throw  around 
America!  'T  is  enough  to  make  us  proud  of  our  country 
and  to  glory  in  the  name  of  Americans ;  yea,  even  to  make 
it  criminal  to  be  destitute  of  pride."  "  Happy  country! 
the  scene  of  such  wonders,  the  nurse  of  such  heroes,  the 
defender  of  liberty,  and  the  care  of  Jehovah.  .  .  .  Soon, 
we  trust,  will  commence  the  era  of  our  quiet  enjoyment  of 
those  liberties  which  our  fathers  purchased  with  the  toil  of 

"  A  Sermon,  October  25,  1780,  on  the  Commencement  of  the  Constitution 
and  Inauguration  of  the  New  Government,"  52-55. 


NA  THAN  FISKE.  307 

their  whole  lives,  with  their  treasure,  with  their  blood. 
Safe  from  the  enemy  of  the  wilderness,  safe  from  the  grip- 
ing hand  of  arbitrary  sway,  here  shall  be  the  late-founded 
seat  of  peace  and  freedom.  Here  shall  arts  and  sciences, 
the  companions  of  tranquillity,  flourish.  Here  shall  dwell 
uncorrupted  faith,  the  pure  worship  of  God  in  its  primitive 
simplicity  —  unawed,  unrestrained,  uninterrupted.  Here 
shall  religion  and  liberty  extend  their  benign  influences  to 
savage,  enslaved,  and  benighted  nations.  How  can  we  for- 
bear rejoicing  in  such  happy  prospects !  .  .  .  But  the 
blessing  is  too  divine,  the  joy  is  too  great — too  sacred,  to 
be  affronted  by  profaneness,  or  polluted  and  debased  by 
sensuality." 

1  "  An  Oration,"  etc.,  6-8.  The  chief  literary  activity  of  Nathan  Fiske  be- 
longs to  the  years  following  the  period  here  under  view.  He  was  a  man  of 
great  note  in  his  time, — strong,  broad,  brilliant,  and  loveable.  Born  in  1733, 
he  became  pastor  in  Brookfield  in  1758,  and  so  remained  as  long  as  he  lived. 
A  wide  and  eager  reader,  an  impressive  speaker,  a  writer  of  rare  pith  and 
skill  ;  disliking  metaphysics  in  the  pulpit,  and  controversy  everywhere  ;  refined, 
benevolent,  affable  ;  a  leader  and  laborer  in  every  practical  work  for  the  good 
of  his  fellow-creatures  ;  himself  a  man  of  joy,  and  frowning  not  at  joy  in  others 
— even  when  expressed  in  certain  harmless  amusements  previously  under  ban  ; 
it  may  be  said  of  him  that  he  lived  in  this  world  the  life  of  a  sane  and  friendly 
man,  and  died  the  death  of  one.  On  Sunday,  November  24,  1799,  he  preached 
to  his  people  from  the  text,  Prov.,  iv.,  18  :  "  But  the  path  of  the  just  is  as  the 
shining  light,  that  shineth  more  and  more  unto  the  perfect  day."  Having  for 
forty-one  years  given  in  his  own  life  among  the  same  people  a  clear  illustration 
of  that  text,  he  was  permitted  to  let  the  record  close  victoriously  at  that  point  ; 
for  that  same  night,  in  his  bed  at  home,  he  slept  the  eternal  sleep.  In  any  ac- 
count of  American  Literature  between  1783  and  1800,  Nathan  Fiske  deserves 
a  permanent  place,  especially  for  his  many  essays  fashioned  somewhat  upon  the 
plan  of  "  The  Spectator"  and  published  in  "  The  Massachusetts  Spy"  and  in 
"  The  Massachusetts  Magazine."  After  his  death,  about  one  hundred  and  fifty 
of  these  essays  were  culled  out  and  republished  in  two  volumes  under  the  title 
of  "  The  Moral  Monitor."  Sketches  of  this  man,  who  is  not  unworthy  of  some 
sort  of  literary  resurrection,  may  be  seen  in  Sprague,  "  Annals,"  i.,  573~574  • 
"  Monthly  Anthology,"  i.,  639-642  ;  J.  I.  Foot,  "  Hist.  Disc."  ;  and  espe- 
cially in  the  first  vol.  of  "  The  Moral  Monitor."  In  "Appletons"  Cycl.  of  Am. 
Biog.,"  this  Nathan  Fiske  is  made  to  be  the  father  of  Professor  Nathan  Welby 
Fiske  of  Amherst  College,  and  the  grandfather  of  Helen  Fiske,  who  became 
Helen  Hunt  Jackson.  Doubtless  these  two  people  were  quite  worthy  of  such 
an  ancestor  ;  but  Nature  did  not  happen  to  arrange  it  so. 


308  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

XI. 

In  the  Spring  of  the  year  immediately  following  the  sur- 
render of  Cornwallis,  the  election  sermon  in  Massachusetts 
was  preached  by  Zabdiel  Adams,  a  cousin  of  John  Adams, 
gifted  with  the  energy  of  mind  and  the  boldness  in  act  and 
utterance  characteristic  of  that  clan.  Having  in  view  the 
achievements  of  the  war,  and  likewise  the  uncertainty  which 
then  beclouded  its  close,  he  urged  his  fellow-countrymen  to 
remain  firm,  to  yield  to  no  illusions,  to  think  nothing  gained 
till  all  was  gained,  to  be  ready  for  any  labors  or  sacrifices 
that  might  still  await  them  in  their  long  battle  for  Independ- 
ence. "  We  are  now,"  said  he,  "  in  sight  of  the  promised 
land.  How  humiliating  it  would  be  to  have  our  Independ- 
ence, just  brought  to  the  birth,  fail  for  want  of  strength  to 
be  delivered!  "  "  Expense  is  not  to  be  regarded  in  a  con- 
test of  such  magnitude.  What  can  possibly  be  a  compensa- 
tion for  our  liberties  ?  It  is  better  to  be  free  among  the 
dead,  than  slaves  among  the  living.  The  ghosts  of  our 
friends  slain  in  war,  the  spirits  of  our  illustrious  ancestors 
long  since  gone  to  rest,  ...  a  regard  to  children  still 
unborn, — all  call  upon  us  to  make  greater  exertions,  and 
will  rise  up  in  judgment  against  us,  if  through  cowardice  we 
desert  the  noble  cause  in  which  for  many  years  past  we 
have  been  engaged."  ' 

XII. 

Nathaniel  Whitaker,  for  many  years  pastor  of  a  congre- 
gation in  Salem,  Massachusetts,  an  able  and  a  good  man, 
was,  however,  as  a  Revolutionary  politician  little  less  than 
ferocious, — for  the  reason  that  he  had  succeeded  in  sanctify- 
ing his  own  hatred  of  the  American  Tories  by  discovering  a 
close  resemblance  between  them  and  certain  children  of  evil 
in  the  Old  Testament  on  whom  had  fallen  the  wrath  of  God 
and  the  curses  of  the  prophets.  Thus,  the  only  sermons  of 

"  Mass.  Election  Sermon,"  57,  59. 


NATHANIEL    WHITAKER.  309 

his  which  attained  to  any  note  during  those  years,  were  two 
in  exposition  and  championship  of  this  gospel  of  implacable 
hate. 

The  first  of  these  sermons,  preached  in  1777,  was  "  An 
Antidote  against  Toryism;  or,  the  Curse  of  Meroz."  ' 
Condensing  his  thought  into  these  few  fine  words  of  sav- 
agery— "  Cursed  be  he  that  holdeth  back  his  hand  from 
blood  " — he  sees  in  the  conduct  of  the  Tories,  who  refused 
to  draw  the  sword  in  the  cause  of  the  Revolution,  precisely 
the  crime  which  should  bring  down  upon  their  heads  that 
appalling  imprecation.  Their  crime,  bad  enough  in  itself, 
had  these  two  aggravations :  that  it  was  a  violation  of  the 
laws  of  nature ;  and  that  it  was  also  a  sin  against  posterity. 
When  dealing  with  the  latter  aspect  of  it,  he  says:  "  What 
a  scene  opens  to  view !  Behold  these  delightful  and  stately 
mansions  for  which  we  labored,  possessed  by  the  minions  of 
power.  See  yonder  spacious  fields,  subdued  to  fruitfulness 
by  the  sweat  and  toil  of  our  fathers  or  ourselves,  yielding 
their  increase  to  clothe,  pamper,  and  enrich  the  tyrant's 
favorites,  who  are  base  enough  to  assist  him  in  his  cursed 
plots  to  enslave  us.  Does  this  rouse  your  resentment  ? 
Stop  a  moment,  and  I  '11  show  you  a  spectacle  more  shock- 
ing than  this.  What  meagre  visages  do  I  see  in  yonder 
field,  toiling  and  covered  with  sweat  to  cultivate  the  soil  ? 
Who  are  those  in  rags,  bearing  burdens  and  drawing  water 
for  these  haughty  lords,  and  then  cringing  to  them  for  a 
morsel  of  bread  ?  They  are — (O  gracious  God !  support  my 
spirits) — they  are  my  sons,  and  my  daughters, 
loaded  with  irons  and  dragging  after  them,  wherever  they 
go,  the  heavy,  galling,  ignominious  chains  of  slavery!  But, 
may  we  not  hope  for  an  end  of  these  miseries  ?  Alas,  what 
hope  ?  Slavery  debases  the  human  faculties,  and  spreads  a 
torpor  and  stupidity  over  the  whole  frame.  They  sink  in 
despair  under  their  load.  They  see  no  way,  they  feel  no 
power,  to  recover  themselves  from  this  pit  of  misery,  but 
pine  away,  and  die  in  it,  and  leave  to  their  children  the 

1  Published,  Newburyport,  1777. 


3IO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

same  wretched  inheritance.  What,  then,  does  he  deserve, 
or,  rather,  what  curse  is  too  heavy  for  the  wretch,  that  can 
tamely  see  our  country  enslaved  ?  " 

Again,  in  May,  1783,  as  the  peace  drew  near,  and  with  it 
the  danger  of  some  softening  of  the  American  heart  toward 
the  Tories,  this  apostle  of  political  vindictiveness  once  more 
in  his  pulpit  sought  to  stir  and  to  blow  into  flame  the  em- 
bers of  the  popular  wrath  against  those  unhappy  people. 
His  sermon,  entitled  "  The  Reward  of  Toryism,"  *  was  an 
elaborate  and  a  red-hot  argument  for  the  expulsion  of  the 
Tories  from  the  country,  or  their  exclusion  from  all  political 
privileges  within  it.  "  The  Tories  of  these  States,  whether 
still  residing  among  us  or  gone  over  to  the  enemy,  are  guilty 
of  the  sin  of  Meroz."  "  It  is  the  command  of  God  that  in 
cursing  we  curse  them. ' ' 3 

XIII. 

The  eleventh  of  December,  1783,  had  been  designated  by 
Congress  as  a  day  of  thanksgiving  for  the  double  blessing 
of  Peace  and  Independence.  Accordingly,  at  the  Congre- 
gational Church  in  Roxbury,  Massachusetts,  the  day  was 
greeted  by  an  assemblage  of  citizens  over  whose  faces  was 
spread  "  an  appearance  of  undissembled  joy."  Their  min- 
ister, Eliphalet  Porter,  then  but  twenty-five  years  of  age 
and  at  the  beginning  of  a  pastorate  which  lasted  more  than 
fifty  years,  touched  with  a  strong  hand  the  chords  of  public 
gratitude  and  of  jubilant  national  confidence.  "  It  is  no 
common  event,  no  vulgar  occasion,"  said  he,  "  that  now 
calls  for  our  gratitude.  Not  only  the  common  mercies  of 
the  last  revolving  year,  but  the  favorable  interposition  of 
Providence  on  our  behalf  through  a  long  and  tedious  con- 
flict with  a  powerful  enemy,  the  maintenance  of  our  rights 
and  liberties,  the  ultimate  acknowledgement  of  our  free- 
dom, sovereignty,  and  Independence,  a  period  to  the  calam- 

1  "  An  Antidote,"  etc.,  24-25.  »  Published,  Newburyport,  1783. 

3  "The  Reward,"  etc.,  9. 


ELIPHA  LE  T  FOR  TER.  3 1  [ 

ities  and  the  distresses  of  war,  and  the  return  of  Peace — 
lovely  Peace — with  her  attendant  blessings,  are  the  events 
we  are  this  day  called  to  celebrate.  These  are  the  events 
for  which  our  hearts  should  expand  with  grateful  joy. 
These  are  the  events  for  which  the  united  thousands  of 
America  are  required  this  day,  with  one  heart  and  one 
voice,  to  ascribe  blessing  and  praise  to  the  God  of  their  sal- 
vation. And  these,  no  doubt,  are  events  for  which  the 
more  numerous  hosts  on  high — those  lovers  of  peace,  and 
well-wishers  to  mankind — give  honor  and  glory  to  Him  that 
sitteth  on  the  throne,  and  who  ruleth  in  the  kingdom  of 
men."  ' 

At  the  Congregational  Church  in  Medford,  Massachu- 
setts,— a  town  near  to  the  very  track  taken  by  the  British 
soldiers  on  their  famous  night-march  to  Lexington  in  1775, 
— the  young  pastor,  David  Osgood,  delivered  a  sermon  a 
remarkable  for  its  vigor  both  of  thought  and  of  expression, 
in  which  he  retraced  year  by  year  the  course  of  the  long 
war;  and  portrayed  its  results  in  great  civic  blessings 
achieved  or  made  possible. 

In  the  city  of  New  York,  where,  for  local  reasons,  exulta- 
tion over  the  peace  was  uncommonly  fervent,  John  Rodgers, 
pastor  of  the  old  Wall  Street  Presbyterian  Church,  dis- 
coursed to  his  flock  on  "  The  Divine  Goodness  Displayed 
in  the  American  Revolution," — holding  up  to  his  fellow- 
countrymen  the  need  of  authenticating  their  professions  of 
national  gratitude  by  fidelity  to  all  national  obligations: 
"  Would  you  reap  the  fruits  of  your  toils,  your  losses  and 
your  blood,  it  is  indispensably  necessary  that  the  federal 
union  of  these  States  be  cemented  and  strengthened;  that 
the  honor  of  the  great  council  of  the  nation  be  supported, 
and  its  salutary  measures  carried  into  execution,  with  una- 
nimity and  despatch,  without  regard  to  partial  views  or 
local  interests;  that  the  credit  of  this  new  empire  be  estab- 
lished on  the  principles  of  the  strictest  justice;  and  its  faith 
maintained  sacred  and  inviolable,  in  whatever  way  or  to 

1  "  Sermon,"  3-4.  *  Published  in  Boston,  1784. 


^12  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

whatever  description  of  persons  it  has  been  pledged,  or  may 
at  any  time  be  pledged." 

XIV. 

Among  the  sturdiest  and  most  vivacious  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary preachers  in  the  middle  colonies  was  George  Duf- 
field,  a  Presbyterian  pastor,  born  in  1732,  of  Anglo-Irish 
and  Huguenot  ancestry,  a  graduate  of  Princeton  in  1752, 
one  of  the  party  of  "  New  Lights  "  in  his  denomination.* 
For  the  peculiar  activities  and  perils  of  his  career  during  the 
Revolution,  he  had  received  admirable  preparation  in  his 
early  ministry  along  the  western  frontier  of  Pennsylvania, 
where  the  onsets  of  the  Indians  were  just  then  so  frequent 
as  to  compel  all  the  male  members  of  his  flock  to  go  armed, 
and  where  he  himself  often  accompanied  his  parishioners 
upon  their  military  raids.  At  one  of  his  preaching-places,, 
also,  the  meeting-house  had  to  be  surrounded  by  fortifica- 
tions, behind  which  the  stout-hearted  pastor  was  accustomed 
to  minister  to  his  people,  while  their  sentinels  were  standing 
upon  the  ramparts  to  give  warning  of  the  approach  of  the 
enemy.*  Acquiring  renown  for  zeal,  eloquence,  and  intrep- 
idity, he  accepted,  about  the  year  1766,  the  pastorate  of 
the  Third  Presbyterian  Church  of  Philadelphia, — a  position 
which  he  continued  to  hold  until  his  death  in  1790. 

His  stanch  opinions  touching  the  great  dispute,  and  the 
boldness  with  which  he  proclaimed  them,  drew  to  his 
church  many  of  the  leaders  of  the  Revolutionary  move- 
ment, who,  perhaps,  in  their  admiration  for  his  politics, 
were  disposed  to  waive  any  objections  that  they  may  have 
had  to  his  theology ;  and  in  great  crises  of  the  struggle — in 
days  alike  of  disaster  and  of  triumph — they  flocked  to  his 

1  "  A  Sermon,"  etc.,  as  reprinted  in  "  The  Patriot  Preachers  of  the  Am. 
Rev.,"  340. 

1  Sketch  of  Duffield,  by  his  grandson,  George  Duffield  of  Detroit,  in  Sprague, 
"  Annals,"  etc.,  iii.,  186-192.  Also,  S.  D.  Alexander,  "  Princeton  College," 
etc.,  17. 

*  Sprague,  "Annals,"  etc.,  iii.,  187-188. 


GEORGE  DUFFLE LD.  313 

services  for  the  good  cheer  and  the  guidance  they  found  in 
his  undaunted  faith  and  in  his  thrilling  words.  Thus,  on 
the  nth  of  June,  1775,  in  the  midst  of  the  popular  emotion 
following  the  events  of  Lexington  and  Concord  and  preced- 
ing those  of  Bunker  Hill,  John  Adams,  then  in  attendance 
upon  the  Continental  Congress  at  Philadelphia,  wrote  home 
to  his  wife  some  account  of  this  notable  man:  "  I  have 
been  this  morning  to  hear  Mr.  Duffield,  a  preacher  in  this 
city,  whose  principles,  prayers,  and  sermons  more  nearly 
resemble  those  of  our  New  England  clergy  than  any  that  I 
have  heard.  His  discourse  was  a  kind  of  exposition  on  the 
thirty-fifth  chapter  of  Isaiah.  America  was  the  wilderness, 
and  the  solitary  place,  and  he  said  it  would  be  glad,  '  re- 
joice and  blossom  as  the  rose.'  He  labored  '  to  strengthen 
the  weak  hands  and  confirm  the  feeble  knees.'  He  '  said 
to  them  that  were  of  a  fearful  heart,  Be  strong,  fear  not. 
Behold,  your  God  will  come  with  vengeance,  even  God 
with  a  recompense;  he  will  come  and  save  you.' 
He  applied  the  whole  prophecy  to  this  country,  and  gave 
us  as  animating  an  entertainment  as  I  ever  heard.  He  filled 
and  swelled  the  bosom  of  every  hearer. ' '  '  About  six  weeks 
afterward,  Adams  wrote  again  of  this  Whig  John  Knox, 
whom  he  had  evidently  taken  to  his  heart:  "  This  day  I 
have  heard  my  parish  priest,  Mr.  Duffield,  from  2  Chroni- 
cles, xv.,  i,  2.  This  gentleman  never  fails  to  adapt  his  dis- 
course to  the  times.  He  pressed  upon  his  audience  the 
necessity  of  piety  and  virtue,  in  the  present  times  of  ad- 
versity, and  held  up  to  their  view  the  army  before  Boston 
as  an  example.  .  .  .  You  may  well  suppose  that  this 
language  was  exceedingly  pleasing  to  me." 

On  the  arrival  of  the  enemy  near  New  York  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1776,  Duffield  served  as  chaplain  in  the  American 
army  gathered  there  to  oppose  them ;  and,  on  one  occasion, 
for  lack  of  a  more  convenient  pulpit,  he  climbed  into  a  tree, 
and,  supporting  himself  upon  its  forks,  preached  to  the 

1  "  Familiar  Letters  of  John  Adams  and  His  Wife,"  etc.,  65. 
*  Ibid.,  90. 


314  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

men  until  a  shot  from  the  enemy,  crashing  through  the 
branches,  suggested  to  him  and  his  congregation  the  pro- 
priety of  retiring  behind  a  neighboring  hillock  for  the  com- 
pletion of  their  religious  exercises.1  He  is  said  to  have 
remained  with  the  army  during  the  whole  of  the  disastrous 
campaign  of  the  autumn  of  1776";  after  which,  hurrying 
back  to  Philadelphia,  he  resumed  his  duties  to  his  own  con- 
gregation there.  His  stay  with  them  at  that  time  was  very 
soon  interrupted;  for  just  before  Washington's  celebrated 
attack  upon  the  enemy  at  Trenton,  Duffield  publicly  "  re- 
buked his  people  because  there  were  so  many  men  in  the 
house,  saying  there  '  would  be  one  less  to-morrow,  and  no 
lecture  on  Wednesday  evening.'  "  3 

Late  in  the  summer  of  the  following  year,  in  the  midst  of 
the  alarm  of  Congress  over  the  impending  movement  of 
General  Howe  upon  Philadelphia,  John  Adams  witnessed 
the  march  of  General  Washington  and  his  army  through 
that  town  in  the  direction  of  the  foe, — a  scene  which  he  at 
once  described  in  a  letter  to  his  wife,  adding  these  words: 
"  After  viewing  this  fine  spectacle  and  firm  defence,  I.  went 
to  Mr.  Dufifield's  meeting  to  hear  him  pray,  as  he  did  most 
fervently,  and  I  believe  he  was  most  sincerely  joined  by  all 
present,  for  its  success."4  Upon  the  flight  of  Congress 
from  Philadelphia  to  York,— a  place  less  accessible  to  the 
enemy,— Duffield  served  as  one  of  its  chaplains,  in  which 
capacity  he  had  the  honor  to  draw  upon  himself  the  light- 
ning of  the  Tory  satirist,  Odell,  in  this  flash  of  verse : 

A  saint  of  old,  as  learned  monks  have  said, 
Preached  to  the  fish— the  fish  his  voice  obeyed. 
The  same  good  man  convened  the  grunting  herd — 
.    .         Who  bowed  obedient  to  his  pow'rful  word. 
Such  energy  had  truth,  in  days  of  yore  ; 
Falsehood  and  nonsense,  in  our  days,  have  more. 

Sprague,  "  Annals,"  etc.  iii.,  ioo-igi 
9  Ibid.  IQI. 

1  R.  Webster,  ••  Presb.  Church  in  America,"  672. 
1  "  Familiar  Letters,"  etc.  208. 


GEORGE  DUFFIELD  315 

Duffield  avows  them  to  be  all  in  all, 

And  mounts  or  quits  the  pulpit,  at  their  call. 

In  vain  '  New  Light '  displays  her  heavenly  shine, 

In  vain  attract  him  oracles  divine  : 

Chaplain  of  Congress  give  him  to  become, 

Light  may  be  dark,  and  oracles  be  dumb. 

It  pleased  Saint  Anthony  to  preach  to  brutes — 

To  preach  to  devils  best  with  Duffield  suits." ' 

By  temperament,  he  was  an  orator  rather  than  a  writer; 
and  the  verbal  form  of  his  discourses  was  usually  the  work 
of  the  instant  in  which  they  were  spoken.  Only  one  pro- 
duction of  his  seems  to  have  found  its  way  into  print,* — a 
sermon  preached  in  his  own  church  on  the  nth  of  Decem- 
ber, 1783,  the  day  of  national  thanksgiving  for  deliverance 
and  peace.  This  discourse  has  all  the  marks  of  direct  and 
vivid  oral  address.  Its  topics  are  the  obvious  ones  for  such 
an  occasion;  and,  as  might  be  expected,  it  has  the  usual 
exultant  forecast  of  the  era  of  imperial  liberty  and  happi- 
ness for  mankind  then  about  to  begin  under  the  aegis  of  the 
victorious  American  Republic:  "  Here  has  our  God  erected 
a  banner  of  civil  and  religious  liberty,  and  prepared  an  asy- 
lum for  the  poor  and  oppressed  from  every  part  of  the  earth. 
Here,  if  wisdom  guide  our  affairs,  shall  a  happy  equality 
reign;  and  joyous  freedom  bless  the  inhabitants  wide  and 
far,  from  age  to  age.  Here,  far  removed  from  the  noise 
and  tumult  of  contending  kingdoms  and  empires,  far  from 
the  wars  of  Europe  and  Asia  and  the  barbarous  African 
coast,  here  shall  the  husbandman  enjoy  the  fruits  of  his 
labor;  the  merchant  trade,  secure  of  his  gain;  the  mechanic 

1  "  The  Loyalist  Poetry,"  etc.  40-41. 

9  In  the  best  existing  sketch  of  Duffield,  it  is  said  that  "  he  published  an  ac- 
count of  his  tour  with  Mr.  Beatty  along  the  frontiers  of  Pennsylvania."  Sprague, 
"  Annals,"  etc.  iii.  192.  I  have  met  with  no  such  publication.  There  was 
published  in  London  in  1768  "  The  Journal  of  a  Two  Months'  Tour  with  a 
View  of  promoting  Religion  among  the  Frontier  Inhabitants  of  Pennsylvania." 
This  little  book  was  by  Charles  Beatty,  who  frequently  mentions  Duffield  as  his 
companion  and  co-worker  in  the  tour. 


316  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

indulge  his  inventive  genius ;  and  the  sons  of  science  pursue 
their  delightful  employment,  till  the  light  of  knowledge 
pervade  yonder  yet  uncultivated  western  wilds,  and  form 
the  savage  inhabitants  into  men."  ' 

'"A  Sermon  at  Third  Presbyterian  Church,"  etc.  16-17.  These  sentences 
are  taken  from  the  original  edition  of  the  sermon,  published  in  1784.  A  reprint 
of  the  entire  sermon  may  be  seen  in  "  The  Patriot  Preachers  of  the  American 
Revolution,"  344-368. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

THREE  ACADEMIC   PREACHERS  AND   PUBLICISTS. 

I. — William  Smith,  Provost  of  the  College  of  Philadelphia— His  many  dis- 
courses on  occasions  of  state — "  On  the  Duties  of  the  Christian  Soldier" — 
"  On  the  Present  Situation  of  American  Affairs,"  June  23,  1775 — His 
retirement  at  the  approach  of  Independence — His  discourses  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  Revolution — His  quality  as  a  writer. 

II. — John  Witherspoon,  President  of  the  College  of  New  Jersey — His  arrival 
in  America  in  1768,  and  prompt  identification  of  himself  with  the  nobler 
moods  of  American  society — Outline  of  his  previous  career — Eclat  attending 
his  entrance  upon  his  work  at  the  college. 

III. — Witherspoon's  fitness  for  the  varied  services  that  lay  before  him  in  his  new 
position — His  eminence  as  a  preacher — The  stimulus  he  gave  to  the  devel- 
opment of  the  College  of  New  Jersey. 

IV. — Witherspoon's  career  as  political  writer  and  practical  statesman — Enters 
Congress  in  June,  1776 — Reasons  for  his  great  influence  in  that  body — His 
sermons  on  public  questions — His  miscellaneous  political  writings,  grave 
and  humorous. 

V. — Witherspoon's  treatment  of  the  leading  questions  then  in  dispute — Special 
value  of  his  writings  on  public  finance — He  forsees  the  perils  that  were 
to  follow  American  Independence. 

VI. — Ezra  Stiles,  President  of  Yale  College — His  ambition  for  universal 
scholarship. 

VII. — Stiles's  numerous  unpublished  writings — His  few  published  writings — 
His  lack  of  ability  in  sustained  literary  expression — His  defects  in  literary 
taste. 

VIII. — Estimate  of  Stiles's  services  to  civilization  in  America — His  attitude 
toward  the  chief  tendencies  of  modern  thought — His  free-mindedness — His 
confidence  in  the  victory  of  truth — His  great  charity — His  sagacious  judg- 
ments concerning  secular  affairs — In  1760  and  1761,  he  predicts  the  entire 
movement  toward  American  union,  Independence,  and  national  develop- 
ment. 

I. 

A  PREACHER  of  great  celebrity  in  his  day,  in  America  as 
in  England,  was  William  Smith,  the  provost  of  the  College 

317 


318  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

of  Philadelphia,  who,  being  without  parochial  duties,  being 
also  eminent  in  many  spheres  of  intellectual  activity,  was 
many  times  brought  forward  for  semi-sacred  discourses 
upon  occasions  of  political  and  military  importance.  Thus, 
in  the  spring  and  summer  of  1768,  in  the  Great  Hall  of  the 
College  of  Philadelphia,  he  preached  to  the  Royal  Regi- 
ment of  Ireland  a  series  of  five  discourses '  on  the  duties  of 
the  Christian  soldier, — it  being  apparently  supposed  that 
some  specimens  of  that  rare  kind  of  man  were  to  be  met 
with  in  the  aforesaid  regiment.  Beyond  all  question,  his 
most  notable  performance  in  political  pulpit  oratory  was 
made  on  the  twenty-third  of  June,  1775,  two  days  after  the 
departure  of  Washington  to  take  command  of  the  American 
forces  at  Cambridge,  when  the  eloquent  provost  preached 
at  Christ  Church,  and  in  the  presence  of  the  members  of 
Congress,  a  sermon  "  On  the  Present  Situation  of  American 
Affairs."  7  This  sermon,  which  was  addressed  to  the  Third 
Battalion  of  Philadelphia  Volunteers,  contained  the  boldest 
words  on  the  questions  of  the  day,  which  had  then  been 
spoken  in  America  from  an  Anglican  pulpit,  and  brought 
upon  its  author  an  embarrassing  amount  of  attention, 
whether  laudatory  or  damnatory,  from  Dr.  Priestly,  Dr. 
Price,  John  Wesley,  from  "  The  Monthly  Review,"  "  The 
London  Magazine,"  "  The  London  Chronicle,"  "  The  Pub- 
lic Advertiser,"  and  even  from  Junius  himself.3  About  a 
month  afterward,  on  July  20,  1775,  for  the  first  public  fast 
proclaimed  by  Congress,  this  facile  orator  made  still  another 
appearance,  preaching  at  All  Saints'  Church  a  sermon  4 
which  had  the  effect  of  an  anti-climax,— for  it  was  alto- 
gether lacking  in  definite  application  to  any  living  problem, 
and  indicated  on  the  writer's  part  a  staggering  fear  of  the 
extreme  courses  into  which  many  of  his  political  associates 

"  The  Works  of  William  Smith,"  ii    170-250 

'  Ibid.  251-286. 

*  An  extended  account  of  the  contemporary  praise  and  abuse  of  this  sermon 
may  be  seen  in  "  Preface  to  the  First  Edition  "  with  supplementary  materials, 
»n  "The  Works  of  William  Smith,"  ii.  252-264.  The  sermon  itself  follows  : 


265-286. 


4  Ibid.  112-126 


JOHN  WITHERSPOON.  319 

were  getting  ready  to  plunge.  Soon,  there  came  stalking 
to  the  front  the  issue  of  Independence, — in  the  presence  of 
which  this  pulpit-orator  shrank  back  into  silence.1  Thence- 
forward, no  political  word  is  any  more  heard  proceeding  out 
of  his  mouth,  until,  at  his  place  of  retirement  in  Maryland, 
he  preaches  a  sermon  for  the  public  fast,"  in  May,  1781, 
and  another  for  the  public  thanksgiving,3  in  December,  of 
the  same  year. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  various  pulpit  harangues 
of  Provost  William  Smith  during  the  Revolution  had,  at 
the  instant  of  their  utterance,  a  sort  of  life  and  power,  de- 
rived partly  from  the  eloquent  manner  of  the  speaker,  partly 
from  the  vitality  of  the  great  topics  with  which  he  in  some 
fashion  dealt — topics  which  already  thrilled  his  hearers 
before  he  began  to  speak  about  them.  Lacking  such  col- 
lateral force,  it  must  be  confessed  that  these  printed  reports 
of  what  he  said  seem  now  to  be  little  else  than  well-dressed 
and  orderly  platoons  of  windy  words.4 

II. 

Although  John  Witherspoon  did  not  come  to  America 
until  the  year  1768, — after  he  had  himself  passed  the  middle 
line  of  human  life, — yet  so  quickly  did  he  then  enter  into 
the  spirit  of  American  society,  so  perfectly  did  he  identify 
himself  with  its  nobler  moods  of  discontent  and  aspiration, 
so  powerfully  did  he  contribute  by  speech  and  act  to  the 
right  development  of  this  new  nation  out  of  the  old  cluster 
of  dispersed  and  dependent  communities,  that  it  would  be 
altogether  futile  to  attempt  to  frame  a  just  account  of  the 
great  intellectual  movements  of  our  Revolution  without 

1  As  the  conceded  author  of  the  "  Letters  of  Cato,"  he  did  indeed  have 
something  to  say  against  Independence. 

8  "  The  Works  of  William  Smith,"  i.  127-140. 

8  Ibid.  141-154. 

4  The  notable  influence  of  William  Smith  as  a  preacher,  teacher,  writer,  and 
man  of  miscellaneous  activity,  prior  to  1765,  has  been  treated  of  by  me  in  "  A 
History  of  American  Literature  during  the  Colonial  Time,"  ii.  233-234. 


320 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


taking  some  note  of  the  part  played  in  it  by  this  eloquent, 
wise,  and  efficient  Scotsman — at  once  teacher,  preacher, 
politician,  law-maker,  and  philosopher,  upon  the  whole  not 
undeserving  of  the  praise  which  has  been  bestowed  upon 
him  as  "  one  of  the  great  men  of  the  age  and  of  the  world." 

Born  in  1722,  in  the  parish  of  Yester,  fourteen  miles  east 
of  Edinburgh, — a  parish  of  which  his  father  was  minister, — 
he  was  able  upon  his  mother's  side  to  trace  his  lineage, 
through  an  unbroken  line  of  Presbyterian  ministers,  back  to 
John  Knox.  That  such  a  man  should  ever,  in  any  country, 
come  to  lend  his  support  to  a  system  of  rather  bold  conduct 
respecting  royal  personages  in  general,  was  hardly  a  thing 
to  shock  or  surprise  any  single  drop  of  blood  in  his  body. 
At  the  age  of  twenty,  he  was  graduated  from  the  University 
of  Edinburgh,  where  he  had  for  associates  Hugh  Blair, 
James  Robertson,  and  John  Erskine.  At  the  age  of  twenty- 
two,  he  became  minister  of  the  parish  of  Beith  in  the  west 
of  Scotland.  At  the  age  of  thirty-four,  he  became  pastor 
of  the  Low  Church  in  Paisley.  At  the  age  of  forty-six, 
after  having  declined  calls  to  Presbyterian  congregations  in 
Dundee,  Dublin,  and  Rotterdam,  he  accepted  an  invitation 
to  the  presidency  of  the  College  of  New  Jersey— an  invita- 
tion which  he  had  already  declined  two  years  before.  At 
the  time  of  his  removal  to  America,  therefore,  he  had 
achieved  distinction  as  a  preacher  and  an  ecclesiastical 
leader.  Even  as  an  author,  also,  he  had  become  well 
known,  his  chief  publications,  at  that  time,  being  "  An 
Essay  on  Justification  "  ;  "A  Practical  Treatise  on  Regen- 
eration "  ;  "A  Serious  Enquriy  into  the  Nature  and  Effects 
of  the  Stage  ";  a  prose  satire,  called  "  Ecclesiastical  Char- 
acteristics ' ' ;  besides  several  volumes  of  sermons,  and  a  col- 
lection of  miscellaneous  writings  in  three  volumes,  entitled 
"  Essays  on  Important  Subjects."  ' 

1  Sprague,  "  Annals,"  etc.  iii.  289. 

'  The  most  of  these  publications,  together  with  his  later  writings,  are  to  be 
found  in  his  collected  "  Works,"  of  which  two  editions  have  appeared  :  the  one 
four  volumes,  Philadelphia,  18001801  ;  the  other  in  nine  volumes,  Edin- 
burgh, 1804-1805.  The  latter  is  the  edition  used  by  me.  For  biographical 


JOHN-  W1THERSPOON.  $21 

His  advent  to  the  college  over  which  he  was  to  preside 
was  like  that  of  a  prince  coming  to  his  throne.  From  the 
moment  of  his  landing  in  Philadelphia  until  that  of  his 
arrival  in  Princeton,  his  movements  were  attended  by  every 
circumstance  that  could  manifest  affection  and  homage ; 
and  on  the  evening  of  the  day  on  which  he  made  his  entry 
into  what  was  thenceforward  to  be  his  home,  "  the  college 
edifice  was  brilliantly  illuminated ;  and  not  only  the  whole 
village,  but  the  adjacent  country,  and  even  the  province  at 
large,  shared  in  the  joy  of  the  occasion."  '  It  is  pleasant  to 
know  that  in  the  six-and-twenty  years  of  public  service  that 
then  lay  before  him  in  America,  the  person  of  whom  so 
much  was  expected,  not  only  did  not  disappoint,  but  by  far 
exceeded,  the  high  hopes  that  had  thus  been  set  upon  him. 
For  once  in  this  world,  as  it  turned  out,  a  man  of  extraor- 
dinary force,  versatility,  and  charm  had  found  the  place 
exactly  suited  to  give  full  swing  and  scope  to  every  element 
of  power  within  him. 

III. 

7 

He  seems  to  have  come  at  the  right  moment,  to  the  right 
spot,  in  the  right  way.  Being  perhaps  equally  apt  for 
thought  and  for  action,  and  having  quite  remarkable  gifts  as 
preacher,  debater,  conversationalist,  politician,  and  man  of 
affairs,  happily  he  found  himself,  in  the  fulness  of  his 
ripened  powers,  in  a  station  of  great  dignity  and  promi- 
nence, near  the  centre  of  the  new  national  life  of  America, 
in  the  midst  of  a  kindred  people  just  rousing  themselves 
with  fierce  young  energy  to  the  tasks  and  risks  of  a  stupen- 
dous crisis  in  their  history.  Thenceforth,  whatsoever  John 

sketches  of  Witherspoon,  the  reader  is  referred  to  these  editions  of  his 
"  Works"  ;  also,  to  the  sermon  preached  at  his  funeral  by  John  Rodgers,  with 
a  valuable  appendix  by  Samuel  Stanhope  Smith  ;  to  J.  Sanderson,  "  The 
Signers  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,"  v.  99-186  ;  to  Sprague,  "  An- 
nals," etc.  iii.  288-300.  The  article  on  Witherspoon,  in  "  Appletons*  Cyclo- 
paedia of  American  Biography,"  vi.  584-585,  is  worth  attention. 
1  Sprague,  "  Annals,"  etc.  iii.  292. 

VOL.    2—21 


322 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


Witherspoon  had  it  in  him  to  do,  in  things  sacred  or  secular, 
in  life  academic  or  practical,  in  the  pulpit,  in  the  provincial 
convention,  in  the  Continental  Congress,  for  the  shaping, 
in  war  and  peace,  of  the  thought  and  character  and  destiny 
of  this  primitive,  passionate,  indomitable  people,  he  then 
had  the  opportunity  to  do.  That  opportunity,  so  precious 
and  so  rare  in  the  experience  of  men,  he  did  not  fail  to  use 
to  the  utmost. 

Even  in  the  exterior  personal  gifts  which  make  for  influ- 
ence, he  was  not  lacking.  It  was  said  of  him  that,  with  the 
exception  of  Washington,  he  had  more  of  the  quality  called 
presence  than,  perhaps,  any.  other  man  of  his  time  in 
America.  He  was,  moreover,  kindly  and  companionable  in 
private  intercourse,  and  fascinated  men  by  talk  sparkling 
with  anecdote,  epigram,  and  repartee. 

In  the  due  order  of  things,  his  earliest  appearance  before 
the  public  was  in  the  pulpit,  which,  to  the  very  end  of  his 
career,  continued  to  be  the  true  seat  and  organ  of  his  best 
activity  and  influence.  Having  the  gift  of  easily  remem- 
bering whatever  he  wrote,  and  of  speaking  naturally  what 
he  thus  remembered,  he  was  able  to  give  to  his  sermons  the 
double  attraction  of  premeditated  and  of  extemporaneous 
speech ;  and  both  for  the  matter  and  the  manner  of  dis- 
course, he  soon  took  rank  here  as  one  of  the  foremost 
preachers  of  his  time.  As  a  contemporary  of  his  has  testi- 
fied :  "  President  Witherspoon's  popularity  as  a  preacher 
was  great.  The  knowledge  that  he  was  to  conduct  a  public 
service,  usually  filled  the  largest  churches  in  our  cities  and 
populous  towns,  and  he  never  failed  to  command  the  pro- 
found attention  of  his  audience."1  Notwithstanding  the 
prodigious  variety  of  those  public  and  private  engagements 
which  were  soon  laid  upon  him,  he  maintained  to  the  very 
end  the  supremacy  of  his  sacred  calling,  and  never,  either 
by  dress,  or  speech,  or  conduct,  permitted  his  career  as  a 
civilian  even  to  seem  to  involve  any  lapse  or  suspension  of 
his  character  as  a  clergyman. 

1  Ashbel  Green,  in  Sprague,  "  Annals,"  etc.  iii.  299. 


JOHN  WITHERSPOON.  323 

As  the  call  that  had  brought  him  to  America  was  the  call 
to  preside  over  the  College  of  New  Jersey,  its  interests  very 
properly  had  the  first  claim  upon  his  attention ;  and,  before 
he  had  been  long  in  charge  of  them,  it  became  evident  that, 
through  him,  the  college  was  about  to  enter  upon  a  new 
and  a  larger  life.  He  addressed  himself,  first  of  all,  to  that 
need  which  is  the  primary,  classic,  and  perennial  need  of 
every  college  fit  to  exist  at  all, — the  need  of  money ;  and  the 
extraordinary  success  he  had  therein  was  due  partly  to  his 
own  extraordinary  energy  and  tact,  and  partly  to  the  sheer 
confidence  of  the  public  in  anything  for  which  he  chose  to 
concern  himself.  He  also  brought  about  an  enlargement  of 
the  curriculum  by  the  introduction  of  new  courses,  particu- 
larly in  Hebrew  and  in  French ;  and  through  his  own  bril- 
liant example  as  a  lecturer  on  eloquence,  history,  philosophy, 
and  divinity,  he  encouraged  methods  of  instruction  far  more 
manly,  vital,  and  stimulating  than  those  previously  in  vogue 
there.  Finally,  his  fame  as  a  divine,  and  soon,  also,  as  a 
statesmen  and  a  patriot,  continually  added  to  the  reputation 
of  the  college,  and  attracted  to  it  during  his  time  some  of 
the  brightest  and  noblest  of  American  youths.  Perhaps 
John  Witherspoon  was  the  first  man  among  us  to  illustrate 
in  a  high  degree  the  possibilities  for  influence  to  be  found 
in  this  very  modern  and  peculiar  function  of  an  American 
college  president. 

IV. 

Before  many  years,  also,  as  the  struggle  with  the  British 
ministry  took  on  more  and  more  of  its  tragic  aspect,  Wither- 
spoon's  labors  as  preacher  and  as  college  officer  began  to  be 
overlaid  by  his  labors  as  a  political  writer  and  a  statesman. 
It  has  been  well  said  of  him  that  "  he  became  an  American 
the  moment  he  landed  on  our  shores  "  ' ;  and,  having  quickly 
mastered  the  questions  in  dispute,  he-showed  from  the  out- 
set a  rational,  temperate,  but  unflinching  sympathy  with  the 
rising  spirit  of  American  opposition.  By  the  spring  of  the 

1  Sanderson,  "  The  Signers,"  etc.  v.  115. 


324  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTIOX. 

year  1776,  it  was  no  longer  possible  for  him  to  hold  back 
from  more  direct  employment  in  the  Revolution ;  and  he 
then  began  his  political  career  by  taking  his  place  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  convention  for  framing  the  first  constitution  for 
New  Jersey.1  His  service  in  that  body  gave  a  new  eclat  to 
his  reputation,  and  great  access  to  the  public  confidence  in 
him;  and,  on  the  2 1st  of  June,  1776,  he  received  promotion 
by  being  transferred  from  the  convention  of  New  Jersey  to 
the  Continental  Congress,  in  which  body  he  took  his  seat  in 
time  to  give  his  voice  and  his  vote  in  favor  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence. 

Thus,  at  last,  was  John  Witherspoon  brought  as  an  active 
force  into  the  highest  sphere  of  American  statesmanship,  and 
at  a  period  of  supreme  opportunity  in  our  affairs.  In  that 
sphere  he  remained  and  wrought,  with  but  a  single  brief  in- 
terval, until  the  virtual  close  of  the  Revolution.  From  the 
beginning,  he  took  and  held  the  foremost  rank  among  his 
associates.  In  the  mere  erudition  required  for  statesman- 
ship, especially  at  such  a  crisis,  probably  few  of  them  were  so 
well  equipped  as  he.  This,  perhaps,  was  to  have  been  ex- 
pected, in  view  of  his  previous  personal  history.  They, 
however,  who  had  supposed  that  this  great  academic  per- 
sonage— this  renowned  divine  and  philosopher — would  in 
Congress  prove  himself  to  be  a  mere  amateur  in  statesman- 
ship, a  doctrinaire  and  a  dreamer,  were  permitted  to  enjoy 
a  great  surprise.  His  long  training  in  ecclesiastical  politics 
in  Scotland  had  left  to  him  few  things  to  learn  as  regards 
the  handling  of  secular  politics  in  America:  he  was  familiar 
with  the  usages  of  legislative  bodies,  he  had  consummate 
skill  in  debate,  he  knew  how  to  influence  men  to  think  and 
act  with  himself.  Throughout  all  those  years  in  which  there 
were  in  Congress  advocates  for  an  imbecile  military  policy, 
for  financial  shuffling  and  dishonor,  even  for  the  annihila- 
tion of  all  genuine  national  life,  the  wit,  the  wisdom,  the 
moral  force  of  this  shrewd  Scotsman  were  to  be  found  on 
the  side  of  wholesome  measures,— an  assured  union  of  the 
1  Poore,  "  The  Federal  and  State  Constitutions,"  ii.  1310-1314. 


JOHN  WITHERSPOON.  325 

insurgent  States;  more  power  at  the  centre  of  government; 
terms  of  enlistment  long  enough  to  make  an  army  worth 
having  after  it  had  become  an  army ;  the  management  of 
the  public  finances  on  the  only  principles  that  have  ever 
proved  sound  or  profitable  in  the  conduct  of  any  business 
public  or  private.1  Moreover,  it  became  soon  apparent  that, 
in  his  view,  the  chief  duty  of  a  congressman  was  not  to  talk, 
but  to  work.  At  the  sessions  of  Congress,  no  member  was 
more  constant  in  attendance  ;  in  committees,  no  one 
wrought  harder,  or  had  harder  tasks  entrusted  to  him.* 

The  powerful  influence  which,  through  his  published 
writings,  Witherspoon  exerted  upon  the  course  of  Revolu- 
tionary thought,  may  be  traced  in  the  very  few  sermons  of 
his  which  touch  upon  the  political  problems  of  that  time,  in 
various  congressional  papers,  and  especially  in  the  numerous 
essays,  long  or  short,  serious  or  mirthful,  which  he  gave  to 
the  press  between  the  years  1775  and  1783,  and  commonly 
without  his  name. 

His  most  memorable  sermon  during  this  period  was  that 
preached  by  him  at  Princeton  on  the  I7th  of  May,  1776,  be- 
ing the  general  fast  appointed  by  Congress  throughout  the 
United  Colonies, — an  opportunity  for  solemn  delay  and  for 
reflection  before  that  great  step  should  be  taken  which 
could  not  be  taken  back.  Witherspoon's  discourse  bore  an 
imposing  title,  "  The  Dominion  of  Providence  over  the 
Passions  of  Men,"  3  and  contained  a  calm  and  very  striking 
statement  of  his  reasons  for  concurring  in  the  American 
demand  for  the  control  by  Americans  of  their  own  affairs. 
It  was  much  read  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic ;  and  at 
Glasgow  it  was  sent  forth  embellished  with  notes  of  dis- 

1  For  example,  see  his  speeches  in  Congress  "  On  the  Confederation," 
"  Works,"  ix.  135-141  ;  "  On  a  Motion  for  Paying  the  Interest  of  Loan-Office 
Certificates,"  ibid.  117-124;  "On  the  Finances,"  ibid.  125-134;  also  his 
remarkable  "  Essay  on  Money,"  ibid.  9—25. 

*  A  fairly  good  idea  of  the  nature  and  value  of  Witherspoon's  services  as  a 
member  of  the  Congress  from  1776  to  1782,  may  be  gathered  from  Sanderson, 
"The  Signers,"  etc.  v.  116-157. 

'"Works,"  v.  176-216. 


326  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

sent  and  indignation  wherein  the  reverend  author  was 
called  a  rebel  and  a  traitor.1  To  the  American  edition  of 
the  sermon,  Witherspoon  added  an  "Address  to  the  Na- 
tives of  Scotland  residing  in  America,"  a — an  effective  and 
a  much-needed  treatment  of  that  series  of  events,  in  both 
countries,  which  had  resulted  in  so  extensive  an  alienation 
of  American  Scotsmen  from  the  cause  of  American  self- 
government. 

As  a  writer  of  political  and  miscellaneous  essays,  com- 
monly published  in  the  newspapers,  it  is  probable  that 
Witherspoon's  activity  was  far  greater  than  can  now  be 
ascertained ;  but  his  hand  can  be  traced  with  certainty  in  a 
large  group  of  keen  and  sprightly  productions  of  that  sort, — 

Reflections  on  the  Present  State  of  Public  Affairs  and  on 
the  Duty  and  Interest  of  America  in  this  Important  Crisis/' ' 
"  Thoughts  on  American  Liberty,"  4  "  On  the  Controversy 
about  Independence,"  5  "  On  Conducting  the  American 
Controversy,"'  "  Aristides,"  T  "  On  the  Contest  between 
Great  Britain  and  America,"8  "On  the  Affairs  of  the 
United  States,"  *  "  Observations  on  the  Improvement  of 
America,"  lo  and  a  series  of  periodical  papers  called  "  The 
Druid."  His  gift  for  personal  and  political  satire  is 
shown  in  "  The  Humble  and  Earnest  Supplication  of  J. 
Rivingtbn,  Printer  and  Bookseller  in  New  York,"  '"  and  in 
"  Recantation  of  Benjamin  Towne."13  By  far  the  most 
masterly  secular  writing  of  Witherspoon's  is  his  "  Essay 
on  Money  as  a  Medium  of  Commerce,  with  Remarks  on 
the  Advantages  and  Disadvantages  of  Paper  admitted  into 
General  Circulation,"  "  principally  made  up  of  portions  of 

Sprague,  "Annals,"  etc.  iii.  293-294.  '  Ibid.  88-98. 

"  Works,"  v.  217-236.  s  Ibid>  l66-i7o. 

Ibid.  ix.  66-72.  9  Ibid.  I7I_i77. 

Ibid.  73-77.  ,o  lbid   I78  I?9 

Ibid-  78-82.  11  Ibid   224_29I. 

Ibid.  83-87.  »  Ibid.  I8o-i9i. 
"Ibid.  192-198;  also  Albert  H.  Smyth,  "The  Philadelphia  Magazines," 
etc.  56,  57. 

14  "  Works,"  ix.  0-65. 


JOHN  WITHERSPOON.  327 

speeches  delivered  by  him  in  Congress,  and  conveying  much 
invaluable  and  unfamiliar  truth  to  the  American  people, 
then,  as  so  often  since  then,  mired  in  the  bog  of  financial 
fallacies  and  impostures. 

V. 

Of  all  these  writings  of  Witherspoon,  dealing  in  grave  or 
playful  fashion  with  Revolutionary  themes,  the  chief  note  is 
that  of  a  virile  mind,  well-balanced,  well-trained,  and  hold- 
ing itself  steadily  to  its  own  independent  conclusions, — in 
short,  of  enlightened  and  imperturbable  common-sense, 
speaking  out  in  a  form  always  temperate  and  lucid,  often 
terse  and  epigrammatic.  "  There  is  not  a  single  instance  in 
history,"  says  he,  "  in  which  civil  liberty  was  lost,  and  re- 
ligious liberty  preserved  entire.  If,  therefore,  we  yield  up 
our  temporal  property,  we  at  the  same  time  deliver  the  con- 
science into  bondage."  '  As  to  the  ministers,  parliament, 
and  people  of  Great  Britain,  "  I  do  not  refuse  submission  to 
their  unjust  claims  because  they  are  corrupt  or  profligate, 
although  probably  many  of  them  are  so,  but  because  they 
are  men,  and  therefore  liable  to  all  the  selfish  bias  insepara- 
ble from  human  nature ;  .  because  they  are  sepa- 
rated from  us,  independent  of  us,  and  have  an  interest  in 
opposing  us. "  "  "It  has  been  my  opinion  from  the  begin- 
ning that  we  did  not  carry  our  reasoning  fully  home  when 
we  complained  of  an  arbitrary  prince,  or  of  the  insolence, 
cruelty,  and  obstinacy  of  Lord  North,  Lord  Bute,  or  Lord 
Mansfield.  What  ,we  have  to  fear,  and  what  we  have  to 
grapple  with,  is  the  ignorance,  prejudice,  partiality,  and  in- 
justice of  human  nature."  3  "  The  question  then  is:  Shall 
we  make  resistance  with  the  greatest  force, — as  rebel  sub- 
jects of  a  government  which  we  acknowledge,  or  as  Inde- 
pendent States  against  an  usurped  power  which  we  detest 
and  abhor?"4  "  Is  there  a  probable  prospect  of  recon- 

!  "  Works,"  v.  203.  ?  Ibid. 

3  Ibid.  ix.  80.  4  Ibid.  92. 


328  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

ciliation  on  constitutional  principles  ?  What  are  these 
constitutional  principles  ?  Will  anybody  show  that  Great 
Britain  can  be  sufficiently  sure  of  our  dependence,  and 
yet  we  sure  of  our  liberties  ?  "  '  "  It  is  proper  to  observe 
that  the  British  settlements  have  been  improved  in  a  pro- 
portion far  beyond  the  settlements  of  other  European  na- 
tions. To  what  can  this  be  ascribed  ?  Not  to  the  climate, 
for  they  are  of  all  climates  ;  not  to  the  people,  for  they  are 
a  mixture  of  all  nations.  It  must,  therefore,  be  resolved 
singly  into  the  degree  of  British  liberty  which  they  brought 
from  home,  and  which  pervaded  more  or  less  their  several 
constitutions."  a  "  Can  any  person  of  a  liberal  mind  wish 
that  these  great  and  growing  countries  should  be  brought 
back  to  a  state  of  subjection  to  a  distant  power  ?  And  can 
any  man  deny  that,  if  they  had  yielded  to  the  claims  of  the 
British  parliament,  they  would  have  been  no  better  than  a 
parcel  of  tributary  states,  ruled  by  lordly  tyrants,  and  ex- 
hausted by  unfeeling  pensioners,  under  the  commission  of 
one  too  distant  to  hear  the  cry  of  oppression,  and  sur- 
rounded by  those  who  had  an  interest  in  deceiving  him  ?  "  s 

It  ought,  therefore,  in  my  opinion,  to  meet  with  the  cor- 
dial approbation  of  every  impartial  person,  as  I  am  confi- 
dent it  will  of  posterity,  that  they  have  united  for  common 
defense,  and  resolved  that  they  will  be  both  free  and  inde- 
pendent, because  they  cannot  be  the  one  without  the 
other."'  As  to  American  Independence,  "  I  mean  to 
shew—  i.  That  it  was  necessary.  2.  That  it  will  be  honor- 
able and  profitable.  And,  3.  That  in  all  probability  it  will 
be  no  injury,  but  a  real  advantage,  to  the  island  of  Great 
Britain."  & 

Of  this  newly  born  and  newly  announced  nation,  thus 
starting  out  in  life  with  a  very  serious  war  on  its  infant 
hands,  the  direst  need  was,  not  of  men  to  do  the  fighting,  but 
of  money  to  sustain  the  men  while  they  were  fighting  ;  and  in 
the  way  of  all  this  stood,  not  only  the  organic  impotence  of 
"  Works,"  ix.  97.  »  Ibid.  v.  223.  3  Ibid.  224 


Ibid- 


s  Ibid> 


JOHN    WITHERSPOON.  329 

the  general  government,  but  the  ignorant,  false,  and  reckless 
notions  as  to  money  and  as  to  the  relation  of  government  to 
money,  which  these  people  had  brought  over  with  them 
from  their  colonial  stage,  and  which,  in  fact,  they  had  long 
been  putting  into  practice  to  their  own  incalculable  loss  and 
shame.  Under  such  circumstances,  what  greater  service  to 
the  American  cause  could  have  been  rendered  by  a  man  like 
Witherspoon,  than  by  exposing,  as  he  did,  the  financial 
sophistries  of  Revolutionary  demagogues  and  blatherskites, 
and  by  putting  into  pithy,  lucid,  and  fearless  words  the  es- 
sential and  immutable  truths  as  to  what  is  possible  and 
desirable  in  public  finance  ?  "  No  paper  of  any  kind  is, 
properly  speaking,  money.  It  ought  never  to  be  made  a 
legal  tender.  It  ought  not  to  be  forced  upon  anybody,  be- 
cause it  cannot  be  forced  upon  everybody."  1  "  The  cry  of 
the  scarcity  of  money  is  generally  putting  the  effect  for  the 
cause.  No  business  can  be  done,  say  some,  because  money 
is  scarce.  It  may  be  said,  with  more  truth,  money  is  scarce 
because  little  business  is  done.  Yet  their  influence,  like  that 
of  many  other  causes  and  effects,  is  reciprocal.""  "  Too 
much  money  may  be  emitted  upon  loan ;  but  to  emit  money 
in  any  other  way  than  upon  loan,  is  to  do  all  evil  and  no 
good."  "  The  excessive  quantity  of  paper  emitted  by 
the  different  States  of  America,  will  probably  be  a  loss  to 
the  whole.  They  cannot,  however,  take  advantage  of  one 
another  in  that  way.  That  State  which  emits  most  will  lose 
most,  and  vice  versa."  '  Those  who  refuse  doubtful 
paper,  and  thereby  disgrace  it,  or  prevent  its  circulation, 
are  not  enemies,  but  friends,  to  their  country."  * 

Happy  was  it  for  us,  that  this  clear-headed  thinker, 
this  expert  in  the  art  of  popular  exposition,  was  in  full 
sympathy  with  those  deep  human  currents  of  patriotic 
thought  and  feeling  which  then  swept  towards  an  Independ- 
ent national  life  in  this  land.  Happy  was  it  for  us,  also, 
that  while  he  was  capable  beyond  most  men  of  seeing  the 

1  "  Works"  ix.  63.  *  Ibid.  3  Ibid.  64. 

4  Ibid.  5  Ibid. 


330 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


historic  and  cosmopolitan  significance  of  the  movement  for 
American  Independence,  he  had  the  moral  greatness  to  risk 
even  his  own  great  favor  with  the  American  people,  by  tell- 
ing them  that  the  acquisition  of  Independence,  was  not  to 
be  the  end  of  their  troubles,  but  rather,  in  some  sense,  the 
beginning  of  them ;  since  greater  perils  than  those  brought 
in  by  Red  Coats  and  Hessians  were  then  to  meet  them, 
in  the  form  of  shallow  and  anarchical  politics,  corruption 
among  voters,  unscrupulous  partisanship,  new  and  hitherto 
unimagined  forms  of  demagogism,  and  the  boisterous  in- 
competence of  men  entrusted  with  power  in  the  regulation 
and  guidance  of  the  state.  He  who  declared  that  the 
American  Revolution  would  be  "an  important  era  in  the 
history  of  mankind,"  '  also  said:  "  I  am  much  mistaken  if 
the  time  is  not  just  at  hand  when  there  shall  be  greater  need 
than  ever  in  America  for  the  most  accurate  discussion  of 
the  principles  of  society,  the  rights  of  nations,  and  the 
policy  of  states  "  ;  and  that  only  by  making  a  people  "  vir- 
tuous," can  they  be  made  "  invincible."  a 

VI. 

On  the  eighth  of  July,  1778,  Ezra  Stiles,  then  fifty  years 
of  age,  being  inducted  into  the  presidency  of  Yale  College, 
delivered  an  oration  in  Latin,  "  on  the  encyclopedia  of 
literature," — meaning  thereby  the  state  of  human  knowl- 
edge, on  all  subjects,  up  to  date;  and  ever  afterward,  until 
very  near  his  death,  he  was  accustomed,  in  his  lectures  to 
the  students,  after  prayers,  in  the  chapel,  to  launch  out  from 
time  to  time  into  the  vasty  deep  of  the  same  shoreless 
theme.  To  be  what  he  called  "  a  universal  scholar,"  was 
his  ruling  passion.  There  was  nothing  knowable  which  he 
did  not  very  strenuously  desire  to  know.  "  I  consider  my- 
self," he  wrote  in  a  private  memorandum,  at  the  age  of 
twenty,  "  as  a  citizen  of  the  intellectual  world,  and  a  sub- 
J^!_^_its  almi£hty  Law-giver  and  Judge.  By  Him  I  am 

1  "  Works,"  v.  222.  *  Ibid.  ix.  231. 


EZRA    STILES.  331 

placed  upon  an  honorable  theatre  of  action,  to  sustain,  in 
the  sight  of  mortal  and  immortal  beings,  that  character  and 
part  which  He  shall  assign  me,  in  order  to  my  being  trained 
up  for  perfection  and  immortality  ;  and  shall,  therefore, 
from  this  time  forth,  devote  my  life  to  the  service  of  God, 
my  country,  and  mankind."  In  this  spirit,  he  threw  open 
every  window  of  his  mind,  toward  every  quarter  of  the 
heavens  and  the  earth :  toward  the  languages  of  men,  their 
opinions,  deeds,  laws,  institutions,  in  all  ages,  in  all  lands ; 
especially  toward  the  person  and  character  of  the  Creator  as 
unfolded  in  His  visible  universe — in  atoms  and  planets,  in 
space,  in  time,  in  force,  in  the  developments  of  His  Provi- 
dence over  all  sentient  creatures.  Thus  it  was,  that  as  his 
life  lengthened,  and  as  his  zeal  for  learning  strengthened,  he 
came  to  have  some  valid  claim,  according  to  the  standards 
of  his  time,  to  be  called  mathematician,  astronomer,  chemist, 
electrician,  meteorologist,  linguist,  orientalist,  antiquarian, 
jurist,  theologian,  Biblical  translator  and  exegete. 

When,  accordingly,  in  1771,  his  portrait  was  painted,  he 
very  naturally  caused  it  to  be  "  charged  with  emblems  " 
descriptive  of  this  omnivorous  appetency  of  his  mind.  He 
himself  is  represented  as  "  in  a  teaching  attitude,"  with  his 
right  hand  on  his  breast,  and  his  left  hand  holding  the 
Bible.  Just  behind  him,  on  the  left  side,  is  a  partial 
glimpse  of  his  book-shelves,  on  one  of  which  we  see  Euse- 
bius,  Livy,  Du  Halde's  History  of  China,  the  Zohar,  the 
Babylonian  Talmud,  Aben  Ezra,  Rabbi  Selomo  Jarchi, 
Ribbi  Moses  Ben  Maimon's  Moreh  Nevochim ;  while 
on  another  shelf  are  Newton's  Principia,  Plato,  Watts, 
Doddridge,  Cudworth's  Intellectual  System,  besides  five 
learned  New  England  divines,  Hooker,  Chauncey,  Daven- 
port, Mather,  and  John  Cotton.  Upon  his  right  side  is  a 
pillar,  on  the  shaft  of  which  is  wrought  a  circle  encompass- 
ing "  a  solar  point,  as  an  emblem  of  the  Newtonian  or 
Pythagorean  system  of  the  sun,  planets,  and  comets." 
Moreover,  at  the  top  of  the  pillar  and  on  the  wall  is  "an 

1  Holmes.  "  Life  of  Stiles,"  18. 


332 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


emblem  of  the  Intellectual  World,"  containing,  in  a  central 
glory,  in  Hebrew,  the  Sacred  Name  "  surrounded  with 
white  spots  in  a  field  of  azure.  From  each  spot  ascend  three 
hair-lines,  denoting  the  tendencies  of  mind  to  Deity,  and 
communion  with  the  Trinity  in  the  divine  light.  These 
spots  denote  systems  of  worlds,  and  their  tendencies  to  the 
eternal,  central,  yet  omnipresent  light.  The  motto  is, — 
ALL  HAPPY  IN  GOD."  ' 

VII. 

Now,  all  that  Ezra  Stiles  did  to  appease  this  hunger  of  his 
soul  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge,  and  how  for  this  he  toiled 
from  youth  to  age,  by  day  and  night,  on  Sundays  and  on 
week-days,  in  readings,  in  observations,  experiments,  conver- 
sations, in  elaborate  and  most  persistent  letters  to  the  learned 
in  many  distant  lands, — is  it  not  written  in  the  chronicles 
of  Ezra  Stiles  himself,  to  wit,  in  some  fifty  volumes  or  more 
of  manuscripts,  being  his  "  Itineraries  and  Memoirs,"  his 

Literary  Diary,"  his  memoranda  of  scientific  observations 
and  experiments,  his  notes  for  an  "  Ecclesiastical  History 
of  New  England,"  his  "  Memoirs  concerning  Mr.  Robert 
Sandeman,"  his  letters,  his  sermons,  his  innumerable  mis- 
cellaneous scraps  and  jottings,  all  still  reposing  under  the 
legal  custody  of  the  president  of  Yale  University  ?  * 

1  Holmes,  "  Life  of  Stiles,"  151-154. 

8  The  Stiles  Manuscripts  may  be  described  as  consisting  of  two  portions, 
those  that  are  bound  and  those  that  are  unbound.  Of  the  latter,  the  following 
are  the  principal  items  :  (i)  Some  hundreds  of  letters  to  and  from  Stiles.  (2) 
About  forty  of  his  sermons.  (3)  Loose  sheets  of  material  not  otherwise  classi- 
fied. Of  the  former  and  larger  portion  of  these  manuscripts,  the  following  are 
the  principal  items:  (i)  "  Literary  Diary,"  from  January  i,  1769,  to  May  6, 
1795,  15  vols.,  quarto.  (2)  "Itineraries  and  Memoirs,"  from  May  23,  1760, 
to  November  8,  1704,  6  vols.,  quarto.  (3)  Memoranda  mainly  scientific. 
About  10  vols.  (4)  Miscellaneous  memoranda.  About  10  vols.  (5)  Material 
or  an  "Ecclesiastical  History  of  New  England,"  I  vol.,  quarto.  (6)  Ex- 
tracts from  manuscripts,  made  by  Stiles,  I  vol.,  quarto.  (7)  Letters  to  and 
from  Stiles,  13  vols.,  quarto  and  folio.  (8)  "  Memoirs  concerning  Mr.  Rob- 
ert Sandeman,"  i  vol.,  quarto.  (9)  The  Journal  of  Rev.  John  Sergeant  of 
Stockbridge,  from  April  i,  1739,  to  March  30,  1740,  I  vol.,  quarto.  This 


EZRA   STILES.  333 

As  to  his  published  writings,  any  possible  list  of  them 
would  be  a  very  small  one,  consisting  of  two  or  three  Latin 
orations ; '  of  a  few  sermons,  such  as  that  "» On  the  Christian 
Union,"  in  1761;  that  "  On  Saving  Knowledge,"  in  1770; 
that  for  the  funeral  of  Napthali  Daggett,  in  1780;  that  for 
"the  anniversary  election"  in  Connecticut,  in  1783;  that 
for  the  funeral  of  Chauncey  Whittelsey,  in  1787;  that  for 
the  ordination  of  Henry  Channing,  in  the  same  year;  and 
besides  these,  of  a  single  book  only,  "  A  History  of  Three 
of  the  Judges  of  King  Charles  I.,"  in  1794. 

A  notable  contrast,  surely,  between  this  man's  boundless 
and  tireless  intellectual  preparation,  and  any  deliberately 
uttered  result!  Indeed,  he  seems  to  have  had  no  faculty 
for  sustained  literary  expression.  His  delight  was  in  the 
perpetual  acquisition  of  knowledge,  never  in  any  record  of 
it,  save  in  his  log-book  of  extemporized  notes.  On  every 
subject,  he  was  inclined  to  postpone  elaborate  report  till  the 
data  should  all  be  in, — which  was  to  postpone  it  forever; 

note  is  founded  on  my  own  memoranda  made  during  an  inspection  of  the  Stiles 
Papers,  and  on  information  subsequently  sent  me  by  Professor  Franklin  B. 
Dexter,  who  also  furnished  to  Henry  M.  Dexter  the  description  of  the  Stiles 
Papers,  given  in  "  Congregationalism  as  Seen  in  its  Literature,"  App.  288.  I 
infer  that  many  of  the  manuscript  sermons  of  Stiles  are  still  in  existence.  One 
of  them,  belonging  to  me,  is  "  No.  454."  Stiles's  "  Literary  Diary"  ought  by 
all  means  to  be  printed  without  delay,  for  the  light  it  throws  on  the  intellectual 
and  political  life  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

1  Besides  these,  he  delivered  at  least  three  Latin  orations  which  seem  not  to 
have  been  printed  :  one  in  1752,  on  the  completion  of  the  first  half-century  from 
the  founding  of  Yale  College  ;  in  1753,  on  tne  death  of  Bishop  Berkeley  ;  and, 
in  1781,  on  the  renewal  of  public  commencements  at  the  college,  after  an  inter- 
ruption of  seven  years,  caused  by  the  war.  On  the  latter  occasion,  President 
Stiles's  fondness  for  exercising  in  public  his  gift  for  languages  unknown  to  the 
most  of  his  auditors,  had  an  extraordinary  gratification  :  he  ushered  in  the  exer- 
cises of  the  morning  by  an  oration  in  Hebrew,  and  those  of  the  afternoon  by 
one  in  Latin.  He  wrote  and  spoke  Latin  with  great  facility,  and  as  his  con- 
temporary, Professor  Meigs,  thought,  "  with  a  purity  and  elegance  that  would 
have  honored  the  age  of  Augustus."  The  specimens  of  his  Latin  which  have 
come  down  to  us,  do  not  justify  this  praise  :  it  was  far  from  being  immaculate, 
and  one  would  prefer  to  extol  it  as  doing  honor  to  the  age  of  George  the  Third, 
than  to  that  of  Augustus.  With  Meigs's  opinion,  in  Holmes's  "  Life  of  Stiles," 
22-23,  compare  that  of  a  real  Latinist,  Kingsley,  in  his  "  Life  of  Stiles,"  73. 


334  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

and  if,  by  chance,  for  such  a  report  he  ever  made  a  begin- 
ning, he  was  apt  soon  to  fall  away  from  it,  before  the  en- 
ticements of  fresh  opportunities  for  knowledge.  Besides, 
he  was  deficient  in  the  sense  of  form,  proportion,  congruity, 
in  literary  judgment,  poise,  and  self-restraint;  and  with 
respect  to  his  erudition,  he  was  nearly  always  its  victim 
rather  than  its  master.  Of  these  traits,  the  monumental 
example  is  his  solitary  book,  published  in  old  age, — a 
medley  born  of  the  vagrant  and  gossiping  industry  of  more 
than  thirty  years, — a  heterogeneous  collection  of  facts,  fic- 
tions, rumors,  traditions,  guesses,  appertaining  more  or  less. 
to  the  three  regicides,  Whalley,  Goffe,  and  Dixwell,  who 
had  found  in  New  England  kindly  shelter.and  quiet  graves : 
a  book  not  without  value,  not  without  interest,  not  without 
a  sort  of  fascination,  yet  admitting  so  many  puerile  inci- 
dents, and  so  many  pottering  discussions,  as  to  have  led 
John  Adams,  soon  after  its  publication,  to  describe  it  as  "  a 
wild  thing,"  and  a  sign  of  its  author's  mental  decay.1 

It  may  be  said  of  Stiles,  moreover,  that  he  often  wrote 
well,  except  when  he  tried  to  do  so.  In  some  moods  of 
literary  unconsciousness,  his  thought  was  clear,  and  his 
language  simple,  incisive,  impressive;  but  upon  any  occa- 
sion of  unusual  importance,  the  balance  of  his  discretion 
was  liable  to  very  serious  disturbance.  At  such  times, 
deeming  it  his  duty  to  produce  before  the  world  his  learn- 
ing, he  commonly  appalled  it  by  his  excesses  of  pedantry ; 
while  some  fatal  supposition,  on  his  part,  that  he  was  then 
expected  to  be  eloquent,  had  the  effect  of  precipitating  him 
into  rhetorical  hysterics— into  the  very  orgasm  of  bombast. 
'  O  Washington!  "  exclaimed  he,  in  his  election  sermon,  in 
1783,  delivered  in  the  presence  of  the  governor  and  general 
assembly  of  Connecticut,  "  O  Washington!  how  do  I  love 
thy  name!  How  have  I  often  adored  and  blessed  thy  God, 
for  creating  and  forming  thee  the  great  ornament  of  human 
kind!  .  .  .  The  world  and  posterity  will,  with  admira- 
tion,  contemplate  thy  deliberate,  cool,  and  stable  judgment, 
1  "  Correspondence  of  Miss  Adams,"  vol.  ii.,  part  ii.  144-145. 


EZRA    STILES.  335 

thy  virtues,  thy  valor  and  heroic  achievements,  as  far  sur- 
passing those  of  Cyrus,  whom  the  world  loved  and  adored. 
The  sound  of  thy  fame  shall  go  out  into  all  the  earth,  and 
extend  to  distant  ages.  .  .  .  Such  has  been  thy  military 
wisdom  in  the  struggles  of  this  arduous  conflict,  such  the 
noble  rectitude,  amiableness,  and  mansuetude  of  thy  char- 
acter, something  is  there  so  singularly  glorious  and  vener- 
able thrown  by  Heaven  about  thee,  that  not  only  does  thy 
country  love  thee,  but  our  very  enemies  stop  the  madness 
of  their  fire  in  full  volley,  stop  the  illiberality  of  their  slander 
at  thy  name,  as  if  rebuked  from  Heaven  with  a — '  Touch  not 
mine  Anointed,  and  do  my  Hero  no  harm !  '  Thy  fame  is 
of  sweeter  perfume  than  Arabian  spices  in  the  gardens  of 
Persia.  A  Baron  de  Steuben  shall  waft  its  fragrance  to  the 
monarch  of  Prussia :  a  Marquis  de  Lafayette  shall  waft  it 
to  a  far  greater  monarch,  and  diffuse  thy  renown  through- 
out Europe.  Listening  angels  shall  catch  the  odor,  waft  it 
to  heaven,  and  perfume  the  universe!  "  ' 

VIII. 

Nevertheless,  the  man  who,  in  the  seclusion  of  his  study, 
deliberately  forged  this  apostrophe,  and  then  with  vocifer- 
ous self-satisfaction,  hurled  it  at  the  heads  of  the  unhappy 
governor  and  legislators  of  Connecticut,  was  by  no  means  a 
fool ;  nay,  but  one  of  the  wisest,  acutest,  and  noblest  men 
of  that  period,  who  did  great  things  in  his  day  for  the  en- 
lightenment of  men  and  the  advancement  of  civilization, — 
for  science,  for  the  arts  and  industries,  for  literature,  for 
education,  for  the  reign  of  justice,  freedom,  and  good-will 
in  this  world. 

The  real  quality  of  his  intellect  we  may  partly  gather 
from  his  life-long  attitude  toward  that  enormous  movement 
of  skepticism  which  swept  through  the  entire  period  in 
which  he  lived.  Having  himself,  as  regards  the  Christian 
doctrine,  "  gone  through  all  the  conflicts  that  it  is  possible 

1  "  The  United  States  elevated  to  Glory  and  Honor,"  42-43. 


336  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

for  the  human  mind  to  be  perplexed  with,"1  he  had 
achieved  a  clear  vision  of  its  truth,  wherein,  as  he  said, 
"  revelation"  appeared  to  him  as  proceeding  "  from  the 
most  perfect  and  consummate  reason,"  "  and  to  invite  and 
welcome,  rather  than  to  repel,  any  form  of  rational  criticism. 
When,  accordingly,  in  1759,  President  Clap  of  Yale  College 
declined  to  receive  for  its  library  a  gift  of  books,  "  some  of 
which  were  deistical,"  Ezra  Stiles,  then  a  pastor  at  New- 
port, took  this  ground  in  opposition:  "  Deism  has  gained 
such  head,  in  this  age  of  licentious  liberty,  that  it  would  be 
in  vain  to  try  to  suppress  it  by  hiding  the  deistical  writings : 
the  only  way  is,  to  come  forth  into  the  open  field,  and  dis- 
pute the  matter  on  even  footing.  The  evidences  of  revela- 
tion are,  in  my  opinion,  nearly  as  demonstrative  as  Newton's 
Principia,  and  these  are  the  weapons  to  be  used."  Having 
perfect  faith  in  the  victory  of  truth  in  every  open  and  fair 
fight,  he  could  not  consent  that  the  large  political  liberty 
which  America  was  then  winning  for  itself,  should  ever  be 
lessened  by  any  pettiness  of  theological  restraint.  It  is  in 
America,  as  he  said,  just  at  the  close  of  the  Revolutionary 
War,  that  "  the  unfettered  mind  can  think  with  a  noble  en- 
largement; and  with  an  unbounded  freedom,  go  wherever 
the  light  of  truth  directs.  Here  will  be  no  bloody  tribunals, 
no  cardinals  inquisitors-general,  to  bend  the  human  mind, 
forcibly  to  control  the  understanding,  and  put  out  the  light 
of  reason,  the  candle  of  the  Lord,  in  man.  .  .  .  Re- 
ligion may  here  receive  its  last,  most  liberal  and  impartial 
examination.  .  .  .  Here  deism  will  have  its  full  chance ; 
nor  need  libertines  more  to  complain  of  being  overcome  by 
any  weapons  but  the  gentle,  the  powerful,  ones  of  argument 
and  truth.  Revelation  will  be  found  to  stand  the  test  of 
the  ten-thousandth  examination."  4 

As  he  thus  welcomed  for  Christianity  the  fullest  criticism 
on  the  part  of  its  opponents,   so-  he  would  have  among 

1  St|les'  MS"  quoted  in  Holmes's  "  Life  of  Stiles,"  85. 
'  Stiles,  letter  to  Wright,  in  Holmes's  "  Life  of  Stiles,"  123. 
|  Letter  to  Clap,  in  Holmes's  "  Life  of  Stiles,"  79. 
Election  Sermon,  in  1783,  p.  56. 


EZRA    STILES.  337 

all  religious  sects  mutual  forbearance :  and  his  charity  was  a 
mantle  as  wide  as  the  brotherhood  of  man.  "  It  has  been  a 
principle  with  me  for  thirty-five  years  past,"  so  he  wrote  in 
1781,  "  to  walk  and  live  in  a  decent,  civil,  and  respectful 
communication  with  all,  although  in  some  of  our  sentiments 
in  philosophy,  religion,  and  politics,  of  diametrically  oppo- 
site opinions.  Hence,  I  can  freely  live  and  converse  in  civil 
friendship,  with  Jews,  Romanists,  and  all  the  sects  of  Prot- 
estants, and  even  with  Deists.  I  am,  all  along,  blamed  by 
bigots  for  this  liberality,  though,  I  think,  none  impeach  me 
now  of  hypocrisy ;  because  I  most  freely,  fully,  and  plainly 
give  my  sentiments  on  everything  in  science,  religion,  and 
politics.  I  have  my  own  judgment,  and  do  not  conceal  it. 
I  have  no  secrets.  I  hold  it  beneath  the  dignity  of  a  phi- 
losopher, to  suppress  his  sentiments  upon  anything.  It  is, 
indeed,  unworthy  of  him  to  make  up  hasty  opinions  on 
every  new  subject  which  occurs.  Upon  these,  therefore,  he 
should  discourse,  in  the  way  of  search  and  enquiry,  till  he 
has  formed  his  judgment:  then  let  him  express  it,  but  with- 
out reprobating  others,  or  treating  them  with  acrimonious 
reflections,  because  they  think  differently."  '  Nobly  did 
Channing  describe  Ezra  Stiles  as  one  whose  "  heart  was  of 
no  sect,"  and  who  "  desired  to  heal  the  wounds  of  the 
divided  church  of  Christ,  not  by  a  common  creed,  but  by 
the  spirit  of  love."  * 

This  same  large  and  fearless  spirit  abode  with  him,  like- 
wise, in  his  judgments  concerning  purely  secular  affairs — 
such  as  forms  of  government,  and  the  duties  and  rights  of 
the  people.  He  was  an  early  specimen  of  the  American 
radical.  On  taking  his  bachelor's  degree,  just  thirty  years 
before  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  he  defended  this 
thesis:  "  Jus  regum  non  est  jure  divino  haereditarium"  8; 
and  in  the  year  which  saw  the  close  of  our  long  struggle  with 
the  king  of  England,  he  shewed  that  with  respect  to  kings 

1  "  Literary  Diary,"  in  Holmes's  "  Life  of  Stiles,"  274-275. 
9  "  The  Works  of  William  Ellery  Channing,"  iv.  340-341,  where  occurs  an 
exquisite  eulogy  of  Stiles,  whom  Channing  personally  knew. 
3  Holmes,  "  Life  of  Stiles,"  14. 


k'OL.    II. — 22. 


338  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

in  general,  his  opinion  had  in  the  meantime  suffered  no  con- 
servative relapse:  "  It  is  next  to  an  impossibility  to  tame  a 
monarch,  and  few  have  ruled  without  ferocity."  It  is 
doubtful  if  any  statesman  of  that  age  saw  earlier  or  more 
clearly  than  did  this  New  England  divine,  the  inevitable 
direction  and  the  irresistible  force  of  that  prodigious  under- 
current in  American  society  which  was  setting  toward  union, 
Independence,  and  national  greatness.  In  1760,  in  a  dis- 
course occasioned  by  the  English  capture  of  Montreal,  and 
their  reduction  of  all  Canada,  he  saw  for  England  a  gain  in 
which  was  coiled  up  a  far  greater  loss:  "  It  is  probable  that 
in  time  there  will  be  formed  a  Provincial  Confederacy  and  a 
Common  Council,  standing  on  free  provincial  suffrage ;  and 
this  may  in  time  terminate  in  an  imperial  diet,  when  the  im- 
perial dominion  will  subsist,  as  it  ought,  in  election."  '  In 
1761,  in  a  sermon  on  the  accession  of  George  the  Third,  he 
spoke  of  "  the  possible  exigencies  of  New  England,  which 
may  fall  within  the  period  of  his  majesty's  reign  "  ;  adding 
that  if  the  "  men,  who  have  a  mighty  opinion  of  retrenching 
the  liberties  of  these  colonies,  or  throwing  a  net  of  policy 
over  them,  .  .  .  should  gain  access  to  his  majesty's 
ears,  mistaken  representations  may  induce  his  majesty  to 
accede  to  measures  of  unhappy  consequences  to  the  liberty 
of  America."  In  1774,  he  wrote  to  the  English  historian, 
Catharine  Macaulay :  "There  will  be  a  Runnymede  in 
America."  * 

1  Election  Sermon  for  1783,  p.  17. 

4  Thanksgiving  Sermon,  in  Holmes's  "  Life  of  Stiles,"  99-100. 

*  Quoted  in  Holmes's  "  Life  of  Stiles,"  101-102. 

4  Holmes,  "  Life  of  Stiles,"  180.  Other  instances  of  Stiles's  political  sagacity 
and  foresight  are  to  be  met  with  in  Holmes's  book  ;  while  his  unpublished 
"Literary  Diary"  abounds  in  them.  See,  also,  Gordon,  "History  of  the 
American  Revolution,"  i.  115  ;  and  William  E.  Foster,  "Stephen  Hopkins," 
ii.  foot  notes  on  pp.  86,  87,  95,  118-119,  together  with  a  letter  from  Stiles  in 
Appendix  T.  A  good  short  sketch  of  Stiles  is  given  by  Sprague,  "  Annals,"  i. 
470-479,  particularly  valuable  for  reminiscences  of  this  Yale  president  by  two 

his  pupils.  A  sprightly  account  of  him,  under  the  title  of  "  An  Old  New 
Divine,"  written  by  his  great-granddaughter,  Kate  Gannett  Wells, 
Vjtti  the  advantage  of  family  papers,  is  in  "  The  Atlantic  Monthly,"  for  Aug.. 
1884,  pp.  247-257. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

TWO  APOSTLES    OF    QUIETNESS    AND    GOOD    WILL  :     JOHN 
WOOLMAN  AND   ST.    JOHN   CREVECCEUR. 

I. — Comparison  between  Franklin's  "Autobiography"  and  John  Woolman's 
"  Journal  " — The  spirit  of  Woolman's  life — He  is  weaned  from  the  desire 
for  outward  greatness — Begins  his  first  journey  to  visit  Friends. 

II. — John  Woolman's  apostleship — The  kindly  burden  thereof  as  set  forth  in 
his  "  Journal." 

III. — John  Woolman's  death  in  1772 — His  several  ethical  and  religious  essays 
— An  unlettered  writer  whose  purity  of  style  is  born  of  the  purity  of  his 
heart — The  love  and  praise  of  him  by  Charles  Lamb,  Channing,  Crabb, 
Robinson,  and  Whittier. 

IV. — St.  John  Crevecoeur's  "  Letters  from  an  American  Farmer"  published  in 
1782 — Their  sweetness  of  tone  and  literary  grace — Personal  history  of  the 
author — His  personal  and  literary  traits  as  American  farmer,  philosopher, 
dreamer,  and  altruist. 

V. — Crevecoeur's  description  of  the  American  colonies — The  limited  range  of 
his  topics — His  definition  of  an  American — His  sympathetic  studies  of 
nature — His  classic  contributions  to  the  literature  of  natural  history. 

VI. — The  note  of  peace  in  Crevecoeur's  book — He  celebrates  the  comfort  of 
American  rural  life,  its  opportunity,  thoughtfulness,  equality,  dignity, 
friendliness,  its  happy  companionship  with  all  innocent  things. 

VII. — The  note  of  pain  in  Crevecceur's  book — The  inevitable  barbarism  of 
negro  slavery — His  pathetic  picture  of  the  caged  negro — The  Indian  wrong 
and  terror — This  quietist  appalled  by  the  wrangles  and  violence  of  the 
Revolution — His  idealized  descriptions  of  American  felicity  both  fascinated 
and  misled  many  readers  in  Europe — His  influence  upon  the  English  poets, 
especially  the  inventors  of  "  Pantisocracy. " 

I. 

IT  is  no  slight  distinction  attaching  to  American  litera- 
ture for  the  period  of  the  Revolution,  that  in  a  time  so  often 
characterized  as  barren  of  important  literary  achievement, 
were  produced  two  of  the  most  perfect  examples  of  auto- 

339 


340  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

biography  to  be  met  with  in  any  literature.  One  of  these, 
of  course,  is  Franklin's  "Autobiography,"  the  first,  the 
largest,  and  the  best  part  of  which  was  written  in  1771, — a 
work  that  has  long  since  taken  its  place  among  the  most 
celebrated  and  most  widely  read  of  modern  books.  Almost 
at  the  very  time  at  which  that  fascinating  story  was  begun, 
the  other  great  example  of  autobiography  in  our  Revolu- 
tionary literature  was  finished — "  The  Journal  of  John 
Woolman,"  a  book  which  William  Ellery  Channing  long 
afterward  described  as  "  beyond  comparison  the  sweetest 
and  purest  autobiography  in  the  language."  It  is  a 
notable  fact,  however,  that  while  these  two  masterpieces  in 
the  same  form  of  literature  are  products  of  the  same  period, 
they  are,  in  respect  of  personal  quality,  very  nearly  antipo- 
dal to  each  other;  for,  as  Franklin's  account  of  himself 
delineates  a  career  of  shrewd  and  somewhat  selfish  geniality, 
of  unperturbed  carnal  content,  of  kindly  systematic  and 
most  successful  worldliness,  so  the  autobiography  of  Wool- 
man sets  forth  a  career  which  turns  out  to  be  one  of  utter 
unworldliness,  of  entire  self-effacement,  all  in  obedience  to 
an  Unseen  Leadership,  and  in  meek  and  most  tender  devo- 
tion to  the  happiness  of  others — especially  slaves,  poor  toil- 
ing white  people,  and  speechless  creatures  unable  to  defend 
themselves  against  the  inhumanity  of  man. 

John  Woolman,  who  was  of  a  spirit  so  unpresuming  that 
he  would  have  wondered  and  have  been  troubled  to  be 
told  that  any  writing  of  his  was  ever  to  be  dealt  with  as 
literature,  was  born  in  1720  in  Northampton,  New  Jersey, 
his  father  being  a  farmer,  and  of  the  Society  of  Friends. 
Until  his  twenty-first  year,  he  lived  at  home  with  his 
parents,  and,  as  he  expresses  it,  "  wrought  on  the  planta- 
tion." Having  reached  his  majority,  he  took  employment 
in  the  neighboring  village  of  Mount  Holly,  in  a  shop  for 
general  merchandise.  In  this  occupation  he  passed  several 
years;  after  which,  as  he  writes,  "  I  was  thoughtful  of 

'This  was  said  by  Channing  not  long  before  his  death,  in  a  conversation  with 
Whmier.  Introd.  to  "  The  Journal  of  John  Woolman,"  2. 


JOHN    WOOLMAN.  341 

some  other  way  of  business ;  perceiving  merchandize  to  be 
attended  with  much  cumber  in  the  way  of  trading  in  these 
parts.  My  mind,  through  the  power  of  truth,  was  in  a  good 
degree  weaned  from  the  desire  of  outward  greatness,  and  I 
was  learning  to  be  content  with  real  conveniences  that  were 
not  costly ;  so  that  a  way  of  life  free  from  much  entangle- 
ments, appeared  best  for  me,  though  the  income  might  be 
small.  ...  I  saw  that  an  humble  man,  with  the  bless- 
ing of  the  Lord,  might  live  on  a  little;  and  that  where  the 
heart  was  set  on  greatness,  success  in  business  did  not  satisfy 
the  craving,  but  that  commonly,  with  an  increase  of  wealth, 
the  desire  of  wealth  increased.  There  was  a  care  on  my 
mind  so  to  pass  my  time,  that  nothing  might  hinder  me 
from  the  most  steady  attention  to  the  voice  of  the  true 
Shepherd.  My  employer,  though  now  a  retailer  of  goods, 
was  by  trade  a  tailor,  and  kept  a  servant  man  at  that  busi- 
ness; and  I  began  to  think  about  learning  the  trade,  ex- 
pecting that  if  I  should  settle,  I  might  by  this  trade  and  a 
little  retailing  of  goods,  get  a  living  in  a  plain  way  without 
the  load  of  great  business.  I  mentioned  it  to  my  employer, 
and  we  soon  agreed  on  terms ;  and  then,  when  I  had  leisure 
from  the  affairs  of  merchandize,  I  worked  with  his  man.  I 
believed  the  hand  of  Providence  pointed  out  this  business 
for  me,  and  was  taught  to  be  content  with  it,  though  I  felt 
at  times  a  disposition  that  would  have  sought  for  something 
greater.  But,  through  the  revelation  of  Jesus  Christ,  I  had 
seen  the  happiness  of  humility,  and  there  was  an  earnest 
desire  in  me  to  enter  deep  into  it ;  and  at  times  this  desire 
arose  to  a  degree  of  fervent  supplication,  wherein  my  soul 
was  so  environed  with  heavenly  light  and  consolation,  that 
things  were  made  easy  to  me  which  had  been  otherwise. 
I  then  wrought  at  my  trade  as  a  tailor;  carefully 
attended  meetings  for  worship  and  discipline;  and  found  an 
enlargement  of  gospel  love  in  my  mind,  and  therein  a  con- 
cern to  visit  Friends  in  some  of  the  back  settlements  of 
Pennsylvania  and  Virginia;  and  being  thoughtful  about  a 
companion,  I  expressed  it  to  my  beloved  friend,  Isaac  An- 


342 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


drews,  who  then  told  me  that  he  had  drawings  to  the  same 
places,  and  also  to  go  through  Maryland,  Virginia,  and 
Carolina.  ...  I  opened  the  case  in  our  monthly-meet- 
ing; and  Friends  expressing  their  unity  therewith,  we 
obtained  certificates  to  travel  as  companions, — his  from 
Haddonfield,  and  mine  from  Burlington." 

II. 

The  story  of  John  Woolman,  as  thus  far  told,  brings  us 
to  the  point  where  he  began  to  give  himself  almost  wholly  to 
the  true  work  of  his  life — that  of  an  apostle,  with  a  need 
to  go  from  land  to  land  in  fulfillment  of  his  apostleship,  and 
able,  like  one  of  the  greatest  of  all  apostles,  to  minister  to 
his  own  necessities  by  the  labors  of  a  lowly  trade.  For, 
long  before  he  set  out  upon  these  travels,  even  from  his 
early  childhood,  he  had  entered,  as  he  thought,  into  the 
possession  of  certain  treasures  of  the  spirit  which  he  could 
not  hoard  up  for  himself  alone, — which,  if  he  could  but 
share  them  with  others,  would  make  others  rich  and  happy 
beyond  desire  or  even  imagination.  As  we  study  John 
Woolman  along  the  pages  upon  which  he  has  made  record  of 
his  inmost  nature,  we  shall  be  inclined  to  infer  that  the 
traits  which  made  him  the  man  he  was,  were  these :  first,  a 
singularly  vivid  perception  of  the  reality  and  worth  of  things 
spiritual ;  secondly,  such  a  passion  of  desire  for  all  that  is 
like  God,  that  whatsoever  he  met  with  in  himself  or  in 
others  which  was  otherwise,  grieved  him  with  an  ineffable 
sorrow ;  thirdly,  love,  taking  every  form  of  adoration  for  the 
Highest  Love,  and  of  sympathy  and  effort  on  behalf  of  all 
God's  creatures,  great  and  small;  next,  humility;  next, 
directness,  simplicity,  sincerity;  next,  refinement.  Cer- 
tainly, the  power  of  this  book  cannot  be  conveyed  by  de- 
tached passages,  and  in  all  cases  must  be  without  effect,  save 
upon  natures  that  are  prepared  for  it ;  yet  of  what  has  just 
now  been  said,  some  verification  may  be  had  in  sentences 

1  "  A  Journal  of  the  Life,"  etc.,  19-21. 


JOHN    WOOLMAN.  343 

like  these,  taken  here  and  there  from  it.  "I  was  taught  to 
read  near  as  soon  as  I  was  capable  of  it ;  and  as  I  went  from 
school  one  seventh  day,  I  remember,  while  my  companions 
went  to  play  by  the  way,  I  went  forward  out  of  sight,  and 
sitting  down  I  read  the  twenty-second  chapter  of  the  Reve- 
lation :  '  He  shewed  me  a  pure  river  of  water  of  life,  clear  as 
crystal,  proceeding  out  of  the  throne  of  God  and  of  the 
Lamb,  &c.'  And  in  reading  it,  my  mind  was  drawn  to  seek 
after  that  pure  habitation."  '  "I  .  -.  ".  was  early  con- 
vinced in  my  mind,  that  true  religion  consisted  in  an  inward 
life,  wherein  the  heart  doth  love  and  reverence  God  the 
Creator,  and  learns  to  exercise  true  justice  and  goodness, 
not  only  toward  all  men,  but  also  toward  the  brute  crea- 
tures; that  as  the  mind  was  moved,  by  an  inward  principle, 
to  love  God  as  an  invisible  incomprehensible  Being,  by  the 
same  principle  it  was  moved  to  love  Him  in  all  His  manifes- 
tations in  the  visible  world;  that,  as  by  His  breath  the 
flame  of  life  was  kindled  in  all  animal  sensible  creatures,  to 
say  we  love  God  as  unseen,  and  at  the  same  time  exercise 
cruelty  toward  the  least  creature  moving  by  His  life,  or  by 
life  derived  from  Him,  was  a  contradiction  in  itself."  2  "I 
looked  upon  the  works  of  God  in  this  visible  creation,  and 
an  awfulness  covered  me ;  my  heart  was  tender  and  often 
contrite,  and  universal  love  to  my  fellow  creatures  increased 
in  me."  "  Some  glances  of  real  beauty  may  be  seen  in 
their  faces,  who  dwell  in  true  meekness."  4  "  When  I  eat, 
drank,  and  lodged  free-cost  with  people  who  lived  in  ease  on 
the  hard  labor  of  slaves,  I  felt  uneasy ;  and  as  my  mind  was 
inward  to  the  Lord,  I  found  from  place  to  place  this  uneasi- 
ness return  upon  me  at  times  through  the  whole  visit." 
"  This  trade  of  importing  slaves  from  their  native  country 
was  frequently  the  subject  of  my  serious  thoughts. 
And  I  saw  in  these  southern  provinces'  so  many  vices  and 
corruptions,  increased  by  this  trade  and  this  way  of  life,  that 
it  appeared  to  me  as  a  dark  gloominess  hanging  over  the 

.     »  "  A  Journal  of  the  Life,"  etc.,  2.  *  Ibid.  8-9. 

3  Ibid.  9.  « Ibid.   9.  &  Ibid.  23. 


344 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


land.  And  though  now  many  willingly  run  into  it,  yet  in 
future  the  consequence  will  be  grievous  to  posterity :  I  ex- 
press it  as  it  hath  appeared  to  me,  not  once  nor  twice, 
but  as  a  matter  fixed  on  my  mind."  '  "I  was  then  carried 
in  spirit  to  the  mines,  where  poor  oppressed  people  were 
digging  rich  treasures  for  those  called  Christians ;  and  heard 
them  blaspheme  the  name  of  Christ,  at  which  I  was  grieved 
— for  His  name  to  me  was  precious."  "  "  About  this  time, 
a  person  at  some  distance  lying  sick,  his  brother  came  to  me 
to  write  his  will.  I  knew  he  had  slaves,  and  asking  his 
brother,  was  told  he  intended  to  leave  them  as  slaves  to  his 
children.  As  writing  is  a  profitable  employ,  and  as  offend- 
ing sober  people  was  disagreeable  to  my  inclination,  I  was 
straitened  in  my  mind ;  but  as  I  looked  to  the  Lord,  He  in- 
clined my  heart  to  His  testimony.  And  I  told  the  man, 
that  I  believed  the  practice  of  continuing  slavery  to  this 
people  was  not  right,  and  had  a  scruple  in  my  mind  against 
doing  writings  of  that  kind ;  that  though  many  in  our  soci- 
ety kept  them  as  slaves,  still  I  was  not  easy  to  be  concerned 
in  it,  and  desired  to  be  excused  from  going  to  write  the  will. 
I  spake  to  him  in  the  fear  of  the  Lord,  and  he  made  no 
reply  to  what  I  said,  but  went  away.  He  also  had  some 
concerns  in  the  practice,  and  I  thought  he  was  displeased 
with  me.  In  this  case,  I  had  a  fresh  confirmation,  that  act- 
ing contrary  to  present  outward  interest,  from  a  motive  of 
divine  love  and  inward  regard  to  truth  and  righteousness, 
and  thereby  incurring  the  resentments  of  people,  opens  the 
way  to  a  treasure  better  than  silver,  and  to  a  friendship  ex- 
ceeding the  friendship  of  men."  3  "A  neighbor  received  a 
bad  bruise  in  his  body,  and  sent  for  me  to  bleed  him ;  which 
being  done,  he  desired  me  to  write  his  will.  I  took  notes; 
and  amongst  other  things,  he  told  me  to  which  of  his  chil- 
dren he  gave  his  young  negro.  I  considered  the  pain  and 
distress  he  was  in,  and  knew  not  how  it  would  end ;  so  I 
wrote  his  will,  save  only  that  part  concerning  his  slave,  and 
carrying  it  to  his  bed-side,  read  it  to  him,  and  then  told 

1  "  A  Journal  of  the  Life, "  etc.,  24.  2  Ibid.  233.  3  Ibid.  35. 


JOHN    WOOLMAN.  345 

him,  in  a  friendly  way,  that  I  could  not  write  any  instru- 
ments by  which  my  fellow  creatures  were  made  slaves,  with- 
out bringing  trouble  on  my  own  mind.  I  let  him  know  that 
I  charged  nothing  for  what  I  had  done,  and  desired  to  be 
excused  from  doing  the  other  part  in  the  way  he  proposed. 
We  then  had  a  serious  conference  on  the  subject.  At 
length,  he  agreeing  to  set  her  free,  I  finished  his  will."  ' 
"  We  were  taught  by  renewed  experience  to  labor  for  an 
inward  stillness;  at  no  time  to  seek  for  words,  but  live  in 
the  spirit  of  truth,  and  utter  that  to  the  people  which  truth 
opened  in  us."  a  "  The  natural  man  loveth  eloquence,  and 
many  love  to  hear  eloquent  orations ;  and  if  there  is  not  a 
careful  attention  to  the  gift,  men  who  have  once  labored  in 
the  pure  Gospel  ministry,  growing  weary  of  suffering  and 
ashamed  of  appearing  weak,  may  kindle  a  fire,  compass 
themselves  about  with  sparks,  and  walk  in  the  light — not 
of  Christ  who  is  under  suffering,  but  of  that  fire  which  they, 
going  from  the  gift,  have  kindled ;  and  that,  in  hearers, 
which  is  gone  from  the  meek  suffering  state  into  the  worldly 
wisdom,  may  be  warmed  with  this  fire,  and  speak  highly  of 
these  labors.  That  which  is  of  God  gathers  to  God,  and 
that  which  is  of  the  world,  is  owned  by  the  world. ' '  9 

III. 

Thus,  the  autobiography  of  John  Woolman  was  the 
gradual  and  secret  growth  of  many  years,  beginning  when 
he  was  of  the  age  of  thirty-six,  and  added  to  from  time  to 
time  until,  at  the  age  of  fifty-two,  being  in  the  city  of 
York,  in  England,  about  the  business  of  his  Master,  he  was 
stricken  down  of  the  small  pox,  whereof  he  died.  Besides 
this  story  of  his  life,  he  left  several  ethical  and  religious 
essays: — "Some  Considerations  on  the  Keeping  of  Ne- 
groes"4; "  Considerations  on  Pure  Wisdom,  and  Human 
Policy,  on  Labor,  on  Schools,  and  on  the  Right  Use  of  the 

1  "  A  Journal  of  the  Life,"  etc.,  42-43.        !  Ibid.  30.  3  Ibid.  243-244. 

4  Part  I.  first  printed  in  1754  ;  Part  II.  in  1762. 


346  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Lord's  Outward  Gifts"1;  "Considerations  on  the  True 
Harmony  of  Mankind,  and  How  it  is  to  be  Maintained  "  '; 
finally,  "  A  Word  of  Remembrance  and  Caution  to  the 
Rich,"  ' — the  last  being  in  some  respects  the  most  impress- 
ive of  all  his  essays,  with  a  striking  applicability  to  prob- 
lems now  vexing  the  civilized  world. 

While  these  essays  set  forth,  without  reserve  and  without 
censoriousness,  the  very  altruism  of  Jesus  Christ,  which,  as 
Woolman  thought,  must  first  live  in  the  hearts  of  men,  both 
rich  and  poor,  before  the  distinctions  of  outward  condition 
will  cease  to  occasion  bitterness  and  violence  upon  earth,  it 
is  fitting  here  to  add,  that,  like  the  autobiography,  all  these 
writings  are,  as  Whittier  has  said,  in  the  style  "  of  a  man 
unlettered,  but  with  natural  refinement  and  delicate  sense 
of  fitness,  the  purity  of  whose  heart  enters  into  his  lan- 
guage." '  "  The  secret  of  Woolman's  purity  of  style,"  said 
Channing,  "  is  that  his  eye  was  single,  and  that  conscience 
dictated  the  words."  There  is  about  John  Woolman's 
writings  that  unconventionality  of  thought,  that  charity 
without  pretense,  that  saintliness  without  sanctimony  or 
sourness,  that  delicacy,  that  untaught  beauty  of  phrase,  by 
which  we  are  helped  to  understand  the  ardor  of  Charles 
Lamb's  love  for  him,  as  uttered  in  his  impulsive  exhorta- 
tion to  the  readers  of  the  Essays  of  Elia :  "  Get  the  writings 

of  John  Woolman  by  heart. A  perfect  gem!  "  wrote 

Henry  Crabb  Robinson,  in  1824,  of  Woolman's"  Journal," 
which  Lamb  had  shortly  before  made  known  to  him.  "  His 
is  a  '  schone  Seele.'  An  illiterate  tailor,  he  writes  in  a  style 
of  the  most  exquisite  purity  and  grace.  His  moral  qualities 
are  transferred  to  his  writings."7  Perhaps,  after  all,  the 

1  First  printed  in  1768. 
*  First  printed  in  1770. 

3  First  printed  in  1793,  and  reprinted  as  a  part  of  the  Appendix  to  Whittier's 
edition  of  "  The  Journal  of  John  Woolman." 

"  The  Journal  of  John  Woolman,"  Introd.,  33. 

5  Cited  by  Whittier,  Ibid.  34. 

6  This  occurs  in  the  ninth  of  the  Essays  of  Elia,  entitled  "  A  Quakers'  Meet- 
ing."    "  The  Works  of  Charles  Lamb,"  iii.  84. 

"Diary     .     .     .     of  Henry  Crabb  Robinson,"  i.  403. 


CREVECCEUR.  347 

aroma  that  lingers  about  Woolman's  words  is  best  described 
by  Woolman's  true  spiritual  successor  in  American  litera- 
ture, in  the  saying,  that  he  who  reads  these  writings  be- 
comes sensible  "  of  a  sweetness  as  of  violets."  ' 

IV. 

In  1782,  just  as  the  people  of  England  were  beginning  to 
adjust  themselves  to  the  fact  that  their  obstreperous  Ameri- 
can children  had  finally  come  of  age,  and  were  giving  rather 
too  many  proofs  of  their  capacity  to  set  up  political  house- 
keeping on  their  own  account,  there  was  published  in  Lon- 
don an  American  book  about  these  same  American  children 
and  their  big  country,  but  written  with  a  sweetness  of  tone 
and,  likewise,  with  a  literary  grace  and  a  power  of  fascina- 
tion, then  quite  unexpected  from  the  western  side  of  the 
Atlantic.  It  presented  itself  to  the  public  behind  this  ample 
title-page: — "  Letters  from  an  American  Farmer,  describing 
certain  provincial  situations,  manners,  and  customs,  not 
generally  known,  and  conveying  some  idea  of  the  late  and 
present  interior  circumstances  of  the  British  Colonies  in 
North  America:  written  for  the  information  of  a  friend  in 
England,  by  J.  Hector  St.  John,  a  farmer  in  Pennsylvania. ' '  * 

The  name  of  the  author  as  thus  given  upon  his  title-page, 
was  not  his  name  in  full,  but  only  the  baptismal  portion  of 
it.  By  omitting  from  the  book  his  surname,  which  was 
Crevecoeur,  he  had  chosen  to  disguise  to  the  English  public 
the  fact — which  could  hardly  have  added  to  his  welcome 
among  them — that  though  he  was  an  American,  he  was  not 
ah  English  American,  but  a  French  one, — having  been  born 
in  Normandy,  and  of  a  noble  family  there,  in  1731.  More- 
over, this  is  not  his  only  device  for  self-concealment ;  for, 
throughout  the  book,  he  writes  under  the  character  of  a 
simple-hearted  American  farmer  who,  born  in  America,  and 
with  but  slight  education,  and  with  no  opportunity  for 

1  Whittier,  Introd.  to  "  The  Journal  of  John  Woolman,"  34. 
8  The  copy  used  by  me  is  the  edition  of  1783,  "  Printed  for  Thomas  Davies, 
in  Russell  Street,  Covent  Garden." 


348  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

travel  beyond  the  bounds  of  his  native  land,  has  inherited 
his  farm  from  his  American  father,  and  has  learned,  almost 
within  the  horizon  of  that  farm,  his  best  lessons  concerning 
this  world  and  other  worlds  and  the  meaning  of  life  every- 
where. 

In  reality,  however,  while  really  an  American  farmer, 
Crevecoeur  was  a  man  of  education,  of  refinement,  of  varied 
experience  in  the  world.  When  but  a  lad  of  sixteen,  he  had 
removed  from  France  to  England ;  when  but  twenty-three, 
he  had  emigrated  to  America.  Here,  in  due  time,  he  had 
taken  unto  himself  an  American  farm,  and  an  American 
wife,  and  with  true  French  graciousness  and  tact  had  quickly 
assimilated  the  ways  of  life,  especially  of  rural  life,  in  his 
adopted  country.  It  is  probable  that  he  was  of  the  Society 
of  Friends — which  may  partly  account  for  his  coming  to 
America  and  especially  to  Pennsylvania,  as  well  as  for  many 
peculiarities  of  his  book, — some  of  its  local  and  personal 
allusions,  its  gentle  tone,  its  spirituality,  its  mysticism,  its 
tender  but  firm  championship  of  the  poor  Indian  and  the 
poor  slave,  and,  above  all,  its  prevailing  reticence  concern- 
ing the  ferocious  political  and  military  controversies  of  the 
Revolution.  At  any  rate,  being  a  man  of  quite  uncommon 
literary  cultivation,  and  having  the  vivacity  and  the  imagi- 
native flexibility  of  his  race,  having  also  a  fondness  both  for 
human  fellowship  and  for  solitude,  and  the  power  to  look 
upon  life,  even  in  a  wilderness,  through  the  eyes  of  a  scholar, 
a  philosopher,  and  an  idealist,  he  threw  himself  with  full 
delight  into  the  primitive  free  spirit  of  the  new  world, — its 
consciousness  of  ample  room  and  of  escape  from  tradition, 
its  helpfulness,  its  frank  customs,  crude  labors,  artless 
pleasures,— and  all  these  he  was  able,  at  last,  to  interpret  to 
the  old  world  in  a  series  of  idyllic  descriptions  which, 
surely,  could  not  be  fallacious  or  misleading— except,  of 
course,  to  people  who  were  not  scholars,  philosophers,  and 
idealists,  or  who,  at  least,  had  not  his  faculty  of  seeing  in 
this  world  those  beautiful  realities  that  are  invisible  always 
to  the  mere  bodily  sight. 


CREVECCEUR.  349 

V. 

As  an  account  of  the  American  colonies,  this  book  makes 
no  pretension  either  to  system  or  to  completeness ;  and  yet 
it  does  attain  to  a  sort  of  breadth  of  treatment  by  seizing 
upon  certain  representative  traits  of  the  three  great  groups 
of  colonies.  For  the  northern  group,  he  has  five  letters, 
devoted  to  Nantucket,  Martha's  Vineyard,  and  Cape  Cod. 
For  the  middle  group,  he  has  two  letters,  evidently  founded 
upon  his  own  experience  as  the  possessor  of  a  farm  in  Penn- 
sylvania, on  "  the  edge  of  the  great  wilderness,  three  hun- 
dred miles  from  the  sea":  one  of  these  letters  being 
descriptive  of  "  the  situation,  feelings,  and  pleasures  of 
an  American  farmer,"  and  the  other  of  the  "  distresses  of  a 
frontier-man."  For  the  southern  group,  he  has  but  one 
letter,  dealing  with  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  and  with 
the  more  harrowing  and  tragic  form  of  the  slave-labor  system 
as  prevalent  in  that  region.  The  remaining  letters — four  in 
number — are  taken  up  with  a  variety  of  topics,  all  having 
their  interpretative  value;  such  as  the  genius  and  the 
achievements  of  John  Bartram  the  American  botanist,  his 
own  observations  upon  natural  history  in  America,  and 
especially  some  aspects  of  the  race-problem  there,  which  he 
deals  with  in  answer  to  the  question — "  What  is  an  Ameri- 
can ?  " 

If  we  would  come  at  once  into  contact  with  Crevecceur's 
habit  and  tone  of  thought, — a  delicate  and  joyous  percep- 
tion of  phenomena,  and  a  divination  of  their  meaning  as  seen 
by  him  through  a  haze  of  noble  idealizing  sentiment, — we 
can  perhaps  do  no  better  than  to  turn  to  his  discussion  of 
this  very  question — a  question  still  often  asked  and  perhaps 
never  yet  fully  answered.  Premising  that  the  people  of  the 
colonies  "  are  a  mixture  of  English,  Scotch,  Irish,  French, 
Dutch,  Germans,  and  Swedes,"  and  that  "  from  this  pro- 
miscuous breed  that  race  no\v  called  Americans  have  arisen," 
he  repeats  the  enquiry — "  What,  then,  is  the  American,  this 
new  man  ?  He  is  neither  an  European,  nor  the  descendant 
of  an  European  :  hence  that  strange  mixture  of  blood,  which 


350  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

you  will  find  in  no  other  country.  I  could  point  out  to  you 
a  family,  whose  grandfather  was  an  Englishman,  whose  wife 
was  Dutch,  whose  son  married  a  French  woman,  and  whose 
present  four  sons  have  now  four  wives  of  different  nations. 
He  is  an  American,  who,  leaving  behind  him  all  his  ancient 
prejudices  and  manners,  receives  new  ones  from  the  new 
mode  of  life  he  has  embraced,  the  new  government  he 
obeys,  and  the  new  rank  he  holds.  He  becomes  an  Ameri- 
can by  being  received  in  the  broad  lap  of  our  great  '  alma 
mater.'  Here  individuals  of  all  nations  are  melted  into  a 
new  race  of  men,  whose  labors  and  posterity  will  one  day 
cause  great  changes  in  the  world.  \l  Americans  are  the 
western  pilgrims,  who  are  carrying  along  with  them  that 
great  mass  of  arts,  sciences,  vigor,  and  industry,  which  began 
long  since  in  the  east.  They  will  finish  the  great  circle. 
The  Americans  were  once  scattered  all  over  Europe.  Here 
they  are  incorporated  into  one  of  the  finest  systems  of  popu- 
lation which  has  ever  appeared,  and  which  will  hereafter  be- 
come distinct  by  the  power  of  the  different  climates  they 
inhabit.  The  American  ought  therefore  to  love  this  country 
much  better  than  that  wherein  either  he  or  his  forefathers 
were  born.  Here  the  rewards  of  his  industry  follow,  with 
equal  steps,  the  progress  of  his  labor.  His  labor  is  founded 
on  the  basis  of  nature — self-interest :  can  it  want  a  stronger 
allurement  ?  Wives  and  children,  who  before  in  vain  de- 
manded of  him  a  morsel  of  bread,  now,  fat  and  frolicsome, 
gladly  help  their  father  to  clear  those  fields  whence  exuber- 
ant crops  are  to  arise,  to  feed  and  to  clothe  them  all,  without 
any  part  being  claimed  either  by  a  despotic  prince,  a  rich 
abbot,  or  a  mighty  lord.  Here  religion  demands  but  little 
of  him,— a  small  voluntary  salary  to  the  minister,  and  grati- 
tude to  God :  can  he  refuse  these  ?  The  American  is  a  new 
man,  who  acts  upon  new  principles;  he  must  therefore  enter- 
tain new  ideas,  and  form  new  opinions.  From  involuntary 
idleness,  servile  dependence,  penury,  and  useless  labor,  he 
has  passed  to  toils  of  a  very  different  nature,  rewarded  by 
amplejmbsistence.— This  is  an  American."  ' 

1  "  Letters."  etc.,  48  ;  51-53. 


CREVECCEUR.  35 1 

It  is  probable  that  not  many  passages  in  these  letters  were 
more  enjoyed  at  the  time,  or  are  more  likely  to  last  in  our 
literature  as  delightful  examples  of  description  at  first  hand, 
than  those  in  which  the  author  gives  the  results  of  his  keen 
and  sympathetic  watchfulness  of  nature  in  the  New  World, 
— such  as  his  account  of  the  intrusive  swallow  and  the  sub- 
missive wren,1  or  of  the  bee-hunt,*  or  of  the  battle  between 
the  water-snake  and  the  black-snake,3 — all  of  which,  indeed, 
are  contributions  to  natural  history  as  well  as  to  literature. 

/ 
VI. 

There  are  in  this  book  two  distinct  notes — one  of  great 
peace,  another  of  great  pain.  The  earlier  and  larger  portion 
of  the  book  gives  forth  this  note  of  peace :  it  is  a  prose  pas- 
toral of  life  in  the  New  World,  as  that  life  must  have  re- 
vealed itself  to  a  well-appointed  American  farmer  of  poetic 
and  optimistic  temper,  in  the  final  stage  of  our  colonial  era, 
and  just  before  the  influx  of  the  riot  and  bitterness  of  the 
great  disruption.4  What  he  thus  writes  breathes  such  deep 
tranquillity  as  might  have  its  pulse  in  some  leafy  dale  of 
Arcadia.  Evidently  this  American  farmer  has  found  some 
happy  valley — some  peace-encircled  spot — where,  in  modest 
competence,  and  with  a  "  holiday-rejoicing  spirit,"  he  can 
plough  his  fields,  and  angle  in  his  brooks,  and  take  note  of 
the  splendors  of  sun-rise,  and  become  acquainted  with  his 
birds  and  bees  and  squirrels  and  other  furtive  creatures — in- 
cluding even  his  own  wife  and  children.  Those  political 
busy-bodies  who,  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  utmost  freedom, 
have  yet  thrown  themselves  into  the  anguish  of  imagi- 
nary slavery  through  their  gratuitous  speculations  over  the 
taxing-power  of  parliament,  have  no  message  for  him.  At 

"  Letters,"  etc.,  40-41. 
1  Ibid.  34-36. 

3  Ibid.  243-246. 

4  He  himself  says  that  several  of  the  letters  in  his  book  were  written  before 
"  the  troubles  that  lately  convulsed  the  American  colonies"  had  "  broke  out." 
"  Letters,"  etc.,  7  n. 


352  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

present  he  hears  them  not.  He  celebrates  the  comfort  of 
American  life  —  its  opportunity — its  thoughtfulness  —  its 
dignity — its  beneficence.  From  his  far-away  plantation  he 
stretches  out  his  hands  and  shares  in  the  "  secret  communion 
among  good  men  throughout  the  world."  Happy  with 
enough,  he  has  no  hatred  for  those  who  have  more.  "  I 
envy  no  man's  prosperity,  and  wish  no  other  portion  of  hap- 
piness than  that  I  may  live  to  teach  the  same  philosophy  to 
my  children. ' ' "  He  exults  in  the  largeness,  equality,  facility, 
of  life  in  this  land :  "  Here  we  have  in  some  measure,  re- 
gained the  ancient  dignity  of  our  species:  our  laws  are 
simple  and  just ;  we  are  a  race  of  cultivators ;  our  cultivation 
is  unrestrained,  and  therefore  everything  is  prosperous  and 
flourishing.  For  my  part,  I  had  rather  admire  the  ample 
barn  of  one  of  our  opulent  farmers,  who  himself  felled  the 
first  tree  in  his  plantation,  and  was  first  founder  of  his  settle- 
ment, than  study  the  dimensions  of  the  temple  of  Ceres.  I 
had  rather  record  the  progressive  steps  of  this  industrious 
farmer,  throughout  all  the  stages  of  his  labors  and  other 
operations,  than  examine  how  modern  Italian  convents  can 
be  supported  without  doing  anything  but  singing  and  pray- 
ing." He  is  glad  to  think  that  American  society  "  is  not 
composed,  as  in  Europe,  of  great  lords  who  possess  every- 
thing, and  of  a  herd  of  people  who  have  nothing.  Here  are 
no  aristocratical  families,  no  courts,  no  kings,  no  bishops,  no 
ecclesiastical  dominion,  no  invisible  power  giving  to  a  few  a 
very  visible  one."  4  "  We  are  a  people  of  cultivators,  scat- 
tered over  an  immense  territory,  communicating  with  each 
other  by  means  of  good  roads  and  navigable  rivers,  united  by 
the  silken  bands  of  mild  government,  all  respecting  the  laws, 
without  dreading  their  power,  because  they  are  equitable."  6 
He  loves  to  think  of  America  "  as  the  asylum  of  freedom, 
as  the  cradle  of  future  nations,  and  the  refuge  of  distressed 
Europeans."  '  "  We  know,  properly  speaking,  no  strangers : 
thisjs^every^person's  country."  7  He  is  fond  of  giving  us 

'  Letters,"  etc.,  Dedication.  *  ibid.  45.  »  Ibid.  8-9. 

Ibid.  46.  s  ibid,  47.  •  ibid.  Dedication.  »  Ibid.  70. 


CREVECCEUR.  353 

glimpses  of  his  own  serene  and  manly  relation  to  life,  as  he 
sits  "  smoking  a  contemplative  pipe  "  '  on  his  piazza,  or  as 
he  plows  his  low  ground  holding  his  "  little  boy  on  a  chair 
which  screws  to  the  beam  of  the  plow. ' ' a  No  struggle  for  ex- 
istence, no  carking  care,  keeps  him  from  enjoying  the  sights 
and  sounds  of  nature  about  him:  "  The  pleasure  I  receive 
from  the  warblings  of  the  birds  in  the  spring  is  superior  to 
my  poor  description,  as  the  continual  succession  of  their 
tuneful  notes  is  for  ever  new  to  me.  I  generally  rise  from 
bed  about  that  indistinct  interval  which,  properly  speaking, 
is  neither  night  nor  day ;  for  this  is  the  moment  of  the  most 
universal  vocal  choir.  Who  can  listen  unmoved  to  the  sweet 
love-tales  of  our  robins,  told  from  tree  to  tree,  or  to  the 
shrill  cat-birds  ?  The  sublime  accents  of  the  thrush,  from 
on  high,  always  retard  my  steps,  that  I  may  listen  to  the 
delicious  music.  The  variegated  appearances  of  the  dew-- 
drops, as  they  hang  to  the  different  objects,  must  present, 
even  to  a  clownish  imagination,  the  most  voluptuous  ideas. 
The  astonishing  art  which  all  birds  display  in  the  construc- 
tion of  their  nests,  ill-provided  as  we  may  suppose  them 
with  proper  tools,  their  neatness,  their  convenience,  always 
make  me  ashamed  of  the  slovenliness  of  our  houses.  Their 
love  to  their  dame,  their  incessant  careful  attention,  and  the 
peculiar  songs  they  address  to  her  while  she  tediously  incu- 
bates their  eggs,  remind  me  of  my  duty,  could  I  ever  forget 
it.  Their  affection  to  their  helpless  little  ones  is  a  lovely 
precept ;  and,  in  short,  the  whole  economy  of  what  we 
proudly  call  the  brute  creation,  is  admirable  in  every  circum- 
stance ;  and  vain  man,  though  adorned  with  the  additional 
gift  of  reason,  might  learn  from  the  perfection  of  instinct, 
how  to  regulate  the  follies,  and  how  to  temper  the  errors, 
which  this  second  gift  often  makes  him  commit.  This  is  a 
subject  on  which  I  have  often  bestowed  the  most  serious 
thoughts.  I  have  often  blushed  within  myself,  and  been 
greatly  astonished,  when  I  have  compared  the  unerring  path 
they  all  follow, — all  just,  all  proper,  all  wise,  up  to  the  nec- 

1  "  Letters,"  etc.,  40.  9  Ibid.  26-27. 

VOL.  n.— 23 


-'4  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

essary  degree  of  perfection — with  the  coarse,  the  imperfect, 
systems  of  men." ' 

VII. 


This  note  of  peace  holds  undisturbed  through  the  first 
half  of  the  book,  and  more.  Not  until,  in  the  latter  half  of 
it,  the  author  comes  to  describe  slavery  in  the  far-south,* 
likewise  the  harsh  relations  between  the  colonists  and  the 
Indians,'  finally  the  outbreak  of  the  tempest  of  civil  war, 
does  his  book  give  out  its  second  note — the  note  of  pain. 
His  observations  upon  slavery  are  penetrating,  and  while 
never  censorious,  are  yet  pitiless  in  their  justice  and  their 
moral  purity.  Moreover,  the  barbarism — perhaps,  the  nec- 
essary barbarism — of  its  penal  methods,  is  set  forth  by  him 
in  a  single  picture,  that  of  the  caged  negro ;  a  picture,  which 
has  genuine  literary  power — quietness  of  stroke,  absolute 
sureness,  vividness,  and  pathos,  and  a  self-enforcing  logic 
which  no  dialectics  can  refute  or  escape.  "  I  was  not  long 
since  invited  to  dine  with  a  planter  who  lived  three  miles 

from ,     ...     In  order  to  avoid  the  heat  of  the  sun, 

I  resolved  to  go  on  foot,  sheltered  in  a  small  path  leading 
through  a  pleasant  wood.  I  was  leisurely  travelling  along, 
attentively  examining  some  peculiar  plants  which  I  had  col- 
lected, when  all  at  once  I  felt  the  air  strongly  agitated, 
though  the  day  was  perfectly  calm  and  sultry.  I  immedi- 
ately cast  my  eyes  toward  the  cleared  ground,  from  which  I 
was  but  a  small  distance,  in  order  to  see  whether  it  was  not 
occasioned  by  a  sudden  shower  ;  when  at  that  instant  a 
sound,  resembling  a  deep  rough  voice,  uttered,  as  I  thought, 
a  few  inarticulate  monosyllables.  Alarmed  and  surprised,  I 
precipitately  looked  all  around,  when  I  perceived,  at  about 
six  rods  distance,  something  resembling  a  cage,  suspended 
to  the  limbs  of  a  tree,  all  the  branches  of  which  appeared 
covered  with  large  birds  of  prey,  fluttering  about  and  anx- 

"  Letters,"  etc.,  38-39.  *  See,  for  example,  pages  219-224. 

1  As  in  pages  272-275. 


CREVECCEUR.  355 

iously  endeavoring  to  perch  on  the  cage.  Actuated  by  an 
involuntary  motion  of  my  hands,  more  than  by  any  design 
of  my  mind,  I  fired  at  them  :  they  all  flew  to  a  short  distance, 
with  a  most  hideous  noise,  when,  horrid  to  think  and  pain- 
ful to  repeat,  I  perceived  a  negro  suspended  in  the  cage,  and 
left  there  to  expire !  I  shudder  when  I  recollect  that  the 
birds  had  already  picked  out  his  eyes ;  his  cheek  bones  were 
bare ;  his  arms  had  been  attacked  in  several  places ;  and  his 
body  seemed  covered  with  a  multitude  of  wounds.  From 
the  edges  of  the  hollow  sockets,  and  from  the  lacerations 
with  which  he  was  disfigured,  the  blood  slowly  dropped  and 
tinged  the  ground  beneath.  No  sooner  were  the  birds 
flown,  than  swarms  of  insects  covered  the  whole  body  of  this 
unfortunate  wretch,  eager  to  feed  on  his  mangled  flesh  and 
to  drink  his  blood.  I  found  myself  suddenly  arrested  by 
the  power  of  affright  and  terror ;  my  nerves  were  convulsed ; 
I  trembled,  I  stood  motionless,  involuntarily  contemplating 
the  fate  of  this  negro  in  all  its  dismal  latitude.  The  living 
spectre,  though  deprived  of  his  eyes,  could  still  distinctly 
hear,  and  in  his  uncouth  dialect  begged  me  to  give  him 
some  water  to  allay  his  thirst.  Humanity  herself  would 
have  recoiled  back  with  horror;  she  would  have  balanced 
whether  to  lessen  such  reliefless  distress,  or  mercifully  with 
one  blow  to  end  this  dreadful  scene  of  agonizing  torture. 
Had  I  had  a  ball  in  my  gun,  I  certainly  should  have  des- 
patched him  ;  but,  finding  myself  unable  to  perform  so  kind 
an  office,  I  sought,  though  trembling,  to  relieve  him  as  well 
as  I  could.  A  shell  ready  fixed  to  a  pole,  which  had  been 
used  by  some  negroes,  presented  itself  to  me ;  I  filled  it  with 
water,  and  with  trembling  hands  I  guided  it  to  the  quiver- 
ing lips  of  the  wretched  sufferer.  Urged  by  the  irresistible 
power  of  thirst,  he  endeavored  to  meet  it,  as  he  instinctively 
guessed  its  approach  by  the  noise  it  made  in  passing  through 
the  bars  of  the  cage.  *  Tank&  you,  whitfe  man;  tanke  you; 
put£  some  poison  and  give  me.'  '  How  long  have  you  been 
hanging  there  ?  ' — I  asked  him.  '  Two  days,  and  me  no  die; 
the  birds,  the  birds,  aaah  me!  '  Oppressed  with  the  reflec- 


356  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

tions  which  this  shocking  spectacle  afforded  me,  I  mustered 
strength  enough  to  walk  away,  and  soon  reached  the  house 
where  I  intended  to  dine.  There  I  heard  that  the  reason  for 
this  slave's  being  thus  punished,  was  on  account  of  his  hav- 
ing killed  the  overseer  of  the  plantation.  They  told  me  that 
the  laws  of  self-preservation  rendered  such  executions  nec- 
essary, and  supported  the  doctrine  with  the  arguments  gen- 
erally made  use  of  to  justify  the  practice,  with  the  repetition 
of  which  I  will  not  trouble  you  at  present." 

In  the  final  chapter  of  the  book,  entitled  "  Distresses  of 
a  Frontier  Man,"  the  note  of  pain,  which  has  begun  to  be 
heard  still  earlier,  rises  into  something  like  a  wail ;  for,  the 
twofold  horrors,  first  of  impending  attacks  by  Indians,  and, 
secondly,  of  civil  war  between  white  men,  have  at  last 
reached  the  once  happy  home  of  this  bucolic  philosopher 
and  quietist.  "  The  hour  is  come  at  last*  that  I  must  fly 
from  my  house  and  abandon  my  farm.  But  what  course 
shall  I  steer,  enclosed  as  I  am  ?  .  Whichever  way  I 

look,  nothing  but  the  most  frightful  precipices  present  them- 
selves to  my  view,  in  which  hundreds  of  my  friends  and 
acquaintances  have  already  perished.  Of  all  animals  that 
live  on  the  surface  of  .this  planet,  what  is  man  when  no 
longer  connected  with  society,  or  when  he  finds  himself  sur- 
rounded by  a  convulsed  and  a  half-dissolved  one!  " *  "I 
am  a  lover  of  peace, — what  must  I  do  ?  .  .  .  I  am  con- 
scious that  I  was  happy  before  this  unfortunate  Revolution. 
I  feel  that  I  am  no  longer  so ;  therefore  I  regret  the  change. 
.  .  .  If  I  attach  myself  to  the  mother-country,  which  is 
three  thousand  miles  from  me,  I  become  what  is  called  an 
enemy  to  my  own  region ;  if  I  follow  the  rest  of  my  country- 
men, I  become  opposed  to  our  ancient  masters.  Both 
extremes  appear  equally  dangerous  to  a  person  of  so  little 
weight  and  consequence  as  I  am,  whose  energy  and  example 
are  of  no  avail.  As  to  the  argument,  on  which  the  dispute 
is  founded,  I  know  but  little  about  it.  Much  has  been  said 
and  written  on  both  sides,  but  who  has  a  judgment  capacious 

1  "  Letters,"  etc.,  232-235.  2  Ibid.  270-271. 


CREVEC(EUR.  357 

and  clear  enough  to   decide  ?     .  Books  tell  me  so 

much,  that  they  inform  me  of  nothing.  .  .  .  Alas,  how 
should  I  unravel  an  argument  in  which  reason  herself  has 
given  way  to  brutality  and  bloodshed  ?  What  then  must  I 
do  ?  I  ask  the  wisest  lawyers,  the  ablest  casuists,  the 
warmest  patriots,  for  I  mean  honestly.  Great  Source  of 
Wisdom!  inspire  me  with  light  sufficient  to  guide  my  be- 
nighted steps  out  of  this  intricate  maze !  Shall  I  discard  all 
my  ancient  principles,  shall  I  renounce  that  name,  that 
nation,  which  I  held  once  so  respectable  ?  .  .  .  On  the 
other  hand,  shall  I  arm  myself  against  that  country  where  I 
first  drew  breath,  against  the  play-mates  of  my  youth,  my 
bosom-friends,  my  acquaintances  ?  .  Must  I  be 

called  a  parricide,  a  traitor,  a  villain ;  lose  the  esteem  of  all 
those  whom  I  love,  to  preserve  my  own ;  be  shunned  like  a 
rattle-snake,  or  be  pointed  at  like  a  bear  ?  "  ' 

By  its  inclusion  of  these  sombre  and  agonizing  aspects  of 
life  in  America,  the  book  gains,  as  is  most  obvious,  both  in 
authenticity  and  in  literary  strength.  Nevertheless,  with 
even  these  tremendous  abatements  from  the  general  scene 
of  human  felicity  presented  by  the  New  World,  the  reader 
is  tempted  to  infer  that,  after  all,  felicity  is  the  permanent 
fact  there,  and  that  suffering  is  but  a  temporary  accident. 
It  is  not  hard  to  understand  why,  at  such  a  time,  a  book 
like  this  should  soon  have  made  its  way  into  the  languages 
of  Europe,  particularly  those  of  France,*  Germany,*  and 
Holland  ; 4  -nor  why  it  should  have  fascinated  multitudes  of 

1  "  Letters."  etc.,  276-278. 

2 "  Lettres  d'un  cultivateur  Americain,  ecrites  a  W.  S.  6cuyer,  Depuis 
1'annee  1770,  jusqu'  a  1781.  Traduites  de  L'Anglois  par  .  .  ."  Paris  :  1784. 
This  translation  was  made  by  Crevecceur  himself,  who  had  been  so  long  unac- 
customed to  French  that  his  work  abounds  in  Anglicisms.  In  1787,  there 
appeared  in  Paris  a  greatly  enlarged  edition,  with  map,  plates,  etc. 

3  "  Briefe  eines  Amerikanischen  Landmanns  .    .   .   Aus  dem  Englischen  ins 
Franzosische  von  .  .  .  und  jetzt  ausdem  FranzOsischen  iibersetst  und  mit  einigen 
Anmerkungen  begleitet,  von  Johann  August  Ephraim  Gotze."     Drei  Bander. 
Leipzig  :   1788. 

4  "  Brieven  van  eenen  Amerikaenschen  Landman  van  Carlisle  in  Pennsilvanien, 
geschteven  aen  eenen  zijner  vrienden  in  Engeland.     Uit  het  Engelsch."     Ley- 


358  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION, 

readers  in  all  parts  of  the  continent,  even  beguiling  many 
of  them — too  many  of  them,  perhaps— to  try  their  fortunes 
in  that  blithe  and  hospitable  portion  of  the  planet  where 
the  struggle  for  existence  seemed  almost  a  thing  unknown. 
In  England,  likewise,  the  book  won  for  itself,  as  was  natural, 
a  wide  and  a  gracious  consideration  ;  its  praises  lasted  among 
English  men  of  letters  as  long,  at  least,  as  until  the  time  of 
Hazlitt  and  Charles  Lamb;  while  its  idealized  treatment  of 
rural  life  in  America  wrought  quite  traceable  effects  upon 
the  imaginations  of  Campbell,  Byron,  Southey,  Coleridge, 
and  furnished  not  a  few  materials  for  such  captivating  and 
airy  schemes  of  literary  colonization  in  America  as  that  of 
"  Pantisocracy. "  ' 

den  :  1784.  Several  titles  in  French,  German,  and  Dutch  are  given  by  Sabin, 
"Dictionary,"  etc.,  v.  76-77. 

1  In  1801  was  published  in  Paris,  in  three  volumes,  a  copious  work  entitled 
"  Voyage  Dans  La  Haute  Pensylvanie  et  Dans  1'Etat  de  New  York,  par  un 
Membre  adoptif  de  la  Nation  Oneida.  Traduit  et  public  par  1'auteur  des 
Lettres  de  'un  Cultivateur  Americain."  This  assumed  relation  to  the  book  was 
probably  only  a  characteristic  literary  device  of  Crevecoeur's  for  veiling  his 
actual  authorship  of  it. 


CHAPTER   XXXVIII. 

FRANKLIN  IN  THE  LITERATURE  OF  THE   REVOLUTION. 

I. — Franklin's  absence  from  America  during  the  larger  part  of  the  Revolution 
— His  vast  influence  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic — Political  uses  of  his 
fame  as  an  electrician. 

II. — His  renown  prior  to  1764 — What  he  had  then  done  as  a  writer — Develop- 
ment of  his  literary  powers  down  to  old  age — Quality  of  his  humor. 

III. — Classification  of  his  writings  during  the  period  of  the  Revolution — Ac- 
count of  those  apart  from  that  controversy — His  proposal  to  Madame 
Helvetius. 

IV. — His  urbane  and  humorous  method  in  controversy — His  attitude  toward 
that  of  the  Revolution — General  view  of  his  writings  on  the  subject. 

V. — His  chief  contributions  to  the  Revolutionary  dispute — His  "  Examination  " 
— "Causes  of  American  discontents  " — "  On  the  Rise  and  Progress  of  the 
Differences  between  Great  Britain  and  her  American  Colonies" — "Dia- 
logue between  Britain,  France,  Spain,  Holland,  Saxony,  and  America  " — 
"  A  Catechism  relative  to  the  English  Debt  " — His  emblematic  picture  of 
Britannia  dismembered. 

VI. — His  special  use  of  satire  in  the  form  of  ludicrous  analogue — Burlesque  of 
extravagant  stories  told  in  England  respecting  the  colonies — "  Rules  for 
Reducing  a  Great  Empire  to  a  Small  One  " — "  An  Edict  by  the  King  of 
Prussia  " — Great  effects  of  the  latter  both  in  England  and  in  America — His 
satire  on  the  Anglo-German  traffic  in  troops  for  America. 

VII. — The  history  of  the  Revolution  as  composed  of  Franklin's  passing  com- 
ments on  its  successive  stages — A  continuous  reading  of  all  his  Revolution- 
ary writings,  needful  for  an  adequate  impression  of  their  worth  or  charm. 

I. 

ONE  peculiarity  attaching  to  Franklin's  part  in  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution  arises  from  the  fact  that  nearly  the  whole  of 
that  Revolution  took  place  in  his  absence.  In  November, 
1764,  he  went  to  England  as  the  agent  of  Pennsylvania, 
charged  with  the  duty  of  protesting  against  the  passage  of 
the  Stamp  Act ;  and  in  England  he  remained  for  nearly 

359 


360  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

eleven  years.  Returning  to  America  in  May,  1775,  he  re- 
mained here  only  until  October,  1776,  when,  "  at  the  age 
of  seventy-two  or  seventy-four,  and  at  the  risk  of  his  head," 
as  Horace  Walpole  wrote,  he  "  bravely  embarked  on  board 
an  American  frigate  "  '  as  commissioner  to  the  court  of 
France.  In  France  he  then  remained  until  September, 
1785.  Conning  back  to  America  in  that  year,  he  died  in 
1790.  "  Thus,  during  the  twenty  years  which  may  be  set 
apart  as  the  period  of  the  American  Revolution,  Franklin 
himself  was  in  America  only  two  years  and  a  half. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  doubtful  if  any  other  brain  than  his 
had  more  to  do  with  the  shaping  of  the  thought  of  the 
American  Revolution,  or  any  other  hand  a  more  potent 
pressure  in  the  ordering  of  its  event.  Though  separated 
from  his  country  by  the  breadth  of  the  Atlantic,  never  was 
there  a  moment  during  all  those  years  when  his  country  was 
not  conscious  of  his  inseparable  and  indispensable  connection 
with  the  development  of  its  destiny.  Indeed,  in  that  very 
spectacle  of  his  personal  absence  from  the  scene  of  great 
transactions  over  which  he  was  believed  to  wield  a  tre- 
mendous control,  was  something  to  give  an  added  stimulus 
to  the  imaginations  of  men,  and  to  enhance  both  in  America 
and  in  Europe  the  vast  influence  which  he  had  in  both. 
From  his  modest  lodgings  in  London  during  the  first  eleven 
years  of  the  Revolution,  from  his  quiet  hotel  in  a  suburb  of 
Paris  during  the  last  eight  years  of  it,  he  seemed  to  be  the 
arch-magician,  who,  by  his  mastery  of  the  secrets  of  nature, 
knew  how  to  send  abroad  over  land  and  sea  invisible  forces 
to  sway  mankind  to  his  will.  Under  such  circumstances,  it 
is  easy  to  perceive  how  his  renown  as  an  electrician  threw 
a  weird  and  an  exaggerating  light  upon  his  prestige  as  a 
statesman  and  a  revolutionist.  "  Our  colonies  might  be 
well  enough,"  was  a  saying  among  Englishmen  in  1774, 
"  were  it  not  for  Dr.  Franklin,  who  has,  with  a  brand 

'Cited  in  his  "  Benjamin  Franklin,"  229,  by  J.  T.  Morse,  Jr.  The  reader 
will  notice  that  Franklin's  age  is  slightly  overstated  by  Walpole. 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.  361 

lighted  from  the  clouds,  set  fire  to  all  America."  *  In  1775, 
Samuel  Johnson  depicted  Franklin  as  a  "  master  of  mis- 
chief "  who  had  taught  his  countrymen  "  how  to  put  in 
motion  the  engine  of  political  electricity,  .  .  .  and  to 
give  the  great  stroke  by  the  name  of  Boston.""  Among 
the  innumerable  prints  of  Franklin  scattered  through  France, 
were  many  that  represented  him  as  an  old  philosopher 
serenely  seated  in  his  chair,  with  flashes  of  lightning  playing 
in  the  sky  above  his  head,  while  beneath  the  portrait  was 
some  inscription  attributing  to  him  the  power  to  use  that 
lightning  as  his  ally  in  the  liberation  of  America  and  of 
mankind :  as,  under  the  drawing  by  Carmontelle, — 

"  On  1'a  vu  de'sarmer  les  Tirans  et  les  Dieux  :  "  * 
or,  under  the  portrait  by  Cochin, — 

"C'est  1'honneur  et  1'appui  du  nouvel  hemisphere ; 
Les  flots  de  1'Ocean  s'abaissent  a  sa  voix  ; 
II  reprime  ou  dirige  a  son  gre  le  tonnerre  : 
Qui  desarme  les  dieux,  peut-il  craindre  les  rois  ?"* 

It  was  for  a  similar  use  that  Turgot  produced  his  incompar- 
able line 

"  Eripuit  coelo  fulmen,  septrumque  tyrannis."  ' 

With  the  grotesque  humor  even  then  characteristic  of  much 
popular  writing  in  America,  one  of  our  own  newspapers  sent 
forth,  in  1777,  the  droll  announcement,  that  Dr.  Franklin 

1  This  is  stated  by  Matthew  Robinson,  afterward  Lord  Rokeby,  in  his  pam- 
phlet entitled  "  Considerations  on  the  Measures     .     .     .     with  respect  to  the 
British  Colonies  in  North  America,"  6l. 

2  "  Taxation  no  Tyranny,"  68. 

3  Hale,  "  Franklin  in  France,"  Part  i.  84-85. 

4  "  The  Works  of  Charles  Sumner,"  viii.  13. 

5  "  CEuvres  de  M.  Turgot,"  ix.  140.     A  most  interesting  discussion  of  the 
origin  and  influence  of  Turgot's  line,  is  given  in  "  The  Works  of  Charles  Sum- 
ner," viii.    1-38.     For  its  bearing  on  our  relations  with   France  during  the 
American  Civil  War,  Sumner's  paper  was  originally  published  in  November, 
1863,  in  "  The  Atlantic  Monthly,"  xii.  648-662. 


362  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

was  about  "  to  produce  an  electrical  machine  of  such  won- 
derful force  that,  instead  of  giving  a  slight  stroke  to  the 
elbows  of  fifty  or  a  hundred  thousand  men  who  are  joined 
hand  in  hand,  it  will  give  a  violent  shock  even  to  nature 
herself,  so  as  to  disunite  kingdoms,  join  islands  to  con- 
tinents, and  render  men  of  the  same  nation  strangers  and 
enemies  to  each  other;  and  that,  by  a  certain  chemical  prep- 
aration from  oil,  he  will  be  able  to  smooth  the  waves  of  the 
sea  in  one  part  of  the  globe,  and  raise  tempests  and  whirl- 
winds in  another,  so  as  to  be  universally  acknowledged  for 
the  greatest  physician,  politician,  mathematician,  and  phi- 
losopher, this  day  living. ' '  ' 

II. 

At  the  time  of  his  voyage  to  England  in  1764 — that  being 
his  third  voyage  thither — he  was  already  the  most  celebrated 
person  that  his  country  had  then  produced, — a  fact  suffi- 
ciently attested  by  Hume's  salutation  of  him  as  "  the  first 
philosopher  and  indeed  the  first  great  man  of  letters  "  for 
whom  Europe  was  beholden  to  America.11  He  was  then 
fifty-eight  years  of  age,  and  independent  in  his  private  cir- 
cumstances. He  had  known  a  long  and  varied  experience 
in  commercial  life,  in  politics,  in  legislative  and  administra- 
tive work.  He  had  been  a  successful  journalist,  under  the 
somewhat  petty  and  clumsy  conditions  of  journalism  in 
those  days.  He  was  the  projector  of  many  mechanical 

"  The  New  Jersey  Gazette,"  for  December  31,  1777,  given  in  Frank  Moore, 
"  Diary  of  the  American  Revolution,"  i.  504. 

1  The  Complete  Works  of  Benjamin  Franklin,"  Bigelow  ed.,  iii.  190.   In  the 
present  chapter,  my  references  to  Franklin's  writings  will  be  mostly  to  the  col- 
lection of  them  just  mentioned,  but  inaccurately  entitled  "  Complete."     Even 
with  this  collection  before  him,  every  scholar  will  need  to  make  use  of  the 
ier  collection  by  Jared  Sparks.     Since  the  death  of  Sparks,  there  has  been  a 
sncy  among  us  to  forget  or  to  undervalue  his  important  and  indeed  almost 
ulean  labors  as  a  pioneer  in  American  historical  scholarship.     Happily  this 
ency,  which  was  too  ill-founded  to  have  lasted  long,  has  received  a  whole- 
some check  through  the  publication,  in  1893,  of  Professor  Herbert  B.  Adams's 
careful  work  on  »  The  Life  and  Writings  of  Jared  Sparks." 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.  363 

and  institutional  devices  for  adding  to  the  welfare  and  happi- 
ness of  the  human  race.  He  was  distinguished  beyond  all 
other  men  of  his  time  in  the  one  branch  of  science  to  which 
the  men  of  his  time  were  looking  with  the  greatest  interest. 
Finally,  he  was  the  author  of  a  multitude  of  writings,  cover- 
ing a  wide  range  of  subjects,  some  of  which  had  already 
made  their  way  wherever  the  English  language  was  known, 
and  were  read  and  relished  for  their  shrewdness,  their  wit, 
their  practical  helpfulness,  their  alliance  of  prudence  with 
generosity  and  good  humor,  their  pure,  pithy,  and  sparkling 
style. 

It  is  a  trait  of  Franklin  as  a  man  of  letters,  that  while  in 
his  early  life  he  took  infinite  pains  to  become  a  good  writer, 
he  did  so,  apparently,  not  from  mere  literary  ambition,  but 
chiefly  as  a  means  to  some  immediate  practical  end — partic- 
ularly that  of  getting  on  in  the  world.1  Accordingly,  nearly 
everything  he  wrote  was  sent  forth  alone,  and  without  his 
name,  and  was  then  allowed  to  shift  for  itself  without  any 
further  pains  or  care  on  his  part.  This  seeming  freedom 
from  solicitude  as  to  the  whereabouts  or  the  well-being  of 
his  literary  children,  may  be  noted  in  the  reply  he  made, 
during  his  second  residence  in  England,  to  a  request  from 
Lord  Kames  for  copies  of  all  his  published  writings: — "  I 
had  daily  expectations  of  procuring  some  of  them  from  a 
friend  to  whom  I  formerly  sent  them  when  I  was  in  Amer- 
ica, and  postponed  writing  to  you,  till  I  should  obtain  them  ; 
but  at  length  he  tells  me  he  cannot  find  them.  Very  mor- 
tifying this  to  an  author — that  his  works  should  so  soon  be 
lost!  So  I  can  only  send  you  my  '  Observations  on  the 
Peopling  of  Countries,'  which  happens  to  have  been  re- 
printed here;  '  The  Description  of  the  Pennsylvania  Fire- 
place,' a  machine  of  my  contriving  ;  and  some  little 
sketches  that  have  been  printed  in  the  '  Grand  Magazine,' 
which  I  should  hardly  own,  did  I  not  know  that  your 
friendly  partiality  would  make  them  seem  at  least  toler- 
able."2 

1  For  example,  "  Franklin's  Works,"  Higelow  ed.,  i.  46,  47-49,  50-51,  146. 
1  "  Franklin's  Works,"  Bigelow  ed.,  iii.  38-30. 


364  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

The  disposition,  as  shewn  in  these  sentences,  humorously 
to  underrate  his  own  performances  and  by  all  means  to 
avoid  every  sort  of  self-glorification,  does  not  leave  him  at 
any  time;  and  whoever,  in  1764,  desired  to  know  what 
Franklin  had  then  done  in  letters,  had  still  to  get  other  tes- 
timony than  Franklin's.  Already,  so  early  as  in  1751,  and 
without  his  knowledge,  had  been  published  in  London  a 
collection  of  his  scientific  writings,  entitled  "  Experiments 
in  Electricity  made  at  Philadelphia" — a  little  book  which 
was  made  larger  in  1752,  and  again  larger  in  1754,  and  was 
also  many  times  republished  on  the  continent  in  Latin, 
French,  German,  and  Italian.  His  greatest  prolificacy, 
however,  had  been  in  writings  of  a  more  general  kind,  deal- 
ing shrewdly  and  often  playfully  with  traits  of  human  nature, 
with  the  vices  and  foibles  of  society,  with  ethical  and 
religious  subjects,  with  all  aspects  of  current  politics  in 
America  as  touching  finance,  the  treatment  of  Indians,  the 
treatment  of  negroes,  military  preparations,  forms  of  gov- 
ernment both  colonial  and  intercolonial,  and  the  relations 
of  the  colonies  to  England.  Besides  innumerable  juvenile 
experiments  in  prose  and  verse, — ballads,  lampoons,  bur- 
lesques, paragraphs,  disquisitions,  epigrams,  emblems,  prov- 
erbs,— the  most  of  which,  happily,  are  lost  beyond  recovery, 
— he  had  published  the  essays  of  "  The  Busy -Body  "  ;  sev- 
eral dialogues  in  the  manner  of  Xenophon,  such  as  "  Public 
Men,"  and  "  Concerning  Virtue  and  Pleasure  "  ;  the  satiri- 
cal letters  of  "  Celia  Single,"  ''Anthony  Afterwit,"  and 
"  Alice  Adder-tongue";  "  Articles  of  Belief  and  Acts  of 
Religion";  "Self-Denial  not  the  Essence  of  Virtue"; 
"On  True  Happiness";  "The  Waste  of  Life";  "A 
Modest  Inquiry  into  the  Nature  of  a  Paper  Currency,"; 
"On  Government";  "The  Importance  of  Gaining  and 
Preserving  the  Friendship  of  the  Indians  "  ;  "  Observations 
concerning  the  Increase  of  Mankind  and  the  Peopling  of 
Countries";  "  Plain  Truth,  or,  Serious  Considerations  on 
the  Present  State  of  the  City  of  Philadelphia  and  the  Pro- 
vince of  Pennsylvania  "  ;  "  Plan  of  Union  for  the  Colonies  "  ; 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.  365 

and  "  The  Interest  of  Great  Britain  Considered  with  regard 
to  her  Colonies  and  the  Acquisition  of  Canada  and  Guada- 
loupe. "  Finally,  no  other  class  of  his  writings  down  to  that 
time  had  appealed  to  so  numerous  and  so  eager  a  multitude 
of  readers,  as  those  in  which  he  undertook  to  teach  men  the 
art  of  worldly  prosperity,  as  "  Necessary  Hints  to  those 
that  would  be  Rich,"  and  "  The  Way  to  Wealth  as  Clearly 
Shown  in  the  Preface  of  an  Old  Almanac  entitled  '  Poor 
Richard  Improved,'  "  the  latter  containing  the  humorous 
and  needle-witted  speech  of  Father  Abraham,  which,  as  a 
recent  biographer  of  Franklin  has  truly  said,  "  is  the  most 
famous  piece  of  literature  the  colonies  produced." 

Undoubtedly,  his  best  work  in  letters  was  done  after  the 
year  1764,  and  thenceforward  down  to  the  very  year  of  his 
death ;  for,  to  a  degree  not  only  unusual  but  almost  without 
parallel  in  literary  history,  his  mind  grew  more  and  more 
vivacious  with  his  advancing  years,  his  heart  more  genial, 
his  inventiveness  more  sprightly,  his  humor  more  gay,  his 
style  brighter,  keener,  more  deft,  more  delightful.  Yet  even 
in  these  earlier  writings  of  his,  Franklin  is  always  Franklin ; 
and  their  vast  popularity  and  effectiveness  were  due  to  qual- 
ities essentially  the  same  as  those  which  marked  his  later 
and  still  better  work : — the  pure  English  of  the  best  writers 
and  of  the  best  talkers,  simplicity,  brevity,  lightness  of 
touch,  strength  without  effort,  the  absence  of  declamation 
and  of  rhetorical  parade,  melody,  point,  extraordinary  in- 
sight into  human  nature  together  with  a  frank  identification 
of  himself  with  its  frailties,  a  singular  desire  and  gift  for 
helping  other  people  to  solve  their  most  troublesome  prob- 
lems, and,  finally,  pervading  all,  and  giving  irresistible 
charm  to  all,  his  humor, — a  humor  which  perfectly  answers 

'John  Bach  McMaster,  "Benjamin  Franklin  as  a  Man  of  Letters,"  129; 
wherein  is  to  be  found,  also,  Franklin's  account  of  a  witch-trial  at  Mount 
Holly, — a  specimen  of  his  wit  not  included  in  any  of  Franklin's  collected 
writings.  Ibid.  71-74.  The  most  of  the  productions  mentioned  by  me  in  the 
text,  have  been  reprinted  within  the  first  three  volumes  of  the  Bigelow  edition 
of  the  Works  of  Franklin. 


366  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

to  Thackeray's  fine  definition  of  it  as  something  made  up  of 
"  wit  and  love,"  the  best  humor  being  "  that  which  contains 
most  humanity,  that  which  is  flavored  throughout  with  ten- 
derness and  kindness."  '  Writing  in  1758  to  his  sister  Jane, 
whom  he  dearly  loved,  and  who  was  very  devout  according  to 
the  severe  Calvinistic  manner  of  the  period,  Franklin  quotes 
an  acrostic  wherein  religion  is  likened  to  a  building,  of  which 
faith,  hope,  and  charity  are  the  three  stories.  ' '  Faith, ' '  says 
he,  in  commenting  upon  this  bit  of  imagery,  "  is  then  the 
ground  floor,  hope  is  up  one  pair  of  stairs.  My  dear  be- 
loved Jenny,  don't  delight  so  much  to  dwell  in  those  lower 
rooms,  but  get  as  fast  as  you  can  into  the  garret,  for  in 
truth  the  best  room  in  the  house  is  charity.  For  my  part, 
I  wish  the  house  was  turned  upside  down — it  is  so  difficult, 
when  one  is  fat,  to  go  up  stairs;  and  not  only  so,  but  I  im- 
agine hope  and  faith  may  be  more  firmly  built  upon  charity, 
than  charity  upon  faith  and  hope."  a 

Yet  no  one  could  read  far  in  Franklin  and  conclude  that 
his  charity  was  of  the  soft  and  eyeless  sort.  To  a  writer  who 
enquired  by  what  means  he  could  find  out  the  faults  of  the 
girl  whom  he  was  courting,  and  especially  whether  she  had 
the  virtues  she  seemed  to  have,  Franklin  replied, — "  Com- 
mend her  among  her  female  acquaintance."  "  As  a  maker 
of  epigrams,  the  man  who  wrote,  "  The  noblest  question  in 
the  world  is,  what  good  may  I  do  in  it,"  and  "  Keep  your 
eyes  wide  open  before  marriage,  half  shut  afterwards,"  and 
"  Deny  thyself  for  self's  sake,"  and  "  He  is  no  clown  that 
drives  the  plow,  but  he  that  does  clownish  things,"  and 
He  that  can  have  patience,  can  have  what  he  will,"  also 
wrote,  "  Three  may  keep  a  secret,  if  two  of  them  are  dead," 
and  "  Sal  laughs  at  everything  you  say;  why  ?  because  she 
has  fine  teeth,"  and  "  God  heals— the  Doctor  takes  the 
fee,"  and  "  Who  has  deceived  thee  so  oft,  as  thyself  ? "  and 
'  Search  others  for  their  virtues,  thyself  for  thy  vices,"  and 

"  Miscellaneous  Essays,  Sketches,  and  Reviews,"  by  W.  M.  Thackeray,  319. 
The  Works  of  Franklin,  Sparks  ed.,  vii.  184. 
'  The  Works  of  Franklin,  Bigelow  ed.,  i.  318. 


BEX  JAM  IN  FR  AX  KLIN.  367 

*'  The  proof  of  gold  is  fire;  the  proof  of  a  woman,  gold; 
the  proof  of  a  man,  woman." 

III. 

For  the  period  of  the  Revolution,  the  writings  of  Franklin 
fall  naturally  into  two  principal  divisions — first,  those  con- 
nected with  the  Revolutionary  controversy,  and,  secondly, 
those  almost  entirely  apart  from  it. 

Among  the  latter,  of  course,  are  to  be  reckoned  his  nu- 
merous papers  on  scientific  discoveries  and  mechanical  inven- 
tions; a  considerable  number  of  his  personal  letters — these 
being,  perhaps,  the  wisest  and  wittiest  of  all  his  writings; 
many  short  sketches,  usually  playful  in  tone,  often  in  the 
form  of  apologues  or  parables;  finally,  the  first,  and  the 
best,  part  of  his  "Autobiography,"  which,  during  the  hun- 
dred years  succeeding  its  first  publication  in  1791,  has  prob- 
ably been  the  most  widely  read  book  of  its  class  in  any 
language,  and  which,  "  treated  as  a  piece  of  writing,  and 
judged  as  literature  .  .  .  must  be  pronounced,"  accord- 
ing to  a  recent  critic,  "  the  equal  of  Robinson  Crusoe,  one  of 
the  few  everlasting  books  in  the  English  language."  *  Here, 

1  These  and  other  examples  of  Franklin's  proverbial  philosophy  are  chiefly 
gathered  from  "Poor  Richard's  Almanac,"  and  with  many  others  are  to  be 
found  collected  in  Bigelow's  edition  of  his  Works,  i.  452-461  ;  in  James  Par- 
ton,  "  Life  and  Times  of  Benjamin  Franklin,"  i.  228-233.  For  the  sources  of 
many  of  Franklin's  proverbs,  the  reader  is  also  referred  to  my  "  History  of 
American  Literature  during  the  Colonial  Time,"  ii.  122. 

1  McMaster,  "  Benjamin  Franklin  as  a  Man  of  Letters,"  269.  All  editions  of 
the  "  Autobiography  "  prior  to  that  of  John  Bigelow,  Philadelphia,  1874,  are  in- 
complete and  corrupt  in  text.  Bigelow's  edition  is  from  the  original  manuscript, 
and,  being  supplemented  by  much  other  material  from  Franklin's  writings,  is  en- 
titled "  The  Life  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  Written  by  Himself  "  :  Three  volumes, 
Philadelphia,  1874.  For  the  first  time  in  any  collected  edition  of  Franklin's 
writings,  an  unmutilated  version  of  the  "  Autobiography  "  appeared  in  1887  in 
the  Hrst  volume  of  Bigelow's  edition  of  "  The  Complete  Works  of  Benjamin 
Franklin,"  wherein  the  editor  has  also  given  an  amusing  account  of  the  recovery 
by  him,  in  Paris  and  London  in  1866  and  1867,  of  the  original  manuscript. 
Many  curious  details  as  to  the  vicissitudes  through  which  this  manuscript  had 
gone,  from  the  time  it  left  the  hand  of  its  author,  are  given  by  Bigelow  in  the 


368  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

then,  as  a  product  of  Franklin's  general  literary  activity 
during  the  Revolutionary  period,  is  a  considerable  body  of 
literature  not  concerned  in  the  strifes  of  that  bitter  time, 
almost  faultless  in  form,  and  so  pervaded  by  sense,  gayety, 
and  kindness,  as  to  be  among  the  most  precious  and  most 
delightful  of  the  intellectual  treasures  of  mankind. 

Among  so  many  pieces  of  writing,  there  must  be  an  in- 
equality of  merit ;  and  perhaps  some  of  those  which  have 
been  most  frequently  quoted  and  most  loudly  praised,  are 
not  altogether  the  most  deserving  of  it,  such  as  "  The 
Whistle,"  '  and  "  An  Economical  Project,"  "  both  of  which 
bear  traces  of  a  conscious  effort  at  pleasantry,  and  of  pleas- 
antry, also,  which,  as  Lord  Jeffrey  said,  has  in  it  "  something 
childish."  "  On  the  other  hand,  the  delicious  trifle  entitled 
"  The  Ephemera:  An  Emblem  of  Human  Life,"  4  and  the 
"  Dialogue  between  Franklin  and  the  Gout,"  *  are  executed, 
as  Lord  Jeffrey  also  declared,  "  with  the  lightness  and  spirit 
of  genuine  French  compositions";  while  "A  Parable  of 
Persecution,"8  and  we  may  add,  "  A  Parable  of  Brotherly 
Love,"1  "  A  Tale  of  Poor  Jacques  Montr£sor,"  8  and  the 
latter  part  of  the  essay  on  "  The  Handsome  and  Deformed 
Leg,"  °  have  "  all  the  point  and  facility  of  the  fine  pleasant- 
ries of  Swift  and  Arbuthnot,  with  something  more  of  direct- 
ness and  apparent  sincerity."10  It  maybe  doubted,  also, 
whether  for  spontaneity,  grace,  and  pure  frolic,  all  inspired 

first  volume  of  his  "  Life  of  Benjamin  Franklin,"  where  it  forms  an  introductory 
paper  entitled  "  Historical  Sketch  of  the  Fortunes  and  Misfortunes  of  the  Au- 
tograph Manuscript  of  Franklin's  Memoirs  of  His  Own  Life." 

1  Works  of  Franklin,  Bigelow  ed.,  vi.  239-242. 

»  Ibid.  277-283. 

1  "  Edinburgh  Review,"  viii.  341. 

4  Works  of  Franklin,  Bigelow  ed.,  vi.  237-239. 

6  Ibid.  vii.  140-149. 

4  Ibid.  v.  372-374- 

'  Ibid.  376-378. 

8  Ibid.  v.  261. 

9  Ibid.  vi.  253-255. 

These  words  of  Lord  Jeffrey  were  applied  only  to  the  first  of  the  pieces 
Jd  in  the  text.     I  have  used  them  as  justly  descriptive  of  the  others  also. 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.  369 

and  illuminated  by  that  sort  of  gallantry  which  can  best  be 
described  as  Parisian,  any  of  his  so-called  <(  Bagatelles  "  is 
now  more  charming  than  the  love-challenge  of  this  sep- 
tuagenarian widower  addressed  to  the  brilliant  and  not 
immature  Madame  Helvetius,  widow  of  the  famous  phil- 
osopher whose  name  she  was  so  proud  to  bear: — "  Mor- 
tified at  the  barbarous  resolution  pronounced  by  you  so 
positively  yesterday  evening,  that  you  would  remain  single 
the  rest  of  your  life  as  a  compliment  to  the  memory  of 
your  husband,  I  retired  to  my  chamber.  Throwing  my- 
self upon  my  bed,  I  dreamt  that  I  was  dead,  and  was  trans- 
ported to  the  Elysian  Fields.  I  was  asked  whether  I  wished 
to  see  any  persons  in  particular;  to  which  I  replied  that  I 
wished  to  see  the  philosophers.  '  There  are  two  who  live 
here  at  hand  in  this  garden ;  they  are  good  neighbors,  and 
very  friendly  towards  one  another. ' — '  Who  are  they  ? ' — 
'  Socrates  and  Helvetius.' — '  I  esteem  them  both  highly; 
let  me  see  Helvetius  first,  because  I  understand  a  little 
French,  but  not  a  word  of  Greek.'  I  was  conducted  to 
him  ;  he  received  me  with  much  courtesy,  having  known  me, 
he  said,  by  character,  some  time  past.  He  asked  me  a 
thousand  questions  relative  to  the  war,  the  present  state  of 
religion,  of  liberty,  of  the  government  in  France.  '  You  do 
not  inquire,  then,'  I  said,  '  after  your  dear  friend  Madame 
Helvetius;  yet  she  loves  you  extremely.  I  was  in  her  com- 
pany not  more  than  an  hour  ago.'  '  Ah,'  said  he,  '  you 
make  me  recur  to  my  past  happiness,  which  ought  to  be 
forgotten  in  order  to  be  happy  here.  For  many  years  I 
could  think  of  nothing  but  her,  though  at  length  I  am  con- 
soled. I  have  taken  another  wife,  the  most  like  her  that  I 
could  find;  she  is  not  indeed  altogether  so  handsome,  but 
she  has  a  great  fund  of  wit  and  good  sense,  and  her  whole 
study  is  to  please  me.  She  is  at  this  moment  gone  to  fetch 
the  best  nectar  and  ambrosia  to  regale  me;  stay  awhile, 
and  you  will  see  her.'  '  I  perceive,'  said  I,  '  that  your 
former  friend  is  more  faithful  to  you  than  you  are  to  her; 
she  has  had  several  good  offers,  but  has  refused  them  all.  I 


370  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUT10X. 

will  confess  to  you  that  I  loved  her  extremely ;  but  she  was 
cruel  to  me,  and  rejected  me  peremptorily  for  your  sake.' 
4  I  pity  you,  sincerely,'  said  he,  '  for  she  is  an  excellent 
woman,  handsome  and  amiable.  But  do  not  the  Abb6  de 
la  R.  ...  and  the  Abb<§  M.  .  .  .  visit  her  ? ' 
'  Certainly  they  do;  not  one  of  your  friends  has  dropped 
her  acquaintance.'  '  If  you  had  gained  the  Abbe  M. 
.  .  .  with  a  bribe  of  good  coffee  and  cream,  perhaps 
you  would  have  succeeded ;  for  he  is  as  deep  a  reasoner  as 
Duns  Scotus  or  St.  Thomas;  he  arranges  and  methodizes 
his  arguments  in  such  a  manner  that  they  are  almost  irresis- 
tible. Or  if  by  a  fine  edition  of  some  old  classic  you  had 
gained  the  Abbe"  de  la  R.  .  .  .  to  speak  against  you, 
that  would  have  been  still  better,  as  I  always  observed  that 
when  he  recommended  anything  to  her,  she  had  a  great  in- 
clination to  do  directly  the  contrary.'  As  he  finished  these 
words  the  new  Madame  Helvetius  entered  with  the  nectar, 
and  I  recognized  her  immediately  as  my  former  American 
friend,  Mrs.  Franklin!  I  reclaimed  her,  but  she  answered 
me  coldly :  '  I  was  a  good  wife  to  you  for  forty-nine  years 
and  four  months,  nearly  half  a  century ;  let  that  content 
you.  I  have  formed  a  new  connection  here,  which  will  last 
to  eternity.' — Indignant  at  this  refusal  of  my  Eurydice,  I 
immediately  resolved  to  quit  those  ungrateful  shades,  and 
return  to  this  good  world  again,  to  behold  the  sun,  and 
you!  Here  I  am;  let  us  avenge  ourselves!  "  ' 

IV. 

Of  course,  of  chief  importance  for  the  purpose  of  our 
present  studies,  are  those  writings  of  Franklin  which  deal 
with  the  controversies  of  the  American  Revolution,  and 
which,  while  they  may  be  called  controversial  writings,  illus- 
trate in  a  delightful  way  Franklin's  habit  of  eliminating 
from  all  controversy  its  churlish  and  merely  rasping  traits. 
He  has  himself  told  us  how  he  came  to  acquire  his  method. 

1  Works  of  Franklin,  Bigelow  ed.,  vi.  269-271. 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.  371 

As  a  somewhat  forward  lad,  he  had  fallen  into  a  disputatious 
habit, — "  a  very  bad  habit,"  as  he  afterwards  came  to  see. 
"  Persons  of  good  sense,  I  have  since  observed,  seldom  fall 
into  it,  except  lawyers,  university  men,  and  men  of  all  sorts 
that  have  been  bred  at  Edinburgh."  From  this  disagree- 
able habit  his  escape  seems  to  have  been  due,  in  the  first  in- 
stance, to  his  good  luck  in  meeting  with  a  copy  of  Xeno- 
phon's  "  Memorable  Things  of  Socrates,"  wherein  he  found 
many  examples  of  the  Socratic  method  of  conducting  a 
dispute: — "  I  was  charmed  with  it,  adopted  it,  dropt  my 
abrupt  contradiction  and  positive  argumentation,  and  put 
on  the  humble  inquirer  and  doubter."  "  I  continued  this 
method  some  few  years,  but  gradually  left  it,  retaining 
only  the  habit  of  expressing  myself  in  terms  of  modest  diffi- 
dence, never  using,  when  I  advanced  anything  that  may 
possibly  be  disputed,  the  words  '  certainly,'  '  undoubtedly,' 
or  any  others  that  give  the  air  of  positiveness  to  an  opinion, 
but  rather  say,  .  .  .  '  I  imagine  it  to  be  so,'  or,  '  it 
is  so,  if  I  am  not  mistaken.'  "  2  Accordingly,  in  the  long 
and  angry  disputes  of  the  American  Revolution,  the  part 
taken  in  them  by  Franklin  was  very  much  like  that  which 
Socrates  might  have  taken  had  he  been  born  in  Boston  in 
the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  had  he  been  for 
many  years  a  printer  and  a  politician  in  Philadelphia,  and 
had  he  filled  at  London  and  Paris  the  diplomatic  stations 
that  were  filled  by  Franklin.  Indeed,  the  likeness  between 
Franklin  and  Socrates  was  more  than  superficial ;  fc^r  besides 
the  plebeian  origin  of  both  and  some  trace  of  plebeian  man- 
ners which  clung  to  both,  and  the  strain  of  animal  coarseness 
from  which  neither  was  ever  entirely  purified,  they  both  had 
an  amazing  insight  into  human  nature  in  all  its  grades  and 
phases,  they  were  both  indifferent  to  literary  fame,  they 
were  both  humorists,  they  both  applied  their  great  intellect- 
ual gifts  in  a  disciplinary  but  genial  way  to  the  improvement 
of  their  fellow-men,  and  in  dealing  controversially  with  the 
opinions  of  others  they  both  understood  and  practised  the 

1  Works  of  Franklin,  Bigelow  ed.,  i.  46-47.  a  Ibid.  50-51. 


372  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION, 

strategy  of  coolness,  playfulness,  an  unassuming  manner, 
moderation  of  statement,  the  logical  parallel,  and  irony. 

Being  officially  employed  in  Europe  during  nearly  the 
entire  period  of  the  American  Revolution,  he  was  every- 
where recognized  as  something  far  more  than  the  official 
representative  of  America.  Through  his  fame  in  science 
and  letters,  through  his  intimacy  with  great  men,  through 
the  picturesqueness  and  the  fascination  of  his  personality, 
finally,  through  his  journalistic  sense  in  detecting  from  day 
to  day  the  set  of  the  winds  and  tides  of  public  opinion  and 
how  to  avail  himself  of  both  in  the  interests  of  his  country, 
he  became,  in  fact,  the  one  conspicuous  interpreter  to 
Europe  of  the  grievances  and  the  purposes  of  America, 
and  the  one  conspicuous  interpreter  to  America  of  the  atti- 
tude of  Europe. 

In  studying  the  mass  of  Franklin's  literary  contributions 
to  the  Revolutionary  controversy  between  1763  and  1783, 
we  shall  find  much  help  in  noting  that  his  relation  to  that 
controversy  had  two  strongly  contrasted  phases:  first,  his 
sincere  and  most  strenuous  desire  that  the  dispute  should 
not  pass  from  the  stage  of  words  to  that  of  blows,  and  thence 
to  a  struggle  for  American  secession  from  the  empire ;  and, 
secondly,  after  the  stage  of  blows  had  been  reached,  his 
championship  of  American  secession  through  war  as  the 
only  safe  or  honorable  course  then  left  to  his  countrymen. 
The  line  of  division  between  these  two  phases  of  opinion 
and  action,  falls  across  the  spring  and  early  summer  of 
1775-  Prior  to  that  time,  all  his  writings,  serious  or  jocose, 
are  pervaded  by  the  one  purpose  of  convincing  the  English 
people  that  the  American  policy  of  their  government  was  an 
injustice  and  a  blunder,  and  of  convincing  the  American 
people  that  their  demand  for  political  rights  would  certainly 
be  satisfied,  if  persisted  in  steadily  and  without  fear,  but  also 
without  disloyalty  and  without  unseemly  violence.  Subse- 
quent to  that  time,  having  accepted  with  real  sorrow  the 
alternative  of  war  and  of  war  for  American  secession,  all  his 
writings,  serious  or  jocose,  are  pervaded  by  the  one  purpose 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.  373 

of  making  that  war  a  successful  one, — a  result  to  which,  as 
a  writer,  he  could  best  contribute  by  such  appeals  to  public 
opinion  in  America  as  should  nourish-and  quicken  American 
confidence  in  their  own  cause,  and  by  such  appeals  to  public 
opinion  in  Europe  as  should  win  for  that  cause  its  moral 
and  even  its  physical  support.  For  reasons  that  must  be 
obvious,  his  general  literary  activity  was  far  greater  during 
the  first  phase  of  this  controversy,  than  during  the  second. 

V. 

Rising  above  the  throng  of  his  writings  upon  the  Ameri- 
can question  in  all  its  varying  issues  and  aspects,  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end,  are  some  eight  or  ten  productions 
which  stand  out  as  most  worthy  of  mention  in  this  place. 

The  first  of  these  is  the  celebrated  pamphlet  entitled 
"  The  Examination  of  Doctor  Benjamin  Franklin,  in  the 
British  House  of  Commons,  relative  to  the  Repeal  of  the 
American  Stamp  Act,  in  1766."  Though  a  mere  report 
of  a  certain  memorable  transaction  in  parliament,  this 
pamphlet  is,  in  reality,  the  result  of  a  most  consummate 
piece  of  political  and  editorial  craftsmanship  on  the  part  of 
Franklin  himself — a  master  without  a  master  in  the  art  of 
touching  the  springs  of  popular  conviction  and  sympathy. 
First  published  in  London  in  1767,  it  had  in  England  "  a 
great  run,"  as  even  Franklin  permitted  himself  to  acknow- 
ledge.2 Being  promptly  translated  into  French,  it  was  also 
widely  circulated  upon  the  continent,  and  for  its  pithy, 
dramatic,  and  amusing  way  of  putting  the  American  case,  it 
was  read  by  multitudes  of  people  in  many  countries  who 
thus  got  their  first  distinct  impression  as  to  the  nature  of 
the  trouble  then  brewing  in  America,  and  as  to  the  Ameri- 
can people  themselves — their  number,  character,  resources, 
dispositions,  opinions,  purposes.  Moreover,  if  the  pamphlet 
thus  gave  a  great  impulse  to  the  American  cause  in  Europe 
— an  impulse  which  was  at  once  transmitted  with  tremendous 

1  Works  of  Franklin,  Bigelow  ed.,  iii.  407-450.  2  Ibid.  iv.  28. 


374 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


effect  to  America,  also — not  less  did  it  contribute  to  the 
reputation  and  standing  of  Franklin  himself  on  both  sides 
of  the  Atlantic;  for,  by  its  incidental  and  modest  exhibition 
of  his  marvelous  presence  of  mind,  under  the  shower  of 
questions  that  were  rained  upon  him  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, of  his  unfailing  resources  both  in  knowledge  and  in 
argument,  of  his  frankness,  reasonableness,  shrewdness,  wit, 
temper,  tact,  good  humor,  it  simply  extended  to  the  public 
outside  the  house  the  impression  he  had  produced  inside  it, 
namely,  that  thenceforward,  upon  the  American  question, 
this  elderly  and  quiet  philosopher  was  to  be  reckoned  with 
as  a  statesman  and  a  diplomatist  of  the  first  order.  "  From 
this  examination  of  Doctor  Franklin,"  said  the  "  Gentle- 
man's Magazine  "  for  July,  1767,  "  the  reader  may  form  a 
clearer  and  more  comprehensive  idea  of  the  state  and  dis- 
position of  America,  and  of  the  expediency  or  inexpediency 
of  the  measure  in  question,  and  of  the  character  and  conduct 
of  the  minister  who  proposed  it,  than  from  all  that  has  been 
written  upon  the  subject  in  newspapers  and  pamphlets,  under 
the  titles  of  essays,  letters,  speeches,  and  considerations, 
from  the  first  moment  of  its  becoming  the  object  of  public 
attention  till  now."  l 

Early  in  the  year  1768,  under  the  guise  of  an  Englishman 
having  unusual  acquaintance  with  the  colonies,  he  published 
in  the  "  London  Chronicle  "  a  long  and  sprightly  article  on 
the  "Causes  of  American  Discontents  before  1768."' 
Though  greatly  mutilated  and  weakened  by  the  editor  of 
the  journal  in  which  it  first  appeared,— so  that,  as  Franklin 
complained,  with  its  teeth  drawn  and  its  nails  pared,  it  could 
"  neither  scratch  nor  bite,"  and  could  only  "  paw  and 
mumble,"  " — there  was  enough  left  of  it  to  shew  Franklin's 
great  skill  in  winning  favor  for  his  side  of  the  question  by  a 
novel  and  a  half-grumbling  presentation  of  its  claims,  and 
even  by  an  ironical  disparagement  of  them. 

"  The  Gentleman's  Magazine  and  Historical  Chronicle,"  xxxvii.  368. 
*  Reprinted  in  the  Works  of  Franklin,  Bigelowed.,  iv.  97-111. 
1  Ibid.  iv.  98  note. 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.  375 

So,  too,  in  1774,  over  the  signature  of  "  A  Londoner," 
he  contributed  to  the  "  Public  Advertiser  "  a  series  of  short 
articles  "  On  the  Rise  and  Progress  of  the  Differences  be- 
tween Great  Britain  and  her  American  Colonies,"  '  in  which, 
with  the  frankness  of  a  discontented  Englishman,  he  caus- 
tically exposes  the  dunce-like  methods  of  the  ministry  in 
dealing  with  the  American  problem,  and  the  stupid  perti- 
nacity of  those  writers  for  the  English  press  who  seemed  to 
think  that  they  were  solving  that  problem  by  calling  the 
Americans  hard  names  and  by  propagating  all  sorts  of 
calumnies  against  them.  "  Surely,"  exclaims  the  "  Lon- 
doner "  at  the  close  of  his  last  article,  "  the  great  commerce 
of  this  nation  with  the  Americans  is  of  too  much  importance 
to  be  risked  in  a  quarrel  which  has  no  foundation  but  minis- 
terial pique  and  obstinacy !  .  Will  our  reviling  them 
as  cheats,  hypocrites,  scoundrels,  traitors,  cowards,  tyrants, 
etc.,  etc.,  according  to  the  present  mode  in  all  our  papers, 
make  them  more  our  friends,  more  fond  of  our  merchan- 
dize ?  Did  ever  any  tradesman  succeed,  who  attempted  to 
drub  customers  into  his  shop  ?  And  will  honest  John  Bull, 
the  farmer,  be  long  satisfied  with  servants  that  before  his 
face  attempt  to  kill  his  plough-horses  ?  "  * 

Probably  no  writer  ever  understood  better  than  he  how 
to  make  dull  subjects  lively,  and  how,  by  consequence,  to 
attract  readers  to  the  consideration  of  matters  in  themselves 
unattractive.  As  he  well  knew,  the  European  public, 
whether  upon  the  continent  or  in  Great  Britain,  were  not 
likely  to  give  their  days  and  nights  to  the  perusal  of  long 
and  solemn  dissertations  on  the  rights  and  wrongs  of  his 
countrymen  in  the  other  hemisphere.  Accordingly,  such 
dissertations  he  never  gave  them,  but,  upon  occasion,  brief 
and  pithy  and  apparently  casual  statements  of  the  American 
case;  exposing,  also,  the  weak  points  of  the  case  against  his 
own,  by  means  of  anecdotes,  epigrams,  jeux-d'esprit ;  espe- 
cially contriving  to  throw  the  whole  argument  into  some  sort 
of  dramatic  form, — as  in  "  A  Dialogue  between  Britain, 

1  Works  of  Franklin,  Bigelow  ed.,  v.  323-338.  *  Ibid.  337~338. 


376  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

France,  Spain,  Holland,  Saxony,  and  America,"  '  or  as  in 
"  A  Catechism  relative  to  the  English  Debt  "  a;  or,  again, 
setting  forth  in  pictorial  form  some  stirring  aspect  of  the 
dispute,  as,  in  1774,  his  famous  emblematic  drawing  to  illus- 
trate "  the  result  of  England's  persistence  in  her  policy 
towards  the  colonies,"  a  wherein  Britannia  is  represented  as 
a  huge  desolate  female-figure  occupying  a  conspicuous  place 
on  the  globe,  but  with  all  her  limbs — that  is,  her  colonies — 
cut  off  and  lying  scattered  about — these  dismembered  limbs 
being  severally  labelled  Virginia,  New  England,  Pennsyl- 
vania, and  New  York.  In  this  sorry  plight,  as  Franklin  says 
in  the  "  Explanation  "  accompanying  the  picture,  Britannia 
lifts  "  her  eyes  and  mangled  stumps  to  Heaven;  her  shield, 
which  she  is  unable  to  wield,  lies  useless  by  her  side;  her 
lance  has  pierced  New  England ;  the  laurel  branch  has  fallen 
from  the  hand  of  Pennsylvania;  'the  English  oak  has  lost  its 
head,  and  stands  a  bare  trunk,  with  a  few  withered  branches ; 
briers  and  thorns  are  on  the  ground  beneath  it ;  the  British 
ships  have  brooms  at  their  topmast  heads,  denoting  their 
being  on  sale;  and  Britannia  herself  is  seen  sliding  off  the 
world, — no  longer  able  to  hold  its  balance, — her  fragments 
overspread  with  the  label,  '  Date  obolum  Belisario.'  "  4 

VI. 

It  remains  to  be  mentioned  that  Franklin's  favorite 
weapon  in  political  controversy — a  weapon  which,  perhaps, 
no  other  writer  in  English  since  Dean  Swift  has  handled 
with  so  much  cleverness  and  effect— was  that  of  satire  in  the 
form  of  ludicrous  analogue,  thereby  burlesquing  the  acts 
and  pretensions  of  his  adversary,  and  simply  overwhelming 
him  with  ridicule.  His  very  first  dash  into  the  Revolu- 
tionary controversy  after  his  arrival  in  England  in  1764, 
furnishes  a  case  in  point ;  when,  in  a  letter  to  a  newspaper, 
over  the  signature  of  "  A  Traveler,"  he  chaffs  the  English 

1  Works  of  Franklin,  Bigelow  ed.,  vi.  118-122.  2  Ibid.  122-124. 

3  Ibid.  v.  416-417.  4  Ibid>  4I6-4i7. 


BENJAMIN.  FRAXKLIN.  377 

public  about  their  habit  of  swallowing  preposterous  stories 
concerning  the  colonies,  as  then  commonly  told  them  in  their 
journals, — himself,  however,  ironically  maintaining  the  truth 
of  these  very  stories,  and  even  capping  them  by  others  just 
as  true :  as  the  one  about  the  tails  of  the  American  sheep 
being  "  so  laden  with  wool,  that  each  has  a  little  car  or 
wagon  on  four  little  wheels  to  support  and  keep  it  from 
trailing  on  the  ground  "  ;  or,  as  the  one  about  the  inhabi 
tants  of  Canada  "  making  preparations  for  a  cod  and  whale 
fishery  this  summer  in  the  upper  lakes.  Ignorant  people 
may  object  that  the  upper  lakes  are  fresh,  and  that  cod 
and  whales  are  salt-water  fish ;  but  let  them  know,  sir,  that 
cod,  like  other  fish,  when  attacked  by  their  enemies,  fly  into 
any  water  where  they  can  be  safest ;  that  whales,  when  they 
have  a  mind  to  eat  cod,  pursue  them  wherever  they  fly,  and 
that  the  grand  leap  of  the  whale  in  the  chase  up  the  Falls 
of  Niagara  is  esteemed,  by  all  who  have  seen  it,  as  one  of 
the  finest  spectacles  in  nature."  l 

Moreover,  with  Franklin,  as  had  been  the  case  with  Dean 
Swift  before  him,  this  species  of  satire  took  a  form  at  once 
so  realistic  and  so  comically  apt,  as  to  result  in  several 
examples  of  brilliant  literary  hoaxing — a  result  which,  in  the 
controversy  then  going  on,  was  likely  to  be  beneficial  to  the 
solemn  and  self-satisfied  British  Philistine  of  the  period, 
since  it  compelled  him  for  once  to  do  a  little  thinking,  and 
also  to  stand  off  and  view  his  own  portrait  as  it  then  ap- 
peared to  other  people,  and  even  in  spite  of  himself  to  laugh 
at  his  own  portentous  and  costly  stupidity  in  the  manage- 
ment of  an  empire  that  seemed  already  grown  too  big  for 
him  to  take  proper  care  of.  Of  Franklin's  work  in  the  vein 
of  literary  burlesque,  three  pieces  claim  mention  for  their 
preeminent  wit  and  point: — first,  "  Rules  for  Reducing  a 
Great  Empire  to  a  Small  One,"  3  secondly,  "  An  Edict  by 
the  King  of  Prussia,"  s  both  printed  in  the  English  news- 
papers in  the  early  autumn  of  1773;  and,  thirdly,  a  pre- 

1  Works  of  Franklin,  Bigelow  ed.,  iii.  378-379.         3  Ibid.  v.  233-234. 
3  Ibid.  214-220. 


378  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

tended  letter  of  instructions  "  From  the  Count  de  Schaum- 
bergh  to  the  Baron  Hohendorf  commanding  the  Hessian 
Troops  in  America,"  '  this  being  dated  at  Rome,  18  Febru- 
ary, 1777. 

Referring  to  the  first  two  of  these  pieces,  soon  after  their 
publication,  Franklin  told  his  son  that  his  object  in  writing 
them  was  to  expose  the  conduct  of  England  toward  the 
colonies,  "  in  a  short,  comprehensive,  and  striking  view,  and 
stated,  therefore,  in  out-of-the-way  forms,  as  most  likely  to 
take  the  general  attention. "  "  In  my  own  mind,"  he  adds, 
"  I  preferred  the  first,  as  a  composition,  for  the  quantity 
and  variety  of  the  matter  contained,  and  a  kind  of  spirited 
ending  of  each  paragraph.  But  I  find  that  others  here 
generally  prefer  the  second."  "  Probably,  the  chief  reason 
for  the  greater  attention  paid  in  England  to  the  second  piece 
is  to  be  found  in  the  more  direct  and  palpable  character  of 
its  satire,  dealing  as  it  did  with  ideas  and  even  phrases  then 
uncommonly  familiar  to  the  English  public.  It  made  its 
appearance  in  the  midst  of  the  busy  preparations  then  in 
progress  for  sending  out  the  guileful  tea-ships;  when,  of 
course,  the  very  air  was  vibrant  with  allusions  to  the  almost 
limitless  claims  of  the  mother  country  upon  her  American 
children,  to  the  propriety  and  beauty  of  the  English  laws 
for  controlling  the  commerce  and  manufactures  of  the 
colonies,  and,  above  all,  to  the  base  ingratitude  of  England's 
American  children  in  objecting  to  being  taxed  at  will  by 
their  affectionate  national  parent.  Under  these  circum- 
stances it  occurred  to  Franklin  to  set  forth  in  some  lively 
way  the  absurdity  of  all  this ;  especially,  that  it  was  an  argu- 
ment which  proved  much  more  than  its  inventors  would  care 
to  be  responsible  for.  If,  indeed,  England  had  such  limit- 
less claims  upon  the  American  colonies  because  she  was  their 

1  Works  of  Franklin,  Bigelow  ed.,  vi.  74-78.  This,  of  course,  is  the  English 
version  of  the  letter  ;  but  it  was  a  part  of  the  jest  to  assume  that  the  letter  was 
originally  written  in  German  or  in  French— probably  in  French.  The  French 
version  is  given  by  M.  de  Lescure,  in  his  "  Correspondance  secrete  inedite 
sur  Louis  XVI.,"  etc.,  i.  31-33.  i  Ihid.  24I-242. 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.  379 

mother  country,  why  had  not  Germany,  the  mother 
country  of  England,  the  same  claims  upon  her  ?  This 
idea,  accordingly,  Franklin  worked  out  in  a  manner 
thoroughly  Franklinian, — causing  to  be  published,  first,  in 
the  "  Public  Advertiser,"  what  purported  to  be  a  solemn 
edict  of  Frederick  the  Great, — "  Given  at  Potsdam,  this 
twenty-fifth  day  of  the  month  of  August,  one  thousand 
seven  hundred  and  seventy-three,  and  in  the  thirty-third 
year  of  our  reign,"  — wherein  that  monarch,  in  a  tone  of 
command  very  natural  to  him,  uses  the  characteristic  words 
of  the  English  acts  of  parliament  regulating  the  commerce 
and  manufactures  of  the  American  colonies,  and  then  pro- 
claims on  behalf  of  Prussia  the  same  regulations  over  "  the 
island  of  Great  Britain":  "  And  all  persons  in  the  said 
island  are  hereby  cautioned  not  to  oppose  in  any  wise  the 
execution  of  this  our  edict,  or  any  part  thereof,  such  oppo- 
sition being  high  treason ;  of  which  all  who  are  suspected 
shall  be  transported  in  fetters  from  Britain  to  Prussia,  there 
to  be  tried  and  executed  according  to  the  Prussian  law."  a 

In  England  this  travesty  made  a  great  hit; — all  the  more 
so  for  the  reason,  as  Franklin  explained  to  his  son,  "  that 
people  in  reading  it  were,  as  the  phrase  is,  '  taken  in,'  till 
they  had  got  half  through  it,  and  imagined  it  a  real  edict,  to 
which  mistake,  I  suppose,  the  king  of  Prussia's  character 
contributed."  s  Some  of  its  effects,  the  author  himself  had 
the  good  luck  to  witness,  and  in  a  way  of  which  he  has  left 
an  amusing  account.  Having  sent  his  satire  to  the  news- 
paper, he  immediately  went  down  to  the  country-seat  of  his 
friend,  Lord  le  Despencer,  where  among  other  guests  hap- 
pened to  be  Paul  Whitehead,  the  poet.  One  morning  while 
most  of  the  company  were  chatting  in  the  breakfast-parlor, 
Whitehead  "  came  running  in  to  us  out  of  breath,  with  the 
paper  in  his  hand.  '  Here!  '  says  he,  '  here  's  news  for  ye! 
Here  's  the  king  of  Prussia  claiming  a  right  to  this  king- 
dom !  '  All  stared,  and  I  as  much  as  anybody ;  and  he  went 

1  Works  of  Franklin,  Bigelow  ed.,  v.  220.  *  Ibid.  219. 

» Ibid.  243. 


380  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

on  to  read  it.  When  he  had  read  two  or  three  paragraphs, 
a  gentleman  present  said:  '  Damn  his  impudence;  I  dare 
say  we  shall  hear  by  next  post,  that  he  is  upon  his  march 
with  one  hundred  thousand  men  to  back  this.'  Whitehead, 
who  is  very  shrewd,  soon  after  began  to  smoke  it,  and  look- 
ing in  my  face  said,  '  I  '11  be  hanged  if  this  is  not  some  of 
your  American  jokes  upon  us.'  The  reading  went  on,  and 
ended  with  abundance  of  laughing,  and  a  general  verdict 
that  it  was  a  fair  hit."  Indeed,  Lord  Mansfield,  who,  of 
course,  was  not  in  that  company,  called  the  satire  "  very 
able  and  very  artful,"  and  expressed  the  belief  that  it 
"  would  do  mischief  by  giving  here  a  bad  impression  of  the 
measures  of  government,  and  in  the  colonies  by  encouraging 
them  in  their  contumacy,"  2  all  of  which,  certainly,  was  pre- 
cisely the  effect  which  it  was  intended  to  have. 

The  last  of  the  three  specimens  of  satire  above  mentioned, 
the  Count  de  Schaumbergh's  letter  of  instructions,  seems  to 
have  been  written  by  Franklin  not  long  after  his  arrival  in 
France  in  the  latter  part  of  1776,  and  was  intended  to  hold 
up  to  the  execration  of  the  civilized  world  both  parties  in 
the  transaction  by  which  the  king  of  England  bought  of 
certain  petty  princes  in  Germany  the  troops  with  which  to 
butcher  his  late  American  subjects.  In  some  respects,  this 
is  the  most  powerful  of  all  the  satirical  writings  of  Franklin. 
More,  perhaps,  than  is  the  case  with  any  other  work  of  his, 
it  displays,  with  marvelous  subtlety  and  wit,  that  sort  of 
genius  which  can  reproduce  with  minute  and  perfect  veri- 
similitude the  psychological  processes  of  some  monstrous 
crime  against  human  nature,— a  crime  which  it  thus  portrays 
both  to  the  horror  and  the  derision  of  mankind.  "  Since 
the  death  of  Swift,"  says  John  Bigelow  in  referring  to  this 
pretended  letter  of  the  Hessian  trafficker  in  the  bodies  and 
souls  of  his  subjects,  "  who,  besides  Franklin,  was  suffi- 
ciently a  master  of  this  kind  of  satire  to  have  written  it  ?  " 3 

1  Works  of  Franklin,  Bigelow  ed.,  v.  243.  2  Ibid.  224. 

3  Works  of  Franklin,  vi.  74  note.  M.  de  Lescure,  in  giving  the  French 
version  of  this  letter,  makes  no  allusion  to  Franklin,  but  says,  in  a  foot-note  : 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN.  381 

VII. 

As  Franklin  was  by  far  the  greatest  man  of  letters  on  the 
American  side  of  the  Revolutionary  controversy,  so  a  most 
luminous  and  delightful  history  of  the  development  of 
thought  and  emotion  during  the  Revolution  might  be  com- 
posed, by  merely  bringing  together  detached  sayings  of 
Franklin,  humorous  and  serious,  just  as  these  fell  from  his 
tongue  or  pen  in  the  successive  stages  of  that  long  conflict : 
it  would  be  a  trail  of  light  across  a  sea  of  storm  and  gloom. 

Nevertheless,  not  by  illustrative  fragments  of  what  he 
wrote  or  said,  any  more  than  by  modern  descriptions  how- 
ever vivid,  can  an  adequate  idea  be  conveyed  of  the  mass, 
the  force,  the  variety,  the  ease,  the  charm,  of  his  total  work 
as  a  writer  during  those  twenty  tremendous  years.  Un- 
doubtedly, his  vast  experience  in  affairs  and  the  sobriety 
produced  by  mere  official  responsibility,  had  the  effect  of 
clarifying  and  solidifying  his  thought,  and  of  giving  to  the 
lightest  products  of  his  genius  a  sanity  and  a  sureness  of 
movement  which,  had  he  been  a  man  of  letters  only,  they 
could  hardly  have  had  in  so  high  a  degree.  It  is  only  by  a 
continuous  reading  of  the  entire  body  of  Franklin's  Revolu- 
tionary writings,  from  grave  to  gay,  from  lively  to  severe, 
that  any  one  can  know  how  brilliant  was  his  wisdom,  or  how- 
wise  was  his  brilliance,  or  how  humane  and  gentle  and  help- 
ful were  both.  No  one  who,  by  such  a  reading,  procures 
for  himself  such  a  pleasure  and  such  a  benefit,  will  be  likely 
to  miss  the  point  of  Sydney  Smith's  playful  menace  to  his 
daughter, — "  I  will  disinherit  you,  if  you  do  not  admire 
everything  written  by  Franklin." 

"  II  est  evident,  pour  quiconque  lit  cette  lettre,  qu'elle  n'est  qu'un  jeu  d'esprit 
et  de  malignite  destine  a  railler  le  commerce  insouciant  et  lucratif  d'hommes  (la 
traite  des  soldats)  qu'on  accusait  les  princes  allemands,  surtout  de  Hanovre  et  de 
Hesse,  de  faire  cyniquement  avec  les  puissances  belligerantes  en  quete  de  mer- 
cenaires."  "  Correspondance  secrete, "etc.,  i.  31. 


CHAPTER   XXXIX. 

THE  WRITERS  OF  HISTORY. 

I. — Two  expressions  of  the  historic  spirit  during  the  Revolution — One  resulting 
in  local  colonial  history— The  other  resulting  in  histories  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary movement  and  therefore  representing  the  colonies  as  moving  for- 
ward into  statehood  and  a  new  national  life. 

II. — Stephen  Hopkins  as  a  representative  of  the  historic  spirit  applied  to  local 
themes — His  fragment  on  "  The  Planting  and  Growth  of  Providence,"  1762 
and  1765— Amos  Adams  and  his  "  Concise  Historical  View  of  the  Planting 
and  Progressive  Improvement  of  New  England,"  1769 — Nathan  Fiske's 
"  Historical  Discourse"  for  the  town  of  Brookfield,  1775. 
III. — Robert  Proud,  and  his  "  History  of  Pennsylvania." 

IV. — How  religious  affiliations  overleaped  colonial  barriers  and  led  to  more 
comprehensive  historical  work — Morgan  Edwards  and  his  "Materials  to- 
wards a  History  of  the  American  Baptists,"  1770 — The  intelligence  and 
validity  of  his  method  as  an  historian — The  scope  of  his  work — Examples 
of  its  quality. 

V. — Another  intercolonial  historian  is  Isaac  Backus,  preacher  and  politician — 
His  "  History  of  New  England,  with  Particular  Reference  to  the  Denomi- 
nation Called  Baptists,"  1777  and  1784 — His  motive  in  writing  history — 
His  method  strictly  scientific,  notwithstanding  his  lack  of  disinterestedness 
— Value  of  his  work. 

VI.—  Thomas  Hutchinson  as  an  historian  dealing  with  themes  both  colonial 
and  Revolutionary — The  peculiar  value  of  his  contributions  to  American 
history — His  writing  of  history  but  the  by-play  of  a  busy  man  of  affairs — 
His  ancestry — His  career  as  merchant  and  politician — His  attitude  toward 
the  Revolutionary  controversy. 

VII- — Hutchinson's  early  passion  for  the  study  of  history,  particularly  constitu- 
tional history— His  preparation  for  the  writing  of  it— His  idea  of  the  im- 
portance of  primary  documents,  and  his  unrivaled  collection  of  them— The 
publication  in  1764  of  the  first  volume  of  his  "  History  of  the  Colony  of 
Massachusetts  Bay  "—His  work  in  writing  the  second  volume  interrupted 
by  a  Boston  mob  in  August,  1765,  looting  his  house  and  destroying  many 
of  his  papers — Fortunate  recovery  of  the  manuscript  of  the  second  volume 
—Its  publication  in  1 767— Characteristics  of  this  volume. 

-Hutchinson  summoned  to  England  in  1774 — His  own  special  purpose  in 
going  there— Failure  of  his  efforts  to  dissuade  the  government  from  its  im- 
382 


LOCAL   AND  NATIONAL  HISTORIES.  383 

politic  measures  towards  the  colonies — The  sorrows  of  his  exile  in  England 
— Resumes  there  his  "  History,"  the  third  volume  of  which  he  finishes  in 
1778 — Contains  his  own  version  of  the  Revolution  down  to  the  close  of  his 
administration  as  governor  of  Massachusetts — Its  first  publication  in  1828. 

IX. — Traits  of  Hutchinson  as  an  historian — The  distinctive  tone  of  each  of  his 
three  volumes — His  evident  truthfulness — His  judicial  tone — The  severest 
test  of  his  fairness  applied  in  the  writing  of  his  third  volume — An  examina- 
tion of  Palfrey's  estimate  of  him  as  an  historian — The  essence  of  his  politics 
with  reference  to  the  Revolutionary  dispute — His  portrait  of  Governor 
Joseph  Dudley,  as  in  some  respects  a  portrait  of  himself. 

X. — A  pretended  historical  work  by  Samuel  Peters,  "  A  General  History  of 
Connecticut,"  1781 — The  career  of  Peters — The  notoriety  acquired  by  his 
book — Its  grotesque  fabrications  in  the  service  of  calumny — Clearly  not  in- 
tended by  himself  as  a  mere  historical  romance  or  a  satire  in  the  form  of 
burlesque  history — Its  author's  mania  for  facts  which  never  had  an  exist- 
ence. 

XI. — The  development  of  the  military  stage  of  the  Revolution  accompanied  by 
a  general  perception  of  its  historic  significance,  and  of  the  need  of  making 
and  preserving  records  of  it — Examples  of  historical  work  in  its  crudest 
form — Especially  the  diaries  of  eye-witnesses  of  its  events — James  Thach- 
er's  "  Military  Journal  of  rfie~AmerirJan  Revolutionary  War  " — "  A  Journal 
of  Occurrences,"  by  Major  Return  Jonathan  Meigs-^George  Rogers  Clark's 
"Campaign  in  the  Illinois  "—Tench  Tilghman's  "Journal,"  and  his 
"  Diary  " — "The  Journal  of  Lieutenant  William  Feltman." 

XII. — The  beginnings  of  professed  histories  of  the  Revolution — Jonas  Clark's 
"  Brief  Narrative"  of  the  events  of  April  19,  1775 — David  Ramsay  as  a 
collector  of  materials  for  a  history  of  the  Revolution — William  Henry 
Drayton  as  an  historian  of  the  Revolution — A  portion  of  his  work  burned 
by  order  of  Congress — His  two  volumes  on  the  history  of  the  war  in  the 
southern  colonies. 

XIII. — Mercy  Warren  as  an  historian  of  the  Revolution — Her  great  opportuni- 
ties for  knowing  the  men  and  events  of  the  period — Her  "  History  of  the 
Rise,  Progress,  and  Termination  of  the  American  Revolution  " — Its  undis- 
guised partisanship — Its  literary  qualities — Its  historical  portraits. 

XIV. — William  Gordon,  and  his  indefatigable  efforts  to  obtain  oral  and  written 
testimony  concerning  the  Revolution — His  evident  purpose  to  be  truthful 
and  fair — Fearing  American  prejudices  against  an  impartial  history  of  the 
Revolution,  he  goes  to  England  to  publish  his  work,  but  encounters  there 
similar  prejudices — How  his  manuscript  was  tampered  with — The  great 
value  of  his  work,  even  as  thus  mutilated. 

I. 

WITHIN  the  two  decades  of  the  American  Revolution,  are 
to  be  found  two  distinct  expressions  of  the  historic  spirit 
among  this  people.  In  the  first  place,  from  a  consciousness 


384  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

• 

of  the  meaning  and  worth  of  the  unique  social  experi- 
ments then  already  made  by  each  of  these  thirteen  little 
republics,  came  the  impulse  which  led  to  the  writing  of 
their  local  history.  Afterward,  from  a  similar  consciousness 
of  the  meaning  and  worth  of  the  immense  events  which 
began  to  unfold  themselves  in  the  collective  political  and 
military  experience  of  these  thirteen  little  republics,  then 
rapidly  melting  together  into  a  larger  national  life  under 
the  fires  of  a  common  danger,  came  the  impulse  which  led 
to  the  writing  of  their  general  history.  It  is  necessary  for 
us  to  note  the  more  important  documents  which  still  testify 
to  the  activity  and  the  vigor  of  such  historic  spirit  in  this  land, 
amid  circumstances  not  at  all  favorable  to  its  cultivation. 

II. 

An  early  and  a  genuine  representative  of  the  historic  spirit 
was  Stephen  Hopkins,  the  Rhode  Island  statesman,  who, 
as  early  as  in  October,  1762,  while  governor  of  that  colony, 
began  to  publish  in  a  weekly  newspaper  the  results  of  his 
researches  into  "  The  Planting  and  Growth  of  Providence." 
After  printing,  in  that  year  and  in  1765,  some  eight  chap- 
ters of  his  intended  book,  he  was  obliged  by  public  occupa- 
tions to  break  off  these  congenial  labors — to  which,  indeed, 
he  was  never  afterward  able  to  return.  What  he  thus  wrote 
is  therefore  but  a  fragment,  telling  the  story  of  Rhode  Island 
only  from  its  origin  to  the  year  1745.  Though  but  a  frag- 
ment, however,  it  is  quite  enough  to  reveal  in  its  author  the 
best  qualities  of  an  historian, — love  of  truth,  fair-minded- 
ness, the  power  to  see  the  meaning  of  facts  and  to  set  them 
in  order,  finally  the  gift  of  lucid,  neat,  and  impressive  state- 
ment.1 

1  The  publication  of  Hopkins's  fragment  began  in  "  The  Providence  Gazette" 
for  October  20,  1762.  Being  then  suddenly  stopped,  it  did  not  begin  again 
until  January  12,  1765,  when  the  "  Gazette"  reprinted  the  portion  already  pub- 
lished. The  publication  of  the  remaining  portions  of  the  work,  was  then  kept 
up  in  the  "Gazette"  for  January  12,  19;  February  2,  9,  16  ;  March  16,  30. 
The  worth  of  this  bit  of  early  American  history  was  fittingly  recognized  by  the 


AMOS  ADAMS.  385 

Not  unworthy  of  a  passing  glance,  as  embodying  in  rudi- 
mental  form  the  true  temper  and  method  of  history,  is  Amos 
Adams's"  Concise  Historical  View1  of  the  Perils,  Hardships, 
Difficulties  and  Discouragements  which  have  attended  the 
Planting  and  Progressive  Improvement  of  New  England," 
published  in  Boston  in  1769.  The  author  was  minister  of 
the  First  Church  of  Roxbury,  a  graduate  of  Harvard,  an 
orator  of  captivating  and  stimulating  gifts,  a  leader  of  men, 
a  martyr  at  last  to  his  uncalculating  zeal  in  the  service  of  the 
sick  and  the  troubled.*  That  he  had  the  historian's  hand 
and  brain  is  shewn  by  the  cleverness  with  which,  in  this  little 
book,  he  plucks  from  a  vast  medley  of  facts  the  salient  and 
characteristic  ones;  by  his  lucid  generalization;  by  the 
sobriety  of  his  treatment  of  the  ultimate  dispute  with  the 
English  ministry.* 

On  the  last  day  of  the  year  1775,  in  the  midst  of  all  the 
tumult  and  terror  of  war,  Nathan  Fiske,  pastor  of  the  Con- 
gregational Church  in  Brookfield,  Massachusetts,  delivered 
to  his  people  a  calm  and  carefully  wrought  "  Historical  Dis- 

officers  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  who,  in  1822,  gave  a  reprint  of 
it  in  their  "  Collections,"  2  series,  ix.  166-203.  In  1885,  a  reprint  was  given 
in  the  "  Collections  of  the  Rhode  Island  Historical  Society,"  vii.  13-65.  This 
version  is  much  to  be  preferred,  as  it  is  annotated  with  characteristic  thorough- 
ness, precision,  and  good  taste  by  Mr.  William  Eaton  Foster,  who,  in  his  well- 
known  monograph  on  "  Stephen  Hopkins,"  Part  i.  134-135  ;  Part  ii.  161,  165, 
167,  191,  200-201,  had  already  called  attention  to  that  statesman's  fondness  and 
aptitude  for  historical  work. 

1  It  is  a  note  of  the  times  that  this  capital  sketch  of  American  colonial  history 
was  struck  off  in  the  shape  of  two  discourses  actually  delivered  from  the  pulpit, 
with  political  and  moral  lessons  of  local  application.  It  was  reprinted  in  Lon- 
don in  1770,  with  a  slight  change  of  title,  and  with  a  curtailment  of  the  afore- 
said lessons. 

*  A  peculiarly  life-like  portrait  of  Amos  Adams  was  drawn  in  miniature  by 
his  contemporary  and  friend,  John  Eliot,  in  his  "  Biographical  Dictionary," 

4-5- 

3  Being  a  man  of  considerable  range  in  action  and  sympathy,  Adams  had  re- 
peatedly sent  to  the  press  his  discourses,  the  best  of  them,  probably,  being  his 
sermon,  in  1759,  "On  the  Reduction  of  Quebec";  and  his  two  sermons,  in 
1767,  "On  Religious  Liberty,"  published  in  the  year  following  that  of  their 

delivery. 

VOL.  it.— as 


386  THE  AMERICAN  REVO-LU TIO N. 

course, ' ' '  relating  to  that  town :  a  true  example  of  the  historic 
spirit  applied  to  local  experience;  a  monograph  strong  in 
fiber,  and  having  the  added  charm  of  its  author's  sincere, 
elastic,  and  clean-cut  style.  Of  course,  it  was  impossible 
for  him  at  such  a  time  to  deal  only  with  their  past ;  and 
there  is  even  yet  something  to  thrill  the  heart  in  the  closing 
paragraphs  in  which  he  sets  forth  the  havoc  and  horror  of 
that  year,  and  compares  the  barbarity  of  their  own  kinsmen 
— the  civilized  foe  then  ready  to  spring  at  their  throats — 
with  the  pitiless  ways  of  that  savage  and  alien  enemy  against 
whom  they  had  for  so  many  generations  been  upon  their 
guard. 

III. 

A  very  sombre  representative  of  the  historic  spirit  in 
America  during  the  period  here  treated  of,  was  Robert 
Proud,  a  Quaker,  born  in  England  in  1728,  and  from  1759 
until  his  death  in  1813  a  reluctant  and  an  unassimilated 
denizen  of  Pennsylvania.  A  bachelor,  a  school-master,  a 
recluse,  with  a  cloud  of  sorrow  and  of  mystery  hanging  over 
his  life,  using  Latin  with  more  facility  than  English,  he  was 
wholly  out  of  accord  with  the  hopes,  the  ambitions,  the 
tendencies  of  the  age  and  neighborhood  upon  which  his  lot 
was  cast.  Being  opposed  to  war  in  general,  and  to  the  war 
of  the  American  Rebellion  in  particular,  he  nursed  in  soli- 
tude the  bitterness  of  his  spirit,  which,  indeed,  must  have 
grown  more  bitter  from  his  attempts  to  utter  it  in  verse 
like  this : 

"  For,  what  man, 
Though  of  every  thing  bereft, 
Though  no  earthly  solace  left, 
Here  with  rebel  powers  would  dwell, 
And  not  shun  the  state  of  hell — 
While  he  can  !  "  a 

1  Published,  Boston,  1776. 

"  Memoirs  of  the  Hist.  Soc.  of  Pennsylvania,"  vol.  i.  ed.  of  1864,  p.  488. 
Between  pages  486  and  492  are  given  other  examples  of  this  poor  man's  excru- 
ciating struggles  with  English  verse. 


MORGAN  EDWARDS.  387 

Tall,  gaunt,  of  a  stern  countenance,  his  beak-like  nose  over- 
hung by  heavy  eye-brows,  a  huge  and  patriarchal  cocked  hat 
predominating  over  his  tremendous  gray  wig,  his  right  hand 
grasping  a  long  ivory-headed  cane,  he  was  occasionally  to 
be  seen  striding  in  melancholy  grandeur  along  the  roads  or 
lanes  in  the  neighborhood  of  Philadelphia — a  figure  of  ter- 
rifying picturesqueness — frowning  with  implacable  disap- 
proval upon  all  the  ways  and  works  of  the  people  among 
whom  he  was  doomed  to  dwell.1 

It  was  in  such  a  mood,  it  was  in  the  midst  of  such  condi- 
tions, that  this  bilious  and  sorrowful  pedagogue  passed  the 
painful  years  from  1776  to  1780,  in  writing  "  The  History 
of  Pennsylvania,  in  North  America,  from  the  Original  In- 
stitution and  Settlement  of  that  Province  under  the  first 
Proprietor  and  Governor  William  Penn,  in  1681,  till  after 
the  Year  1742," a — a  book  of  very  exact  and  extremely 
solidified  information,  wherein  the  author  quotes  long  docu- 
ments, elaborates  moral  platitudes,  and  tells  the  truth — as 
he  sees  it — in  slow,  weighty,  and  sleep-diffusing  sentences. 

IV. 

A  noteworthy  example  of  the  true  historic  spirit  then  at 
work  among  us — at  work  after  the  right  method  even  when 
expressing  itself  in  the  crudest  form — is  to  be  seen  in  a  book 
entitled  "  Materials  towards  a  History  of  the  American 
Baptists," — the  author  being  Morgan  Edwards,  a  Welsh- 
man, who,  after  acquiring  some  distinction  as  a  Baptist 
preacher  in  England  and  in  Ireland,  settled  in  Philadelphia 
in  1761  in  order  to  take  charge  of  a  Baptist  congregation 
there.3 

The  work  was  planned  by  him  on  a  large  scale.     It  was  to 

1  The  best  account  of  Proud  to  be  met  with,  is  by  Charles  West  Thomson, 
entitled  "  Notices  of  the  Life  and  Character  of  Robert  Proud,"  and  forming 
pages  417-435  of  "  Memoirs  of  the  Hist.  Soc.  of  Pennsylvania,"  vol.  i.,  ed. 
of  1864. 

*  Published  in  two  volumes,  Philadelphia,  1797-1798. 

1  A  brief  sketch  of  his  singular  character  and  career  may  be  seea  in  W.  B. 
Sprague,  "  Annals,"  etc.,  vi.  82-85. 


388  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

include  all  the  American  colonies  in  which  the  Baptists  had 
made  any  history, — that  is,  in  which  they  had  ever  been ; 
and  it  was  to  extend  to  at  least  twelve  volumes.  Only  the 
first  two  volumes  were  ever  written,  and  these  were  pub- 
lished in  Philadelphia  in  1770.  The  author  had,  indeed, 
gathered  together  the  substance  of  a  third  volume;  but  this, 
as  he  informed  the  public,  he  could  not  expect  to  see 
printed,  "  because  of  an  asthma  and  atrophy,  which  hurry 
him  out  of  the  world."  In  spite  of  this  announcement  of 
his  speedy  exit,  the  Welsh  fire  within  him  seems  to  have 
blazed  up  again,  and  to  have  been  more  than  a  match  even 
for  "  an  asthma  and  atrophy  "  ;  for,  instead  of  being  hurried 
out  of  the  world  in  1770,  he  held  his  own  in  it  just  twenty- 
five  years  longer,  dying  at  his  leisure  in  1795. 

The  intelligence  and  the  validity  of  his  method  as  an  his- 
torian are  well  shewn  in  his  own  frank  avowal  that  the  data 
for  his  two  volumes  were  "  collected  partly  from  knowledge, 
partly  from  church-books,  and  partly  from  informations. 
Collections  from  the  two  former  may  be  exact ;  but  those 
from  the  other  may  not  be  so,  because  old  memories  are  un- 
safe records.  If  any  should  discover  errors  and  give  notice 
thereof  to  the  editor,  he  will  take  the  first  opportunity  to 
rectify  them,  and  be  much  obliged  to  the  informers."  3 

The  first  volume  has  to  do  with  the  Baptists  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, the  second  with  those  of  New  Jersey.  In  the  former 
colony,  they  are  of  five  sorts — "  First  Day  Baptists," 
"  Seventh  Day  Baptists,""  Keithians.,"  "  Tunckers,"  and 
"  Mennonites  ";  in  the  latter  colony  they  are  of  only  four 
sorts—"  First  Day  Baptists,"  "  Seventh  Day  Baptists," 
"  Tunckers,"  and  "  Rogerenes."  Dealing,  then,  in  its 
place  and  order,  with  each  of  these  subdivisions  of  his  sect, 
the  author  proceeds  to  spread  out  before  us  a  multitude  of 
local  and  personal  details— the  pettiness  and  aridity  of 
which  are  in  his  comment  often  relieved  by  some  touch  of 
tender  wisdom,  of  shrewd  observation,  or  of  satiric  humor. 

1  "  Materials,"  etc.,  ii.  151. 

1  "  Advertisement,"  in  vol.  i.  signed  by  the  author. 


MORGAN  EDWARDS.  389 

Thus,  of  those  German  Baptists  who  were  called  "  Tunck- 
ers,"  he  says  that  the  name  was  given  to  them  "  in  deri- 
sion " ;  that  it  came  from  the  German  word  "  '  tunken,'  to 
put  a  morsel  into  sauce,"  and  that  it  "is  as  much  as  to  say 
'  Sops.'  '  Nevertheless,  "  as  the  term  signifies  Dippers, 
they  may  rest  content  with  the  nickname,  since  it  is 
the  fate  of  Baptists  in  all  countries  to  bear  some  cross  or 
other."  ' 

His  account  of  the  Rogerene  Baptists,  while  evidently  fair, 
has  an  amusing  sub-acid  flavor.  ' '  This  distinction  of  a  sect 
took  its  rise  at  New  London  in  Connecticut,  about  the  year 
1674,"  when  one  John  Rogers  of  that  town  formed  a  church 
of  his  own,  the  first  members  of  it  being  his  father,  his 
mother,  two  of  his  brothers,  and  his  sister.  As  to  its  creed, 
the  chief  peculiarities  were  these  four:  "  All  days  are  alike 
since  the  death  of  Christ  "  ;  "  No  medicines  are  to  be  used, 
nor  doctors  nor  surgeons  employed  "  ;  No  grace  at  meals  ' ' ; 
"  All  prayers  to  be"  mental  and  not  vocal,  except  when  the 
spirit  of  prayer  compels  to  the  use  of  the  voice."  a  Having 
thus  founded  his  church,  it  was  proper  that  John  Rogers 
should  take  an  early  occasion  to  shew  a  strong  hand  as  its 
ruler.  Accordingly,  his  "  first  act  of  discipline  was  the  ex- 
communication of  his  brother  Jonathan,  for  using  medicine, 
and  refusing  to  do  things  which  would  bring  on  him  the  lash 
of  the  civil  magistrate."  Moreover,  "  this  John  Rogers 
was  not  only  the  founder  of  the  sect  .  .  .  but  the  hero 
of  the  cause  in  suffering,  and  writing,  and  defying."  In 
fact,  the  last  seems  to  have  been  rather  his  favorite  and  most 
shining  function.  "  He  had  not  been  long  at  the  head  of 
the  cause,  before  he  printed  and  published  "  a  sort  of  en- 
cyclical, in  which  he  made  "  an  open  declaration  of  war 
against  the  great  red  dragon,  and  against  the  beast  to  which 
he  gives  power,  and  against  the  false  church  which  rides 
upon  the  beast,  and  against  the  false  prophets  who  are  estab- 
lished by  the  dragon  and  the  beast,  and  against  the  image 
of  the  beast."  To  this  he  added  "  a  proclamation  of  deri- 

1  "  Materials,"  etc.,  i.  64.  *  Ibid.  147-148. 


390 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


sion    against   the   sword   of    the    devil's   spirit,  —  which   is 
prisons,  stocks,  whips,  fines,  and  revilings." 

But  as  even  this  proclamation  failed,  in  the  opinion  of  the 
Rogerenes,  sufficiently  to  enliven  the  situation,  they  pro- 
ceeded to  more  active  measures.  For  example,  as  it  was 
their  duty  "  to  exert  themselves  "  against  the  idol  called  the 
Sabbath,  they  would  on  that  day  "  be  at  work  near  meeting- 
houses, and  take  work  into  meeting-houses  —  the  women 
knitting,  and  the  men  whittling  and  making  splits  for 
baskets,  and  every  now  and  then  contradicting  the  preach- 
ers. This  was  seeking  persecution  ;  and  they  had  plenty  of 
it,  insomuch  that  the  New  Englanders  left  some  of  them 
neither  liberty,  nor  property,  nor  whole  skins."  While, 
however,  the  New  Englanders  thus  made  the  mistake  of 
taking  the  Rogerenes  seriously,  and  of  gratifying  them  with 
the  boon  of  persecution,  the  people  of  New  Jersey,  being 
either  wiser  in  their  generation,  or  else  blessed  with  a  keener 
perception  of  the  ludicrous  aspect  of  things,  quite  discon- 
certed them  in  the  performance  of  such  antics,  by  a  con- 
temptuous gentleness  which  seemed  to  announce  the 
Rogerenes  as  mild  lunatics,  rather  than  as  heroes  or 
martyrs.  I  do  not  find,"  says  our  author,  "  that  the 
Rogerenes  have  suffered  by  fines  or  corporal  punishment  in 
Jersey  more  than  once,  and  that  was  for  disturbing  a  Pres- 
byterian congregation  at  Baskingridge.  In  other  places, 
they  have  been  taken  out  of  meeting-houses  with  much 
pleasantry,  and  shut  up  in  stables,  penfolds,  and  once  in  a 
hog-pen  —  till  worship  was  over."  "  Paul  speaks  of  some 
people  '  who  pleased  not  God,  and  were  contrary  to  all 
men.'  It  were  uncharitable  to  apply  this  to  the  Rogerenes; 
but  facts,  for  a  course  of  one  hundred  and  sixteen  years, 
look  too  much  like—'  contrary  to  all  men.  '  And  as  for  the 
spirit  that  actuated  them,  it  was  as  different  from  the  meek 
and  humble  spirit  of  Jesus,  as  any  two  things  could  be. 
•  •  •  Had  the  Rogerenes  lived  in  the  time  of  the  Cynics, 
they  would  have  been  ranked  with  them."  3 

"  Materials,"  etc.,  ii.  147-148.  »  Ibid  149-150. 


ISAAC  BACKUS.  391 

Finally,  as  to  John  Rogers  himself,  the  historian  finishes 
a  portrait  of  him  by  two  strokes  of  the  pen,  which  almost 
deserve  to  be  called  masterly.  The  founder  of  the  sect  of 
Rogerenes  certainly  desired  persecution,  but  not  persecu- 
tion in  every  possible  form:  "  what  troubled  John  Rogers 
most  was  their  taking  his  wife  from  him,  and  giving  her  to 
a  lawyer  of  the  name  of  Pratt."  Nevertheless,  even  he 
had  his  revenge — if  not  upon  the  "  lawyer  of  the  name  of 
Pratt,"  at  least  upon  the  rest  of  the  world:  for  "  he  pub- 
lished a  commentary  on  the  Revelation.  He  that  hath 
patience  to  read  it,  let  him  read  it."  ' 

V. 

A  man  who  lacked  many  of  the  literary  qualifications  for 
an  historian  but  who  yet  had  the  root  of  the  matter  in  him, 
was  Isaac  Backus,  a  Baptist  minister,  born  in  1724  at  Nor- 
wich, Connecticut,  and  both  upon  his  father's  side  and  upon 
his  mother's  allied  to  some  of  the  oldest  and  most  honorable 
families  in  New  England.3  He  began  to  preach  when  he 
was  but  twenty-two,  and  he  continued  to  preach  until  he 
was  eighty-two;  having  been,  during  all  those  years,  tireless 
in  labor,  a  visitor  of  the  sick  and  sorrowing,  in  journeys 
often,  in  conflicts  many, — above  all  things,  a  father  of  his 
despised  sect,  a  champion  of  its  civil  and  religious  rights,  a 
dauntless  apostle  of  the  doctrine — then  almost  a  paradox 
among  us — of  the  total  separation  of  church  and  state.  In 
1772,  elected  by  the  Baptist  churches  in  Massachusetts,  he 
became  their  "  agent,"  and  in  their  name  he  went  before 
congresses,  conventions,  and  legislatures,  doing  much  to 
shape  the  new  laws  of  that  new  time  into  conformity  with 
the  majestic  principle  that,  in  matters  religious,  no  man 
may  be  interfered  with  by  the  civil  authority. 

This  man  it  was  who,  being  preacher,  pastor,  politician, 

1  "  Materials,"  etc.,  ii.  149. 

8  A  brief  sketch  of  him  is  to  be  found  in  Sprague,  "  Annals,"  etc.,  vi.  54-58. 
The  chief  authority,  however,  is  "  A  Memoir  of  the  Life  and  Times  of  the  Rev. 
Isaac  Backus,"  by  Alvah  Hovey. 


392  THE  AMERICAN  RE  VOL  UTIOX. 

agitator,  became  also  historian — in  the  latter  capacity  illus- 
trating some  of  the  primary  virtues  appertaining  thereto. 
So  effectually  did  he  strive  in  this  task,  even  amid  the  dis- 
tractions of  the  great  war,  that  he  was  able  to  publish,  in 
1777,  the  first  volume,  and,  in  1784,  the  second  volume,  of 
his  monumental  work, — "  A  History  of  New  England, 
with  particular  Reference  to  the  Denomination  of  Christians 
called  Baptists:  containing  the  first  principles  and  settle- 
ments of  the  Country ;  the  rise  and  increase  of  the  Baptist 
churches  therein;  the  introduction  of  arbitrary  power  under 
the  cloak  of  religion;  the  Christian  testimonies  of  the 
Baptists  and  others  against  the  same,  with  their  sufferings 
under  it,  from  the  beginning  to  the  present  time."  : 

His  call  to  this  great  office  of  historian  did  not  come  to 
him  either  through  literary  ambition  or  even  through  the 
antiquarian  zest:  it  came,  apparently,  through  his  belief 
that,  ever  since  the  settlement  of  New  England,  monstrous 
crimes  against  religious  liberty  had  been  there  perpetrated 
by  the  civil  and  religious  leaders  of  the  commonwealth ;  and 
that,  as  the  history  of  the  commonwealth  had  been  written 
chiefly  by  the  very  men  who  had  perpetrated  these  crimes, 
or  by  their  natural  representatives,  its  history  had  never  been 
truly  or  fairly  written.  "  As  every  one  is  orthodox  to  him- 
self, they  who  have  oppressed  others  have  always  denied 
it."  "If  it  should  be  found  that  near  all  the  histories  of 
this  country  which  are  much  known,  have  been  written  by 
persons  who  thought  themselves  invested  with  power  to  act 
as  lawgivers  and  judges  for  their  neighbors,  under  the  name 
either  of  orthodoxy  or  of  immediate  power  from  heaven,  the 
inference  will  be  strong  that  our  affairs  have  never  been  set 
in  so  clear  a  light  as  they  ought  to  be."  * 

1  The  first  volume  brings  the  history  down  to  1690  ;  the  second,  to  1784.  A 
third  volume  was  published  in  1796,  continuing  the  history  to  that  year.  An 
abridgement  of  the  three  volumes  was  published  in  one  volume  in  1804,  the 
history  being  once  more  brought  down  to  date.  Finally,  a  new  edition  of  the 
original  work,  revised  by  David  Weston,  was  published  in  two  volumes,  in  1871. 
"  A  History  of  New  England,"  i.  Pref. 


ISAAC  BACKUS.  393 

Therefore,  to  set  "  our  affairs  "  in  a  clearer  light — in 
other  words,  with  respect  to  the  history  of  New  England,  to 
drag  to  the  surface  a  series  of  tremendous  facts  which  have 
hitherto  been  thrust  below  and  kept  out  of  sight — such  is 
the  principal  purpose  of  this  historian.  He  accuses  his  pre- 
decessors of  being  partisan  ;  and  if,  in  the  opposite  direction, 
he  is  equally  partisan,  he  would  perhaps  insist  that  it  was 
his  duty  to  be  so,  in  order  to  redress  the  long-disturbed 
balance  of  historic  testimony.  "  Only  the  author  must  say, 
that  he  has  acted  under  a  full  belief  that  with  what  measure 
we  mete,  it  shall  be  measured  to  us  again ;  so  that  we  cannot 
injure  others  in  any  case,  without  therein  wronging  our  own 
souls."  l 

At  any  rate,  he  is  not  to  be  turned  aside  from  his  stern 
task  of  exposing  evil-doers,  merely  because  those  evil-doers 
happen  to  be  dead  and  to  be  venerated.  "  The  greatest 
objection  that  I  have  heard  against  this  design  is,  that  we 
ought  not  to  rake  up  the  ashes  of  our  good  fathers,  nor  to 
rehearse  those  old  controversies,  which  will  tend  to  in- 
crease our  present  difficulties.  But  what  is  meant  by  this 
objection  ?  To  reveal  secrets,  or  to  repeat  matters  that 
have  been  well  settled  between  persons  or  parties,  is  forbid- 
den, and  its  effects  are  very  pernicious;  but  what  is  that  to 
a  history  of  public  facts,  and  an  examination  of  the  prin- 
ciples and  conduct  both  of  oppressors  and  of  the  op- 
pressed ?  "  * 

Being  upon  our  guard,  then,  against  this  writer's  prepos- 
session, we  may  note  that  his  method  of  procedure  antici- 
pates every  feature  of  modern  historic  research :  a  tireless 
hunt  for  the  original  documents,  a  tireless  study  of  them,  a 
reference  of  every  problem  to  them,  the  use  in  essential 
particulars  of  their  very  words,  finally,  a  perception  of  the 
worthlessness  of  every  historic  affirmation  that  stands  with- 
out its  source  definitely  given.  "  Let  us,"  says  he,  "  hear 
those  fathers  tell  their  own  story."  In  order  to  do  this, 
he  makes  no  difficulty  of  journeys  far  and  near;  of  turning 

1  "  A  History  of  New  England,"  i.  Pref.  *  Ibid.  3  Ibid.  1-2. 


jt^  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

over  patiently  the  manuscript  records  of  churches,  towns, 
colonies,  States ;  of  writing  out  with  his  own  hand  the  exact 
language  of  the  fathers.  "  Here,  therefore,"  he  is  able  to 
say^at  last,  "are  a  great  number  of  particulars  with  good 
vouchers  to  support  them." 

The  result  of  all  this  toil  is,  indeed,  a  book  without  classic 
symmetry  or  charm,  with  no  amenities  of  style,  without  the 
calm  grandeur  of  disinterestedness,  yet  thorough  and 
genuine  in  all  its  parts,  honest  in  purpose,  every  page  of  it 
bearing  the  stamp  of  "  simplicity,  perspicuity,  integrity, 
and  manliness,"  *  the  whole  quite  needful  to  be  reckoned 
with  by  any  one  who  would  grasp  the  significance  of  the 
history  of  New  England  for  its  first  two  centuries. 

VI. 

Reaching  the  line  which,  in  these  historical  essays,  divides 
Colonial  themes  from  those  of  the  Revolution,  we  confront 
a  writer  who,  in  his  capacity  as  historian,  not  only  towers 
above  all  his  contemporaries,  but  deals  with  themes  which 
are  both  Colonial  and  Revolutionary.  This  writer  is  the 
man  so  famous  and  so  hated  in  his  day  as  a  Loyalist  states- 
man and  magistrate,  Thomas  Hutchinson,  the  last  civilian 
who  served  as  governor  of  Massachusetts  under  appointment 
of  the  king. 

A  recent  and  a  very  competent  American  critic  '  has  char- 
acterized the  three  volumes  of  Thomas  Hutchinson's 
"History  of  Massachusetts  Bay"  and  the  one  volume 
of  his  "  Collection  of  Original  Papers  "  as  "  the  four  most 
precious  books  "  touching  that  portion  of  American  history. 
Indeed,  that  in  these  volumes  Hutchinson  has  illustrated 
the  fundamental  virtues  of  an  historian,  and  that  he  de- 
serves to  be  ranked  as,  upon  the  whole,  the  ablest  historical 
writer  produced  in  America  prior  to  the  nineteenth  century, 
are  conclusions  as  to  which  there  is  now  substantial  agree- 

1  "  A  History  of  New  England,"  i.  Pref. 

3  Hovey,  "  A  Memoir  ...  of  Isaac  Backus,"  32. 

J  William  Frederick  Poole,  in  "  The  Dial,"  vol.  v.  number  51. 


THOMAS  HUTCHINSON.  395 

mcnt  among  scholars.  James  Savage  called  him  "  the  most 
diligent  and  exact  of  all  writers  of  colonial  history,  since 
Winthrop."  '  Charles  Francis  Adams,  the  elder,  put  many 
eulogies  into  few  words  when  he  described  Hutchinson  as 
an  historian  who  "  is  seldom  inaccurate."  a  Charles  Deane, 
who  regarded  Hutchinson's  historical  labors  as  of  "  the  high- 
est value,"  partly  accounted  for  their  worth  by  the  remark, 
that  "  Hutchinson's  mind  was  eminently  a  judicial  one," 
and  that  "  candor,  moderation,  and  a  desire  for  truth,  ap- 
pear to  have  guided  his  pen."  '  William  Frederick  Poole, 
after  pointing  out  that  Hutchinson  "  had  opportunities  of 
access  to  original  papers  such  as  no  person  now  possesses," 
declared  that  he  had  also  made  an  adequate  use  of  his  un- 
rivaled opportunities: — "  He  had  the  tastes,  the  capacity 
for  close  application  and  research,  the  judicial  understand- 
ing, and  the  freedom  from  prejudice  and  partisanship,  which 
characterize  the  genuine  historian.  His  style,  if  not  always 
elegant,  is  clear  and  simple,  and  singularly  free  from  that 
sensational  and  rhetorical  method  of  statement  which  is  the 
bane  of  much  of  the  historical  writing  of  the  present  day." 
It  is  far  from  being  a  reason  for  abating  anything  from  the 
glory  due  to  such  achievements  in  historical  literature,  that 
they  were  but  the  recreation  and  by-play  of  a  most,  laborious 
man-of-affairs,  who,  as  politician,  legislator,  and  magistrate, 
was  from  manhood  to  old  age  in  the  thick  of  nearly  all  im- 
portant business  pertaining  to  the  interests  of  his  country; 
who,  prior  to  1765,  was  incomparably  the  most  popular  and 
the  most  influential  statesman  in  New  England ;  and  who, 
from  the  year  of  the  Stamp  Act  until  that  of  his  own  death 
in  London  fifteen  years  afterward,  was  the  most  powerful 
American  statesman  in  the  ranks  of  the  Loyalist  party. 
In  writing  the  early  history  of  Massachusetts,  Thomas 

1  John  Winthrop,   "  The  History  of  New  England,"  with   Notes  by  James 
Savage,  i.  296,  note. 

9  "  The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  i.  103. 

3"  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Proc.."  iii.  147. 

4  "  The  N.  E.  Hist,  and  Gen.  Register,"  xxiv.  381-382. 


396  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Hutchinson  was  in  effect  writing  the  history  of  his  own  an- 
cestors, some  of  whom  had  been  eminent,  some  of  whom 
had  been  notorious,  in  the  colony  almost  frpm  the  year  of 
its  foundation  He  was  born  in  Boston  in  1711.  Immedi- 
ately upon  his  graduation  at  Harvard  College  in  1727,  he 
entered  the  counting-house  of  his  father,  who  was  a  pros- 
perous merchant.  Clear-headed,  thorough,  methodical,  in- 
defatigable, he  at  once  developed  a  high  capacity  for  business, 
both  commercial  and  political.  In  1737,  he  was  chosen  a 
selectman  for  the  town  of  Boston,  and  a  month  or  two  later, 
one  of  its  representatives  in  the  colonial  legislature.  The 
burning  question  in  politics  at  that  time  was  public  finance, 
— a  subject  on  which  Thomas  Hutchinson  was,  probably, 
the  greatest  master  produced  in  America  prior  to  Robert 
Morris,  Pelatiah  Webster,  and  Alexander  Hamilton.  Thirty- 
five  years  before  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  there  was 
in  Massachusetts  a  large  and  vociferous  party  resolved  upon 
various  schemes  for  fiat  money  and  for  wild-cat  banking. 
Against  all  these  schemes,  this  young  politician  set  himself 
with  fearless  and  most  intelligent  opposition, — thus  shewing 
at  the  beginning  of  his  long  political  career  that  trait  of  in- 
tellectual and  moral  independence  which  he  continued  to 
exercise  to  the  very  end  of  it.  From  the  age  of  twenty-six 
when  he  was  elected  to  his  first  office,  until  the  age  of  sixty- 
three  when  he  resigned  his  last  one,  he  was  kept  constantly 
and  conspicuously  in  the  public  service,  either  as  selectman, 
member  of  the  house  of  representatives,  speaker  of  the 
house,  member  of  the  council,  commissioner  to  the  general 
congress  at  Albany  in  1754,  commissioner  on  many  negotia- 
tions with  the  Indians,  judge  of  probate,  justice  of  the  com- 
mon-pleas, chief-justice,  lieutenant-governor,  and  finally 
governor.  Before  the  outbreak  of  the  great  controversy 
between  the  colonies  and  the  British  government,  no  other 
man  in  America  had,  to  so  high  a  degree  as  Hutchinson,  the 
confidence  both  of  the  British  government  on  the  one  hand, 
and  of  his  own  countrymen  on  the  other.  Had  his  advice 
been  taken  in  that  controversy  by  either  of  the  two  parties 


THOMAS  HUTCHINSON.  397 

who  had  so  greatly  confided  in  him,  the  war  of  the  Revolu- 
tion would  have  been  averted.*  His  advice  was  twofold: 
first,  that  the  British  government  should  be  content  with  the 
assertion  of  the  constiutional  principle  of  the  supremacy  of 
parliament,  and  forbear  from  exercising  it  in  the  article  of 
American  taxation;  and,  secondly,  that  the  Americans 
should  forbear  from  denying  the  constitutional  principle  of 
the  supremacy  of  parliament,  in  view  of  the  assurance  that, 
upon  their  doing  so,  that  principle  should  never  be  exercised 
in  any  form  of  colonial  taxation.  To  these  two  ideas  of  public 
policy  and  of  public  righteousness,  Thomas  Hutchinson,  as 
is  now  known,  remained  faithful  unto  death, — in  his  fidelity 
to  them  sacrificing,  on  the  one  hand,  popularity,  home, 
fortune,  and  the  privilege  of  burial  by  the  side  of  his  loved 
ones,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  some  portion  even  of  his  per- 
sonal favor  with  the  king.  Thus,  in  his  championship  of  a 
noble,  even  if  baffled,  scheme  for  the  liberty  and  unity  of 
the  English-speaking  race,  this  statesman  of  Massachusetts 
takes  his  stand,  in  the  history  of  the  American  Revolution, 
by  the  side  of  Joseph  Galloway  of  Pennsylvania,  as  atypical 
American  Loyalist. 

VII. 

While  the  writing  of  history  was  for  Hutchinson  but  the 
recreation  and  by-play  of  a  life  immersed  in  outward  busi- 

1  It  may  help  the  modern  reader  to  some  appreciation  of  the  pre- Revolution- 
ary standing  of  Thomas  Hutchinson  to  read  an  entry  made  by  John  Adams  in 
his  diary  for  March  17, 1766 — the  very  month  of  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act — 
wherein,  with  his  usual  orotundity  of  statement,  he  mentions  the  trophies  of 
this  New  England  Miltiades  by  which  the  ambitious  young  lawyer  could  not 
sleep:  "  Has  not  his  merit  been  sounded  very  high,  by  his  countrymen,  for 
twenty  years  ?  Have  not  his  countrymen  loved,  admired,  revered,  rewarded, 
nay,  almost  adored  him?  Have  not  ninety-nine  in  a  hundred  of  them  really 
thought  him  the  greatest  and  best  man  in  America  ?  .  .  .  Nay,  have  not  the  af- 
fection and  admiration  of  his  countrymen  arisen  so  high  as  often  to  style  him 
the  greatest  and  best  man  in  the  world?"  "  The  Works  of  John  Adams,"  ii. 
189-190.  Six  years  afterward,  John  Adams  wrote  in  his  diary  that  he  and  his 
kinsman,  Samuel  Adams,  had  always  "  concurred  in  sentiment  that  the  liberties 
of  this  country  had  more  to  fear  from  one  man,  the  present  Governor  Hutchin- 


398  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

ness,  the  study  of  history  seems  to  have  been  a  passion  with 
him  almost  from  his  childhood.  Speaking  of  himself  in  the 
third  person,  he  once  wrote  in  his  diary : — "  History  was  his 
favorite  study ;  and  when  a  boy,  before  he  went  to  college, 
he  chose  rather  to  spend  an  evening  in  reading  Morton's 
'  New  England  Memorial,'  Church's  '  History  of  the  Indian 
War,'  Dr.  Mather's  '  Lives  of  the  New  England  Governors/ 
etc.,  than  to  be  at  play  with  boys  in  the  street.  And  he 
had  made  some  advances  in  the  English  History.  The 
tragical  account  of  King  Charles's  sufferings  and  death  hap- 
pening to  fall  into  his  hands,  tho'  it  produced  tears,  he  went 
through  it  with  eagerness;  and  Baker's  '  Chronicle,'  and 
Fox's  '  Martyrology,'  being  among  his  father's  books, 
afforded  him  much  entertainment."  '  Among  the  papers 
left  by  Hutchinson  at  his  death,  was  found  this  additional 
note  of  self-description: — "  In  the  course  of  my  education, 
I  found  no  part  of  science  a  more  pleasing  study  than  his- 
tory, and  no  part  of  the  history  of  any  country  more  useful 
th;m  that  of  its  government  and  laws.  The  history  of  Great 
Britain  and  of  its  dominions  was  of  all  others  the  most  de- 
lightful to  me;  and  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  nature 
and  constitution  of  the  supreme  and  of  the  subordinate  gov- 
ernments thereof  I  considered  as  what  would  be  peculiarly 
beneficial  to  me  in  the  line  of  life  upon  which  I  was  entering ; 
and  the  public  employments  to  which  I  was  early  called,  and 
sustained  for  near  thirty  years  together,  gave  me  many  ad- 
vantages for  the  acquisition  of  this  knowledge. ' "  It  should 
be  added  that,  even  then,  Hutchinson  had  the  scientific 
idea  of  the  importance  of  primary  documents.  Through  his 
great  eminence  in  the  community,  and  through  his  ceaseless 
zeal  in  the  collection  of  such  documents,  he  was  enabled  in 

son,  than  from  any  other  man,  nay,  than  from  all  other  men  in  the  world.  This 
sentiment  was  founded  in  their  knowledge  of  his  character,  his  unbounded  am- 
bition,  and  his  unbounded  popularity."  Ibid.  295. 

"The  Diary  and  Letters  of  His   Excellency  Thomas  Hutchinson,  Esq." 
Edited  by  his  great-grandson,  Peter  Orlando  Hutchinson,  i.  47. 

*  Cited  by  Charles  Deane  in  his  admirable  paper  on  "  Hutchinson's  Histori- 
cal  Publications."     ••  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Proc.,"  iii.  147. 


THOMAS  HUTCH  IN  SON.  399 

the  course  of  many  years  to  bring  together  a  multitude  of 
manuscript  materials  of  priceless  value  touching  the  history 
of  New  England. 

With  such  materials  at  his  command-,  and  using  with  dili- 
gence those  fragments  of  time  which  his  unflagging  energy 
enabled  him  to  pluck  from  business  and  from  sleep,  he  was 
ready,  in  July,  1764,  amid  the  first  mutterings  of  that  politi- 
cal storm  which  was  to  play  havoc  with  these  peaceful  studies 
and  to  shatter  the  hopes  of  his  life-time,  to  send  to  the 
printer,  in  Boston,  the  first  volume  of  "  The  History  of  the 
Colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  from  the  First  Settlement 
thereof  in  1628,  until  .  .  .  1691."  ' 

The  great  place  in  public  life  then  held  by  the  author 
of  this  book,  the  fulness  of  his  learning,  his  ability,  the 
fairness  of  his  method  in  dealing  with  the  subject,  finally, 
the  incomparable  interest  which  that  subject  had  for  the 
people  to  whom  it  was  addressed,  all  combined,  even  amid 
the  ferocities  and  clamors  of  politics,  to  give  to  its  publica- 
tion very  considerable  eclat.  In  spite  of  the  distractions  of 
that  angry  and  perilous  period,  the  author  at  once  set  to 
work  upon  his  second  volume,  which  was  to  carry  the  history 
of  Massachusetts  down  to  the  year  1750.  In  this  noble  task 
he  had  proceeded  for  a  considerable  time,  and  had  brought 
the  story  as  far  on  as  to  the  year  1730,  "  when,"  as  he  after- 
ward wrote,  "  a  misfortune  befell  me  which  had  like  to  have 
rendered  my  past  labor  of  no  effect  and  to  have  prevented 
me  from  proceeding  any  farther."4  This  misfortune,  of 
course,  was  the  riotous  attack  upon  his  house  in  Boston  by 
a  mob  maddened  by  rum  and  by  the  false  charge  that 
Hutchinson  had  been  in  favor  of  the  passage  of  the  Stamp 
Act. 

'By  an  advertisement  in  the  Boston  "  Evening  Post,"  it  appears  to  have 
been  issued  December  17,  1764.  In  the  following  year,  it  was  reprinted  in 
London,  and  that  reprint  was  called  "  The  Second  Edition."  By  a  typographi- 
cal error,  the  final  character  in  the  intended  date  upon  the  title-page  was  left 
off,  and  thus  the  second  edition  purports  to  have  been  published  in  MDCCLX,. 
four  years  before  the  first  edition.  My  references  are  to  this  second  edition. 

2  Part  of  the  Preface  to  the  second  volume  of  his  "  History." 


4QO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

It  was  on  the  evening  of  Monday,  the  twenty-sixth  of 
August,  1765,  that  the  Lieutenant-Governor,  according  to  a 
narrative  written  by  some  friend  five  days  afterward,  received 
warning,  while  he  was  at  supper  in  his  own  house  with  his 
motherless  children,  "  that  the  mob  was  coming  to  him. 
He  immediately  sent  away  his  children,  and  determined  to 
stay  in  the  house  himself;  but,  happily,  his  eldest  daughter 
returned,  and  declared  she  would  not  stir  from  the  house 
unless  he  went  with  her :  by  which  means  she  got  him  away, 
which  was  undoubtedly  the  occasion  of  saving  his  life.  For, 
as  the  mob  had  got  into  the  house,  with  a  most  irresistible 
fury,  they  immediately  looked  about  for  him,  to  murder 
him,  and  even  made  diligent  enquiry  whither  he  was  gone. 
They  went  to  work  with  a  rage  scarce  to  be  exemplified  by  the 
most  savage  people.  Every  thing  moveable  was  destroyed 
in  the  most  minute  manner,  except  such  things  of  value 
as  were  worth  carrying  off, — among  which  were  near  one 
thousand  pounds  sterling  in  specie,  besides  a  great  quantity 
of  family  plate,  and  so  forth."  "  As  for  the  house,  which, 
from  its  structure  and  inside  finishing,  seemed  to  be  from  a 
design  of  Inigo  Jones,  or  his  successor,  it  appears  that  they 
were  a  long  while  resolved  to  level  it  to  the  ground.  They 
worked  three  hours  at  the  cupola  before  they  could  get  it 
down,  and  they  uncovered  part  of  the  roof;  but  I  suppose 
that  the  thickness  of  the  walls,  which  were  of  very  fine  brick- 
work adorned  with  Ionic  pilasters  worked  into  the  wall,  pre- 
vented their  completing  their  purpose,  though  they  worked 
at  it  till  day-light.  The  next  day,  the  streets  were  found 
scattered  with  money,  plate,  gold  rings,  and  so  forth,  which 
had  been  dropt  in  carrying  off."  "  But  the  loss  to  be  most 
lamented  is,  that  there  was  in  one  room,  kept  for  that  pur- 
pose, a  large  and  valuable  collection  of  manuscripts  and 
original  papers,  which  he  had  been  gathering  all  his  life- 
time, and  to  which  all  persons  who  had  been  in  possession 
of  valuable  papers  of  a  public  kind,  had  been  contributing, 
as  to  a  public  museum.  As  these  related  to  the  history  and 
policy  of  the  country,  from  the  time  of  its  settlement  to  the 


THOMAS  HUTCHINSON.  40 1 

present,  and  was  the  only  collection  of  its  kind,  the  loss  to 
the  public  is  great  and  irretrievable, — as  it  is  to  himself  the 
loss  of  the  papers  of  a  family  which  had  made  a  figure  in 
this  province  for  a  hundred  and  thirty  years."  ' 

Among  the  treasures  which  thus  lay  scattered  abroad  in 
the  wet  and  filthy  streets  for  several  hours  of  that  night  of 
barbarity,  was  his  unfinished  manuscript  for  the  second 
volume  of  his  History  of  Massachusetts;  and  though  for 
several  days  afterward  the  historian  quite  despaired  of  re- 
covering it,  yet,  through  the  help  of  his  friend  and  neighbor, 
the  Reverend  Andrew  Eliot,  all  but  eight  or  ten  sheets 
were  rescued  from  destruction.  Bespattered  with  rain  and 
mud,  stamped  and  torn  by  the  hoofs  of  horses  and  of  men, 
much  of  this  recovered  manuscript  proved  to  be  so  far  legible 
that  it  could  be  transcribed  by  the  author,  who  was  also 
able  to  supply  the  rest.9  Accordingly,  resuming  his  work, 
and  carrying  forward  the  story  to  the  year  1750,  he  pub- 
lished his  second  volume  in  the  early  summer  of  the  year 
1767, — not  far  from  the  very  day  on  which  parliament,  by 
the  passage  of  the  Townsend  Act,  perpetrated  the  ineffable 
folly  of  plunging  the  empire  into  such  tumults  as  led  to  its 
disruption.3 


1  These  paragraphs  are  from  a  letter,  probably  by  Governor  Bernard,  and 
dated  August  31,  1765.     It  was  printed,  without  signature,  in  the  Appendix  to 
the  celebrated  English  pamphlet  entitled  "  The  Conduct  of  the  Late  Adminis- 
tration Examined."     London  :    1767,  pages  xlii-xlviii. 

2  The  first  sheets  of  this  first  draught  of  Hutchinson's  second  volume,  which 
thus  survived  that  horrid  night,  and  which  still  bear  the  stains  and  bruises  of  the 
outrage  put  upon  them,  are  now  preserved  in  the  library  of  the  State  of  Massa- 
chusetts.    Hutchinson  himself  had  told  us,  in  the  Preface  to  that  volume,  that 
the  copy  sent  to  the  press  was  a  transcript  made  by  himself  from  this  first 
draught ;  but  it  remained  for  William  Frederick  Poole  to  make  the  interesting 
and  valuable  discovery  that  the  copy  from  which  the  book  was  printed  is  not  so 
good  as  that  original  draught :  "  Incidents  and  opinions  contained  in  the  earlier 
draught  are  changed,  abridged,  and  sometimes  omitted,  in  the  later  draught. 
In  matters  of  fact,  the  earlier  draught  is  often  more  precise  and  accurate  than 
the  printed  text."     "  The  N.  E.  Hist,  and  Gen.  Reg.,"  xxiv.  381. 

3  "  The  Evening  Post,"  of  Boston,  for  July  13,  1767,  advertises  Hutchinson's 
second  volume  as  "  just  published." 

VOL.    II.— 26 


402  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Notwithstanding  the  lurid  and  bitter  incidents  amid  which 
it  was  written,  the  second  volume  of  Hutchinson's  History 
of  Massachusetts,  like  the  first  one,  has  the  tone  of  modera- 
tion and  of  equanimity  suggestive  of  a  philosopher  abstracted 
from  outward  cares,  and  devoted  to  the  disinterested  dis- 
covery and  exposition  of  the  truth.  Only  in  the  Preface  is 
there  any  allusion  to  the  indignity  from  the  fatal  effects  of 
which  the  historian  and  his  History  had  so  narrowly  escaped. 
After  narrating  concisely  the  events  which  led  to  the  tem- 
porary loss  of  his  own  manuscript,  and  to  the  permanent 
loss  of  other  documents  still  more  valuable,  he  contents  him- 
self with  a  single  sentence  of  austere  and  not  unrighteous 
indignation : — "  I  pray  God  to  forgive  the  actors  in,  and  ad- 
visers to,  this  most  savage  and  inhuman  injury ;  and  I  hope 
their  posterity  will  read  with  pleasure  and  profit  what  has  so 
narrowly  escaped  the  outrage  of  their  ancestors." 

VIII. 

From  the  time  of  the  publication  of  the  second  installment 
of  his  work,  sixty-one  years  were  to  elapse  before  the  public 
should  receive  ocular  evidence  that  the  author  had  had  the 
fortitude,  amid  the  calamities  which  overwhelmed  his  later 
years,  to  go  on  with  his  historical  labors,  and  to  complete  a 
third  and  final  volume,  telling  the  story  of  Massachusetts 
from  the  year  1750  until  the  year  1774— the  year  in  which 
he  laid  down  his  office  as  governor,  and  departed  for  Eng- 
land. 

He  was  summoned  thither  at  his  own  desire,  in  order  to 
report  in  person  to  the  king  and  ministry  the  condition  of 
affairs  in  America,  and  especially  in  his  own  province. 
Moreover,  if  we  may  accept  the  solemn  and  pathetic  declar- 
ations now  to  be  found  scattered*  through  the  letters  and 
diaries  which  he  wrote  in  England,  a  nearer  and  a  dearer 
purpose  prompted  him  to  ask  permission  to  go  there :  it  -was 
that  he  might,  by  direct  personal  appeal,  dissuade  the  gov- 
ernment from  persisting  in  its  impolitic  measures  toward  the 


THOMAS  HUTCHINSON.  403 

colonies,  and  might  thus  avert  from  his  country  the  ineffable 
calamity  of  a  fratricidal  war — the  nearness  of  which  he  could 
not  fail  to  see.1 

Of  course,  his  mission  to  England  was  a  failure.  The 
quarrel  had  already  gone  too  far;  already  upon  both  sides 
blood  had  become  too  hot;  and,  before  very  long,  both  at 
the  levees  of  the  king  and  at  the  audiences  of  the  ministers, 
the  somewhat  dreary  and  monitory  tales  of  this  fumbling 
New  England  courtier  fell  upon  impatient  ears,  until,  in- 
deed, they  were  quenched  in  the  ultimate  disaster  of  a  royal 
snub."  In  the  meantime,  no  slight,  no  misfortune,  could 
quench  his  love  for  his  country,  his  longing  to  save  it  from 
misery,  his  longing  to  return  to  it  and  to  lay  his  body  where 
was  buried  that  of  the  wife  of  his  youth.  "  I  am  not  able 

1  For  his  opposition  to  the  parliamentary  taxation  of  the  colonies,  and  for 
his  efforts  to  secure  some  mitigation  of  the  Boston  port  bill  and,  in  other  ways, 
to  soften  ministerial  measures  and  to  prevent  a  resort  to  hostilities,  the  reader 
may  find  it  of  interest  to  turn  to  the  following  pages  of  the  first  volume  of  his 
"  Diary  and  Letters'  : — 70,  188,   189,  197,  203,  214,  217,  219,  220,  233,  261, 
285-286,  375,  381,  500. 

2  Some  sorrowful  hints  of  all  this  are  given  by  Hutchinson  himself  in  his 
"  Diary,"  as  where  he  mentions,  in  a  bewildered  sort  of  way,  the  first  time 
that  the  king  passed  him  at  a  levee  without  speaking  to  him  or  looking  at  him. 
John  Adams,  who  so  roundly  hated  Hutchinson,  and  who,  in  1785,  went  to  Lon- 
don as  American  minister,  seems  to  have  used   some   of   the   leisure   which 
the   disdain   of    that   court    conferred   upon   him,  in   gathering   up   items   of 
gossip  touching  the  humiliations  of    Hutchinson's   last   years.    "  Fled  in  his 
old  age,"  writes  John   Adams,  of  the  last  royal  governor  of  Massachusetts, 
'•  from  the  detestation  of  a  country  where  he  had  been  beloved,  esteemed,  and 
admired,  and  applauded  with  exaggeration — in  short,  where  he  had  been  every- 
thing from  his  infancy— to  a  country  where  he  was  nothing  ;  pinched  by  a  pen- 
sion, which,  though  ample  in   Boston,  would  barely  keep  a  house  in  London  ; 
throwing  round  his  baleful  eyes  on  the  exiled  companions  of  his  folly  ;  hearing 
daily  of  the  slaughter  of  his  countrymen  and  conflagration  of  their  cities  ;  ab- 
horred by  the  greatest  men  and  soundest  part  of  the  nation,  and  neglected,  if  not 
despised  by  the  rest,  hardened  as  had  been  my  heart  against  him,  I  assure  you  I 
was  melted  at  the  accounts  I  heard  of  his  condition.     Lord  Townsend  told  me 
that  he  put  an  end  to  his  own  life.     Though  I  did  not  believe  this,  I  know  he 
was  ridiculed  by  the  courtiers.     They  laughed  at  his  manners  at  the  levee,  at 
his  perpetual  quotation  of  his  brother  Foster,  searching  his  pockets  for  letters 
to  read  to  the  king,  and  the  king  turning  away  from  him  with  his  head  up,  etc." 
"  Works,"  x.  261-262. 


404 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


to  subdue  a  natural  attachment  to  the  very  soil  and  air,  as 
well  as  to  the  people,  of  New  England. "  "  The  prospect  is 
so  gloomy  that  I  am  sometimes  tempted  to  endeavor  to  for- 
get that  I  am  an  American,  and  to  turn  my  views  to  a  pro- 
vision for  what  remains  of  life  in  England ;  but  the  passion 
for  my  native  country  returns. "  "  "  People  in  high  and  low 
life  agree  in  advising  me  to  settle  in  England ;  but  I  cannot 
give  up  the  hopes  of  laying  my  bones  in  New  England,  and 
hitherto  I  consider  myself  as  only  upon  an  excursion  from 
home."  8  "  For  myself,  I  have  been  offered  the  fulfillment 
of  every  promise  or  assurance  given  me  before  I  left  America ; 
but  I  had  no  aim  at  honors  or  titles,  and  would  now  be  con- 
tent to  give  up  all  claim  to  them,  and  to  all  emoluments 
whatsoever,  and  to  spend  the  remainder  of  life  in  obscurity, 
if  upon  those  terms  I  could  purchase  the  peace  and  prosper- 
ity of  my  country."  *  "I  assure  you  I  had  rather  die  in  a 
little  country  farm  house  in  New  England,  than  in  the  best 
nobleman's  seat  in  Old  England."  6  "  New  England  is 
wrote  upon  my  heart  in  as  strong  characters  as  Calais  was 
upon  Queen  Mary's."  ' 

Borne  down  with  sorrow,  amazed  and  horror-stricken  at 
the  fury  of  the  storm  that  was  overturning  his  most  prudent 
calculations,  and  was  sweeping  him  and  his  party  from  all  their 
moorings  out  into  an  unknown  sea,  and,  for  them  and  for 
all  men,  was  changing  the  very  face  of  the  world,  he  found 
some  solace  in  resuming  in  England  the  historical  task  which 
he  had  left  unfinished.  In  his  diary  for  the  twenty-second 
of  October,  1778,  its  completion  is  recorded  in  this  modest 
note: — "  I  finished  the  revisal  of  my  History,  to  the  end  of 
my  Administration,  and  laid  it  by."  '  Laid  by  certainly  it 
was,  so  far  as  concerned  men's  knowledge  or  their  charitable 
speeches,  if  not  to  foreign  nations,  at  least  to  the  next  ages; 
and  not  until  the  year  1828,  was  it  permitted  to  come  forth 
to  the  light  of  day,  and  then,  largely,  through  the  magnani- 
mousjntervention  of  a  group  of  noble-minded  American 

|  "  Diary  and  Letters,"  of  Hutchinson,  i.  128.  s  Ibid.  215. 

Ibid.  231.     *  Ibid.  263.     •  Ibid.  356.     6  Ibid.  283.      '  Ibid.  ii.  218. 


THOMAS  HUTCHINSON.  405 

scholars  in  the  very  city  which,  in  his  later  life-time,  would 
not  have  permitted  his  return  to  it.1 

IX. 

A  great  historian,  Hutchinson  certainly  was  not,  and, 
under  the  most  favorable  outward  conditions,  could  not  have 
been.  He  had  the  fundamental  virtues  of  a  great  historian 
— love  of  truth,  love  of  justice,  diligence,  the  ability  to 
master  details  and  to  narrate  them  with  accuracy.  Even 
in  the  exercise  of  these  fundamental  virtues,  however,  no 
historian  in  Hutchinson's  circumstances  could  fail  to  be 
hampered  by  the  enormous  preoccupations  of  official  busi- 
ness, or  to  have  his  judgment  warped  and  colored  by  the 
prepossessions  of  his  own  political  career.  While  Hutchin- 
son was,  indeed,  a  miracle  of  industry,  it  was  only  a  small 
part  of  his  industry  that  he  was  free  to  devote  to  historical 
research.  However  sincere  may  have  been  his  purpose  to 
tell  the  truth  and  to  be  fair  to  all,  the  literary  product  of 
such  research  was  inevitably  weakened,  as  can  now  be  abun- 
dantly shewn,  by  many  serious  oversights  and  by  many 
glaring  misrepresentations,  apparently  through  his  failure  to 
make  a  thorough  use  of  important  sources  of  information 
then  accessible  to  him,  such  as  colonial  pamphlets,  colonial 
newspapers,  the  manuscripts  of  his  own  ancestors  and  of  the 
Mathers,  and  especially  the  general  court  records  of  the 
province  in  which  he  played  so  great  a  part.  As  to  the 
rarer  intellectual  and  spiritual  endowments  of  a  great  his- 
torian,— breadth  of  vision,  breadth  of  sympathy,  the  his- 
toric imagination,  and  the  power  of  style, — these  Hutchinson 

1  The  third  volume  of  Hutchinson's  History,  preserved,  indeed,  but  for  a 
time  almost  forgotten,  by  his  descendants  in  England,  was  issued  in  London,  in 
1828,  by  John  Murray,  who  was  induced  to  undertake  so  unpromising  an  enter- 
prise by  the  liberality  of  the  president  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society, 
the  president  of  Harvard  College,  the  governor  of  Massachusetts,  and  Mr.  James 
Savage.  It  was  chiefly  through  the  historical  zeal  and  the  persistence  of  the 
gentleman  last  named,  that  success  was  given  to  the  long  negotiations  with  the 
English  Hutchinsons  and  their  London  publisher.  The  story  of  this  is  briefly 
told  by  Charles  Deane  in  "  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Proc.,"  iii.  144-147. 


4o6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

almost  entirely  lacked.  That  he  had  not  the  gift  of  historical 
divination,  the  vision  and  the  faculty  divine  to  see  the 
inward  meaning  of  men  and  of  events,  and  to  express  that 
meaning  in  gracious,  noble,  and  fascinating  speech — Hutch- 
inson  was  himself  partly  conscious.  "  I  am  sensible," 
he  says,  with  his  usual  modesty,  respecting  the  first  volume 
of  his  History,  "  that  whoever  appears  in  print  should  be 
able  to  dispose  his  matter  in  such  order,  and  clothe  it  with 
such  style  and  language,  as  shall  not  only  inform  but  delight 
the  reader.  Therefore,  I  would  willingly  have  delivered 
over  everything  I  have  collected  to  a  person  of  genius  for 
such  a  work.  But  seeing  no  prospect  of  its  being  done  by 
any  other,  I  engaged  in  it  myself,  being  very  loth  that  what 
had  cost  me  some  pains  to  bring  together,  should  be  again 
scattered  and  utterly  lost."  ' 

His  first  volume  seems  to  have  been  written  under  a  con- 
sciousness that  his  subject  was  provincial,  and  even  of  a 
local  interest  altogether  circumscribed.  In  the  second 
volume,  one  perceives  a  more  cheery  and  confident  tone, 
due,  probably,  to  the  prompt  recognition  which  his  labors 
had  then  received  not  only  in  Massachusetts  but  in  Eng- 
land. In  the  third  volume,  are  to  be  observed  signs  of  in- 
creasing ease  in  composition,  a  more  flowing  and  copious 
style,  not  a  few  felicities  of  expression. 

That,  in  all  these  volumes,  he  intended  to  tell  the  truth, 
and  to  practice  fairness,  is  also  plain :  to  say  that  he  did  not 
entirely  succeed,  is  to  say  that  he  was  human.  His  purpose 
to  be  fair  in  his  handling  of  all  controversies  of  which  he  had 
to  take  account,  is  well  stated  by  himself  with  reference  to 
a  single  one  of  them: — "  I  am  apprehensive  some  of  my 
readers  will  be  apt  to  doubt  the  impartiality  of  the  relation. 
.  .  .  I  am  not  sensible  of  having  omitted  any  material 
fact,  nor  have  I  designedly  given  a  varnish  to  the  actions  of 
one  party,  or  high  coloring  to  those  of  the  other.  .  .  . 
I  profess  to  give  a  true  relation  of  facts.  I  see  no  difference 
between  publishing  false  facts  for  truths,  and  omitting  any 

1  Preface  to  the  first  volume. 


THOMAS  HUTCHINSON.  407 

which  are  material  for  the  forming  a  just  conception  of  the 
rest."  *  A  striking  instance  of  his  judicial  tone  is  to  be 
noted  in  the  story,  given  by  him  in  his  first  volume,  of  the 
•career  of  his  ancestress,  Mistress  Anne  Hutchinson.  In- 
deed, many  of  the  first  readers  of  that  volume  thought  that, 
in  many  particulars,  he  had  carried  his  impartiality  too  far: 
they  accused  him  of  coldness  of  heart  in  giving  so  hard,  dry, 
and  unfeeling  a  narrative  of  the  Indian  wars, — especially  of 
the  sufferings  of  his  own  countrymen,  even  of  his  own  kin- 
dred, at  the  hands  of  the  savages.3  In  his  second  volume, 
the  whole  of  which  was  written  after  the  beginning  of  his 
own  unpopula-ity,  and  a  part  of  it  even  after  the  looting 
and  demolition  of  his  house,  there  is  a  tinge  of  still  deeper 
political  conservatism,  and  of  a  sad,  if  not  cynical,  convic- 
tion that  in  New  England  a  public  servant  might  have  to 
choose  between  popularity  and  fidelity  to  his  own  sense  of 
right.*  Of  course,  the  supreme  test  of  historical  fairness 
was  reached  when  he  came  to  the  writing  of  his  third 
volume, — which  was,  in  fact,  the  history  not  only  of  his 
contemporaries  but  of  himself,  and  of  himself  in  deep  and 
angry  disagreement  with  many  of  them.  It  is  much  to  his 
praise  to  say  that,  throughout  this  third  volume,  the  pre- 
vailing tone  is  calm,  moderate,  just,  with  only  occasional 
efforts  at  pleading  his  own  cause,  with  only  occasional  flick- 
ers of  personal  or  political  enmity.  Unquestionably,  in  his 
descriptions  of  such  antagonists  of  his  as  Hancock,  Bow- 
doin,  Gushing,  the  Adamses,  the  Otises,  he  does  make 
statements  which  imply  in  them  weaknesses  and  faults — in 
some  instances,  faults  of  a  very  serious  nature.  Even  in 
these  instances,  the  historian's  censures  of  them  may  per- 
haps be  called  gentle,  even  sweet,  by  comparison  with  the 
unrestrained  and  blasting  censures  of  him,  which,  as  he  well 
knew,  several  of  these  men  were  accustomed  publicly  to  ex- 

1  "  History,"  etc.,  ii.  288. 

*  It  will  be  remembered  that  Anne  Hutchinson  and  many  of  her  family  were 
cruelly  massacred  by  the  Indians. 

*  For  example,  volume  ii.  196,  226,  231. 


408  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

press.  Moreover,  with  the  exception  of  the  charge  of 
pecuniary  dishonor  against  Samuel  Adams — wherein  the 
historian  put  upon  record  what  he  and  many  of  his  contem- 
poraries believed  to  be  true — it  is  not  now  entirely  clear  that 
his  estimates  of  his  principal  antagonists  differ  very  much 
from  the  estimates  of  them  now  held  by  disinterested 
students  of  that  age. 

A  profound  writer  upon  the  history  of  New  England  ' 
has  expressed  the  opinion  that,  as  an  historian,  Hutchinson 
was  unfitted  for  the  work  he  undertook,  either  because  he 
had  no  heart,  or  because  he  had  no  heart  for  his  country, — • 
being  out  of  sympathy  with  the  strongest  and  best  currents 
of  the  life  of  its  people.  That  Hutchinson  had  a  heart — a 
tender  and  a  true  one — and  that  he  had  a  heart  even  for  his 
own  country,  has  now  been  placed  beyond  doubt  by  the 
publication  of  his  private  papers.  Moreover,  in  culture,  in 
opinion,  in  religious  faith,  in  conduct,  he  was  himself  a 
representative  New  England  Puritan.  Furthermore,  there 
was  no  element  of  civic  greatness  or  felicity  which  he  did 
not  covet  for  his  countrymen,  and  strive  to  procure.  Even 
with  their  fundamental  conception  as  to  the  proper  form 
for  their  own  political  rights,  he  was  in  accord, — declaring 
that  our  ancestors  "  left  their  native  country  with  the 
strongest  assurances  that  they  and  their  posterity  should 
enjoy  the  privileges  of  free  natural-born  English  subjects," 
and  praying  that  those  privileges  might  "  be  preserved  in- 
violate to  the  latest  posterity. ' ' a  Even  in  their  magnificent 
dream  of  a  great  American  empire,  he  shared, — giving  it  as 
one  reason,  in  fact,  for  preserving  the  records  of  "  the  rise 
and  progress  of  the  several  colonies,"  that  those  colonies 
were  destined,  "  in  a  few  generations,"  to  have  great  historic 
importance  by  becoming  constituent  parts  of  "  a  mighty 
empire." '  The  issue  upon  which,  at  last,  this  most  popular 
of  New  England  men  broke  with  many  of  his  contempo- 

1  J.  G.  Palfrey,  in  "  3  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Proc.",  ix.  173-174. 

I  Hutchinson,  "  History,"  etc.,  i.  Preface  iv. 

*  Hutchinson,  "Original  Papers,"  etc.,  Preface  i. 


THOMAS  HUTCHINSON.  409 

raries,  and  fell  out  of  line  with  what  finally  proved  to  be  the 
course  of  events,  was  an  issue  touching  the  method  of  realiz- 
ing this  magnificent  dream.  Hutchinson  believed  that  it 
could  be  realized,  and  that  it  ought  to  be  realized,  by  the 
process  of  a  natural  and  legal  development,  in  full  peace  and 
amity  with  the  mother  land — in  short,  by  evolution.  They 
believed,  on  the  other  hand,  that  such  process  would  be 
either  too  doubtful  or  too  slow  ;  that  their  magnificent 
dream  could  best  be  realized  by  a  sudden  attack  upon  their 
constitutional  environment,  by  a  swift  and  violent  rupture  of 
legal  and  traditionary  ties — in  short,  by  revolution.  Ac- 
cordingly, it  is  only  in  the  third  volume  of  his  History  that 
Hutchinson  can  truly  be  said  to  be  out  of  sympathy  with 
the  dominating  currents  of  the  life  of  his  countrymen. 
Nevertheless,  for  that  period  also,  what  he  thus  wrote,  even 
if  it  breathes  the  tone  of  a  baffled  and  an  alienated  man,  is 
of  high  value  as  the  testimony  of  one  who  took  a  great  part 
in  the  events  which  he  endeavors  to  narrate. 

No  one  should  approach  the  reading  of  Hutchinson's 
"  History  of  Massachusetts  Bay"  with  the  expectation  of 
finding  in  it  either  brilliant  writing  or  an  entertaining  story. 
From  beginning  to  end,  there  are  few  passages  that  can  be 
called  even  salient — but  almost  everywhere  an  even  flow  of 
statesmanlike  narrative ;  severe  in  form ;  rather  dull,  probably, 
to  all  who  have  not  the  preparation  of  a  previous  interest  in 
the  matters  discussed ;  but  always  pertinent,  vigorous,  and 
full  of  pith.  Notwithstanding  Hutchinson's  modest  opin- 
ion of  his  own  ability  in  the  drawing  of  historical  portraits, 
it  is  probable  that  in  such  portraits  of  distinguished 
characters,  both  among  his  contemporaries  and  among  his 
predecessors,  the  general  reader  will  be  likely  to  find  him- 
self the  most  interested.  One  of  these  portraits  is  that 
of  Joseph  Dudley,  governor  of  Massachusetts,  by  royal  ap- 
pointment, from  1702  to  1715.  Perhaps  Hutchinson  may 
have  wrought  at  this  sketch  with  especial  care,  as  being  con 
scious*  that  in  the  character  and  in  the  earlier  career  of  Gov- 
ernor Dudley  were  some  features  of  resemblance  to  his  own, 


4io 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


even  as  he  may  also  have  believed  that  the  later  triumphs  of 
his  predecessor  in  office,  were  but  a  prophecy  of  those  that 
then  awaited  him: — "  No  New  England  man  had  passed 
through  more  scenes  of  busy  life  than  Mr.  Dudley.  His 
friends  intended  otherwise.  He  was  educated  for  the  min- 
istry, and  if  various  dignities  had  been  known  in  the  New 
England  churches,  possibly  he  had  lived  and  died  a  clergy- 
man ;  but  without  this,  nothing  could  be  more  dissonant 
from  his  genius.  He  soon  turned  his  thoughts  to  civil 
affairs ;  was  first  a  deputy  or  representative  of  the  town  of 
Roxbury ;  then  an  assistant ;  then  agent  for  the  colony  in 
England,  where  he  laid  a  foundation  for  a  commission,  soon 
after,  appointing  him  president  of  the  council  of  Massachu- 
setts Bay  only,  but,  under  Andros,  for  all  New  England. 
Upon  the  Revolution,  for  a  short  time,  he  was  sunk  in  dis- 
grace, but  soon  emerged.  He  appeared,  first,  in  the  char- 
acter of  chief  justice  at  New  York;  then,  returning  to 
England,  became  lieutenant-governor  of  the  Isle  of  Wight 
and  member  of  parliament  for  Newtown,  both  which  places 
he  willingly  resigned  for  the  chief  command  in  his  own 
country.  Ambition  was  the  ruling  passion;  and  perhaps, 
like  Caesar,  he  had  rather  be  the  first  man  in  New  England 
than  the  second  in  Old.  Few  men  have  been  pursued  by 
their  enemies  with  greater  virulence,  and  few  have  been  sup- 
ported by  their  friends  with  greater  zeal.  .  .  .  Some  of 
his  good  qualities  were  so  conspicuous,  that  his  enemies 
could  not  avoid  acknowledging  them.  He  applied  himself 
with  the  greatest  diligence  to  the  business  of  his  station. 
The  affairs  of  the  war  and  other  parts  of  his  administration 
were  conducted  with  good  judgment.  In  economy  he  ex- 
celled, both  in  public  and  private  life.  He  supported  the 
dignity  of  a  governor  without  the  reproach  of  parsimony, 
and  yet,  from  the  moderate  emoluments  of  his  post,  made 
an  addition  to  his  paternal  estate.  The  visible  increase  of 
his  substance  made  some  incredible  reports  of  gross  bribery 
and  corruption  to  be  very  easily  believed ;  but,  in'  times 
when  party  spirit  prevails,  what  will  not  a  governor's  enemies 


THOMAS  HUTCHINSON.  41 1 

believe,  however  injurious  and  absurd  ?  .  .  .  His  cring- 
ing to  Randolph,  when  in  his  heart  he  despised  him,  was  a 
spot  in  his  character;  and  his  secret  insinuations,  to  the  dis- 
advantage of  his  country,  was  a  greater, — both  being  for 
the  sake  of  recommending  himself  to  court  favor.  I  think 
it  is  no  more  than  justice  to  his  character  to  allow,  that  he 
had  as  many  virtues  as  can  consist  with  so  great  a  thirst  for 
honor  and  power." 

1  Hutchinson,  "  History  of  Massachusetts  Bay,"  ii.  213-214.  Besides  the 
two  editions  already  mentioned  of  the  first  two  volumes  of  this  work,  there  was 
published  in  1795  a  third  edition,  "With  Additional  Notes  and  Corrections," 
the  first  volume  having  been  printed  at  Salem  and  the  second  at  Boston.  The 
mechanical  execution  of  this  edition  is  inferior  ;  while  the  notes  are  few  and 
meagre,  and  the  so-called  corrections  unimportant.  For  this  edition  of  the  first 
two  volumes,  and  for  the  only  edition  of  the  third  volume,  was  issued  in  New 
York,  in  1879,  an  "  Index  to  Persons  and  Places  mentioned  in  Hutchinson's 
Massachusetts  .  .  .  made  by  J.  Wingate  Thornton,  Historiographer,  and  some- 
what corrected  by  Charles  L.  Woodward,  Book  Peddler."  For  other  writings 
of  Hutchinson,  should  be  mentioned  a  pamphlet  on  the  paper-money  dispute, 
published  in  1736  ("  Diary  and  Letters,"  i.  53),  and  now  unknown  ;  "  The  Case 
of  the  Provinces  of  Massachusetts  Bay  and  New  York,  respecting  the  Boundary 
Line  between  the  two  Provinces,"  Boston,  1764 — probably  the  same  production 
as  that  mentioned  by  William  Allen  ("Am.  Biog.  Diet.,"  462)  as  "a  brief 
state  of  the  claim  of  the  colonies,  etc."  ;  "  The  Letters  of  Governor  Hutchin- 
son," written  in  1768  and  1769  to  his  friend  Thomas  Whately,  M.P.,  and  sur- 
reptitiously procured  by  Franklin,  and  printed  in  Boston  in  1773  and  in  London 
in  1774  ;  many  of  Hutchinson's  official  speeches  and  other  papers  as  lieutenant- 
governor  and  as  governor  of  Massachusetts,  republished  in  the  collection  of  state- 
papers  edited  by  Alden  Bradford,  Boston,  1818  ;  many  letters  of  his  printed  in 
"  Massachusetts  Archives,"  xxvi.  ;  finally  "  Strictures  upon  the  Declaration  of 
the  Congress  at  Philadelphia:  In  a  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,  etc."  London, 
1776.  There  are  also  many  important  manuscript  letters,  and  other  unpub- 
lished papers  of  Hutchinson,  to  be  found  in  the  library  of  the  State  of  Massachu- 
setts, and  in  the  library  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society.  Since  this 
chapter  was  written,  Professor  James  Kendall  Hosmer  has  published  an  ex- 
tended biography  of  Hutchinson,  based  upon  a  direct  study  of  all  the  materials 
left  by  Hutchinson,  and  furnishing  an  example  of  historic  fair-mindedness  in  the 
treatment  of  a  subject  hitherto  commonly  swamped  in  mere  partisanship.  Who- 
ever would  have  before  him  all  that  can  now  be  urged  against  Hutchinson,  both 
as  an  historian  and  as  a  statesman,  by  a  scholar  minutely  acquainted  with  the 
sources  of  Massachusetts  history,  may  be  fully  gratified  by  reading  the  trenchant 
criticism  on  Dr.  Hosmer's  book,  by  Abner  C.  Goodell,  Jr.,  in  "  The  American 
Historical  Review,"  for  October,  1896,  pp.  163-170. 


412  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

X. 

Somewhere  in  the  debatable  land  between  history,  fic- 
tion, and  burlesque,  there  wanders  a  notorious  book,  first 
published  anonymously  in  London  in  1781,  and  entitled 
"A  General  History  of  Connecticut,  from  its  first  Settlement 
under  George  Fenwick,  Esq.  to  its  latest  Period  of  Amity 
with  Great  Britain ;  including  a  Description  of  the  Country, 
and  many  curious  and  interesting  Anecdotes.  To  which  is 
added  an  Appendix,  wherein  new  and  the  true  Sources  of 
the  present  Rebellion  in  America  are  pointed  out,  together 
with  the  particular  Part  taken  in  it  by  the  People  of  Connec- 
ticut in  its  Promotion.  By  a  Gentleman  of  the  Province."  ' 

Though  the  authorship  of  this  book  was  never  acknowl- 
edged by  the  man  who  wrote  it,  there  is  no  doubt  that  it 
was  the  work  of  Samuel  Peters,  an  Anglican  clergyman  and 
a  Loyalist,  a  man  of  commanding  personal  presence,  uncom- 
mon intellectual  resources,  powerful  will,  and  ill-balanced 
character.  He  was  born  in  Hebron,  Connecticut,  in  1735; 
was  graduated  at  Yale  College  in  1757;  and  having  soon 
after  received  ordination  in  England,  he  became  minister  of 
the  Episcopal  parish  in  his  native  town,  in  which  capacity 
he  there  remained  from  about  the  year  1760  until  1774. 
That  he  labored  all  his  life  under  a  certain  perturbation  of 
those  faculties  which  are  meant  to  confer  upon  a  man  good 
sense,  is  partly  shewn  by  the  fact,  mentioned  by  his  own 
nephew,  that  this  missionary  of  a  Church  planted  among  a 
people  already  prejudiced  against  it,  "  aped  the  style  of  an 
English  nobleman,  built  his  house  in  a  forest,  kept  his  coach, 


1  Second  edition,  London  :  1782.     Of  the  first  London  edition  an  American 

reprint  was  issued  in  New  Haven  in  1829,— an  ill-looking  book,  on  flimsy  paper, 

with  eight  melancholy  "  engravings"  on  wood.     A  second  American  reprint  of 

the  first  London  edition  was  published  in  excellent  form  in  New  York,  in  1877, 

id  by  Samuel  Jarvis  McCormick,  a  great-grandson  of  Samuel  Peters.     A  list 

Peters's  numerous  published  writings  is  given  by  Franklin  Bowditch  Dexter, 

"  Yale  Biographies,"  ii.,  485-487,— a  work  of  great  learning,  precision. 

and  fairness,  which  has  appeared  since  my  account  of  Peters  was  written. 


SAMUEL  PETERS.  413 

and  looked  with  some  degree  of  scorn  upon  republicans."  ! 
Very  naturally,  he  opposed  with  frank  and  bitter  aggressive- 
ness the  Revolutionary  politics  then  rampant  among  his 
neighbors;  and  having  in  1774 drawn  upon  himself  the  pain- 
ful attentions  of  the  "  Sons  of  Liberty,"  he  fled  in  great 
wrath  from  the  town  and  the  colony.  For  a  few  weeks 
thereafter,  he  found  refuge  in  Boston,  whence  he  sailed  for 
England  in  October,  1774.  There  he  abode  until  his  return 
to  America  in  1805.  During  the  five  or  six  years  imme- 
diately following  his  arrival  in  England,  he  seems  to  have 
had  congenial  employment  in  composing  his  "  General 
History  of  Connecticut,"  as  a  means  apparently  of  wreaking 
an  undying  vengeance  upon  the  sober  little  commonwealth 
in  which  he  was  born  and  from  which  he  had  been  thus 
ignominiously  cast  out.  The  result  of  this  long  labor  of 
hate,  was  a  production,  calling  itself  historical,  which  was 
characterized  by  a  contemporary  English  journal *  as  having 
"  so  many  marks  of  party  spleen  and  idle  credulity  "  as  to 
be  "  altogether  unworthy  of  the  public  attention." 

In  spite,  however,  of  such  censure  both  then  and  since 
then,  this  alleged  "  History  "  has  had,  now  for  more  than 
a  hundred  years,  not  only  a  vast  amount  of  public  attention, 
but  very  considerable  success  in  a  form  that  seems  to  have 
been  dear  to  its  author's  heart — that  of  spreading  through 
the  English-speaking  world  a  multitude  of  ludicrous  impres- 
sions to  the  dishonor  of  the  people  of  whom  it  treats.  It 
cannot  be  denied  that  for  such  a  service,  it  was  most  admir- 
ably framed ;  since  its  grotesque  fabrications  in  disparage- 
ment of  a  community  of  Puritan  dissenters  seem  to  have 
.proved  a  convenient  quarry  for  ready-made  calumnies  upon 
that  sort  of  people  there  and  elsewhere,  and  even,  in  the 
opinion  of  some  on-lookers,  to  have  supplied  "  many  respect- 
able and  reverend  authors  with  facilities  for  breaking  the 

John  S.  Peters,  sometime  governor  of  Connecticut,  in  Sprague,  "  Annals," 
v.  194. 

The  Monthly  Review,"  cited  in  J.  H.  Trumbull,  "  The  True  Blue  Laws," 
etc.,  33-34- 


etc.,  v.  194. 


414 


THE  AMERICAN  DEVOLUTION. 


ninth  commandment  without  incurring  personal  respon- 
sibility." ' 

Respecting  this  singular  book,  it  is  perhaps  possible  to 
suggest  but  one  theory  which  can  relieve  its  author  of  a  cer- 
tain term  of  reproach  never  justly  applied  to  an  honest  man. 
Did  he  not  write  his  so-called  "  History  "  in  a  spirit  of  mere 
irony  and  burlesque  ?  Have  we  not  here  another  of  those 
cases  of  literary  misinterpretation,  wherein  what  was  meant 
for  jest  has  been  taken  in  earnest  ?  A  glance  through  the 
preface,  still  more,  a  glance  through  the  text,  should  be 
enough  to  disperse  such  a  supposition.  After  even  so  slight 
an  inspection,  probably  no  disinterested  and  competent  critic 
can  doubt  that  Peters  intended  his  narrative  to  be  accepted 
by  the  world  as  authentic  history.  But  authentic  history 
it  is  not.  What  then  ?  For  a  political  satire,  one  can  feel 
respect — a  respect  even  proportioned  to  the  keenness  and 
fierceness  of  its  wit.  An  historical  romance,  also,  however 
grotesque,  however  incredible,  one  may  be  able  to  read  with 
some  amusement,  and  at  any  rate  without  necessary  moral 
disapproval.  But  a  narrative  obviously  intended  to  be 
taken  by  its  readers  as  a  truthful  and  faithful  record  of 
facts,  which  yet  is  saturated  by  exaggerations  and  perver- 
sions of  those  facts,  is  interfused  and  overlaid  by  fictions, 
— many  of  them,  likewise,  of  a  nature  to  bring  contempt 
and  obloquy  upon  the  people  thus  dealt  with, — this  is  such 
a  monstrosity  in  literature  as  literature  has  no  place  nor 
name  for. 

There  once  lived  in  Connecticut  another  professed  histor- 
ian of  that  commonwealth — but  a  man  of  extreme  truthful- 
ness and  precision  of  statement— Benjamin  Trumbull *  by 
name,  born  in  the  same  town  with  Samuel  Peters,  and  in 
the  same  year,  a  fellow-student,  likewise,  with  Peters  in  the 
same  college,  and  his  acquaintance  and  correspondent 

1  J.  Hammond  Trumbull,  "The  True  Blue  Laws,"  etc.,  34,  where  may  be 
seen  some  evidence  in  justification  of  the  above  remark. 

*  Author  of  "  A  Complete  History  of  Connecticut,  Civil  and  Ecclesiastical," 
etc.  Two  volumes.  New  Haven  :  1818 


SAMUEL   PETERS.  415 

y 

during  a  long  life.  A  few  words  of  quiet  testimony  once 
uttered  by  Trumbull  may  help  us  to  assign  Samuel  Peters 
and  his  book  to  the  category  to  which  they  both  belong: 
"  Of  all  men  with  whom  I  have  ever  been  acquainted,  I 
have  thought  Dr.  Peters  the  least  to  be  depended  upon  as 
to  any  matter  of  fact."  Moreover,  much  of  what  other- 
wise remains  to  us  in  the  form  of  book,2  or  letter,  or  anec- 
dote, either  from  Peters  or  about  him,  has  the  effect  of  add- 
ing strength  to  the  conclusion  that  he  was  himself  a  victim 
of  his  own  almost  unrivaled  gift  for  confounding  the  things 
he  had  actually  known,  with  the  things  he  had  merely  im- 
agined. His  appears  to  have  been  one  of  those  exceedingly 
creative  minds,  which  are  unable  to  give  an  account  of  the 
simpkst  facts,  without  adding  to  them  great  and  perhaps 
unconscious  embellishments  of  fancy.  Indeed,  his  capacity 
for  such  embellishments  may  be  said  to  have  had  a  brilliance 
that  was  even  hectic  and  morbid.  For  an  ordinary  person 
afflicted  in  this  way,  there  exists  among  healthy  people  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  race  a  single  descriptive  word  which  has 
the  merit  of  cogent  brevity  and  explicitness.  Probably, 
however,  for  an  extraordinary  person,  like  Samuel  Peters, 
some  may  think  it  needful  to  resort  to  a  more  erudite  and  a 
more  courteous  description.  Certainly,  as  a  narrator  of 
facts,  he  seems  to  have  had  so  marvelous  an  alacrity  for 
those  which  never  had  any  existence,  as  to  have  won  for 
himself  the  honor  of  being  described  not  as  a  liar,  but  as  a 
victim  of  that  magnificent  ailment  now  known  as  pseudo- 
mania.3 


1  Transposed  from  the  form  of  sentence  as  given  by  J.  Hammond  Trumbull, 
in  "  The  Rev.  Samuel  Peters,  His  Defenders  and  Apologists,"  26. 

1  For  example,  his  "  History  of  the  Rev.  Hugh  Peters,  A.M.,"  New  York, 
1807, — a  work  wholly  without  historical  character  :  loose  and  reckless  in  asser- 
tion, violent  in  temper,  flabby  in  style,  the  product  of  a  mind  which  one 
instinctively  feels  to  have  been  not  careful  for  precision,  not  orderly  and 
well-poised,  not  thoroughly  sane. 

8  The  reader  who  may  care  to  examine  all  that  can  be  said,  in  full  detail, 
upon  both  sides  of  the  controversy  respecting  Samuel  Peters,  is  referred,  first  of 
all,  to  the  book  itself,  Peters's  "  General  History  of  Connecticut  "  ;  then  to 


416  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

XI. 

So  soon  as  the  Revolutionary  conflict  had  reached  its  mil- 
itary  stage,  there  began  to  be  manifest  among  us  a  conscious- 
ness  of  its  unusual  significance,  and  the  need  of  making  and 
keeping  records  of  it.  We  may  not  entirely  disregard  the 
tokens  of  this  historic  purpose  even  in  a  form  so  humble  and 
so  crude  as  that  of  diaries  and  other  off-hand  records  of  pass- 
ing events.  Especially  noteworthy  are  some  of  the  military 
journals  which  have  survived  from  those  times. 

James  Thacher,  who,  at  the  outbreak  of  hostilities,  was  a 
student  of  medicine  at  Barnstable,  Massachusetts,  entered 
the  medical  service  of  the  army  on  the  fifteenth  of  July, 
1775,  and  continued  in  that  service  until  the  first  of  Janu- 
ary, 1783, — accompanying  the  army  upon  nearly  all  of  its 
most  celebrated  movements,  and  making  the  acquaintance 
of  nearly  all  of  its  most  celebrated  men.  Some  sort  of 
journal  of  this  very  interesting  life  of  his,  he  seems  to  have 
kept ;  and  had  he  chosen,  at  any  time  afterward,  to  publish 

"  The  True  Blue  Laws  of  Connecticut  and  New  Haven,"  etc.,  by  J.  Hammond 
Trumbull,  Hartford,  1876;  to  "  The  Churchman "  for  March  24,  1877,  con- 
taining an  article  on  "  Virginia  and  Civil  Liberty,"  by  Thomas  W.  Coit  ;  to 
"  The  Churchman  "  for  May  26,  and  June  2,  1877,  containing  articles  on  "  Dr. 
Samuel  Peters,"  by  his  great-grandson,  Samuel  Jarvis  Me  Cormick  ;  to  "  The 
Churchman"  for  August  n,  and  September  I,  1877,  containing  articles  in  re- 
view of  Trumbull's  book  on  "  The  True  Blue  Laws  of  Connecticut  and  New 
Haven,"  etc.  ;  to  the  reprint  of  Peters's  "General  History  of  Connecticut," 
edited,  with  additions  to  the  Appendix,  etc.,  by  Samuel  Jarvis  Me  Cormick,  New 
York,  1877  !  and  to  J.  Hammond  Trumbull's  rejoinder  to  these  criticisms,  en- 
titled "  The  Rev.  Samuel  Peters,  His  Defenders  and  Apologists,"  Hartford, 
1877.  Upon  the  whole,  the  most  dispassionate  and  the  fairest  account  of  Peters, 
and  also  the  saddest  one,  is  the  straightforward  documentary  sketch  written  by 
his  kinsman,  the  late  Governor  John  S.  Peters,  of  Hebron,  Connecticut,  to  be 
found  in  Sprague,  "Annals,"  etc.,  v.  191-200.  The  judgment  respecting 
Peters,  which  I  have  expressed  above,  is  based  almost  entirely  upon  a  study  of 
the  evidence  furnished  by  that  sketch  and  by  the  printed  writings  of  Peters. 
To  this  judgment  I  have  come  reluctantly,  after  three  deliberate  sieges  of  inves- 
tigation separated  from  one  another  by  intervals  of  several  years,  and  in  spite  of 
my  private  sympathy  with  the  ecclesiastical  position  of  the  man  himself,  of  my 
appreciation  of  his  many  kindly  and  attractive  qualities,  and  of  my  desire  to 
discharge  a  judicial  duty  without  giving  pain  to  living  persons,  particularly,  as 
in  the  present  case,  to  living  persons  of  the  highest  worth. 


HISTORICAL  DIARIES.  417 

that  journal  just  as  it  stood,  in  all  its  primitive  crudity,  with 
every  break,  blunder,  pen-slip,  raggedness  of  phrase,  and 
other  ear-mark  of  the  original  situation  sticking  to  it  and 
authenticating  it,  its  value  to  all  readers  could  not  have  been 
small.  Unfortunately,  however,  he  was  not  content  with  so 
humble  a  ministration  to  the  cravings  of  posterity  for  Revo- 
lutionary memories.  He  was  a  facile  and  a  somewhat  effu- 
sive writer;  and  in  preparing  for  the  press  his  memoranda, 
which  he  published  in  1823  under  the  title  of  "  A  Military 
Journal  during  the  American  Revolutionary  War,"  he 
seems  to  have  recomposed  and  expanded  the  original  record, 
to  have  removed  from  it  every  trace  of  brevity,  haste,  per- 
turbation, surprise,  or  uncertainty,  to  have  diluted  and 
rounded  out  all  his  rough  jottings  into  flowing  and  conven- 
tional literary  periods,  and  to  have  intermingled  with  his 
original  materials  a  mass  of  later  information,  inference, 
reminiscence,  or  rhapsody, — leaving  the  reader  in  total  dark- 
ness as  to  what  portion  of  the  journal  was  written  during 
the  Revolutionary  War,  and  what  forty  years  aftenvard, 
and,  as  a  consequence,  robbing  his  book  of  much  of  the 
charm  and  of  the  trustworthiness  which  would  have  attached 
to  the  sort  of  work  which  it  professes  to  be — but  is  not. 

A  valid  specimen  of  the  military  diary  is  "  A  Journal  of 
Occurrences  "  '  as  kept  by  Major  Return  Jonathan  Meigs 
of  Connecticut,  an  officer  in  the  heroic  little  army  which 
marched  in  1775,  under  the  command  of  Benedict  Arnold, 
through  the  wilderness  of  Maine  for  the  invasion  of  Canada. 
Without  the  waste  of  a  word,  without  a  boast  or  a  whine,  it 
gives  the  essential  facts  appertaining  to  that  most  gritty, 
painful,  and  disastrous  job, — the  stark  details  of  labor, 
suffering,  courage,  cowardice,  in  the  long  march,  the  arrival 
upon  the  river  bank  opposite  Quebec,  the  crossing,  the 
ascent  to  the  Heights  of  Abraham,  the  attack,  the  failure. 

1  I  found  at  the  library  of  Harvard  College  a  very  old  copy  of  this  "  Jour- 
nal," printed  without  place  or  date  of  publication.  It  is  said  to  have  first  ap- 
peared in  the  "  American  Remembrancer  "  in  1776.  It  was  republished  in  New 
York  in  1876,  with  an  introduction  and  notes  by  Charles  Ira  Bushnell. 

VOL.  II. — 27 


4l 8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

An  able  soldier's  story  of  an  able  soldier's  great  achieve- 
ment under  conditions  of  the  utmost  hardship  and  hazard, 
is  the  sketch  of  his  "  Campaign  in  the  Illinois  in  1778- 
1779>"  '  by  George  Rogers  Clark:  a  bit  of  writing,  this,  by 
a  swordman's  pen  amusingly  authenticated  in  its  disdain  of 
such  rubbish  as  orthography  and  syntax ;  a  straight-forward 
narrative  full  of  action,  magnanimous  emotion,  and  graphic 
power,  and  of  imperishable  interest,  likewise,  as  a  record  of 
the  way  in  which  the  young  republic  got  its  foot  well 
planted  on  the  broad  lands  of  the  northwest,  holding  it 
there  thenceforward  as  against  all  comers,  whether  Spaniard, 
Frenchman,  or  Briton. 

Without  being  spoiled  by  any  effort  at  elaborateness,  yet 
shewing  the  facility  and  neatness  of  a  practised  writer,  is 
the  "  Journal  of  Tench  Tilghman,"  while  acting  as  secre- 
tary to  the  commissioners  appointed  by  Congress  to  treat 
with  the  Six  Nations  at  German  Flats,  in  the  summer  of 
1775  5  also,  his  "  Diary  of  the  Siege  of  Yorktown."  8 

Another  genuine  example  of  the  military  diary  is  "  The 
Journal  of  Lieutenant  William  Feltman,"  "  from  May,  1781, 
to  April,  1782,  embracing  memoranda  relating  to  the  siege 
of  Yorktown  and  the  Southern  Campaign. 

XII. 

A  notable  example  of  genuine  work  in  the  writing  of  some 
portion  of  the  history  of  the  Revolution,  by  a  contemporary 
witness  of  its  scenes,  was  occasioned  by  the  first  return  of 
the  anniversary  of  the  slaughter  at  Lexington,  namely,  "A 
Brief  Narrative  of  the  Principal  Transactions  of  That  Day," 
—a  clear,  vivid,  thrilling  story  as  told  by  Jonas  Clark,  and 
by  him  added  to  a  sermon  *  which  he  preached  in  Lexington 
Church  on  the  nineteenth  of  April,  1776. 

1  Published  as  "Number  Three,"  in  the  "  Ohio  Valley  Historical  Series," 
Cincinnati :  1869. 

*  This  "  Diary  "  with  the  earlier  "  Journal  "  was  first  ;  •..'. .li-hed  in  the  Ap- 
pendix to  "  Memoir  of  Tench  Tilghman,"  Albany,  1876. 

3  First  published,  Philadelphia,  1853. 

*  Published  in  Boston,   1777  ;  republished  in  the  same  place,  in  folio,  with 


HISTORIES  OF   THE  REVOLUTION.  419 

David  Ramsay,  of  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  an  eminent 
actor  in  the  Revolution,  began  to  qualify  himself  to  be  its 
historian  by  collecting  documentary  materials  therefor, 
which,  however,  he  appears  not  to  have  put  to  any  literary 
use  until  after  the  close  of  this  period. 

A  fellow-townsman  of  Ramsay's,  William  Henry  Drayton, 
a  member  of  the  Continental  Congress  from  South  Carolina, 
had,  also,  formed  the  project  of  writing  the  history  of  the 
American  Revolution.  Upon  his  death  at  Philadelphia  in 
September,  1779,  there  was  found  among  his  papers  in  that 
city  a  number  of  manuscripts  shewing  that  he  had  already 
made  considerable  progress  in  the  work.  On  the  ground, 
however,  that  these  manuscripts  contained  important  secrets 
of  state,  they  were  at  once  destroyed.  Luckily,  Drayton 
had  left  at  home  two  volumes  written  prior  to  his  residence 
in  Philadelphia,  and  embodying  a  narrative  of  events  in  the 
southern  colonies,  between  the  latter  part  of  1773  and  the 
latter  part  of  1776.  These  volumes,  having  thus  escaped 
the  doom  which  had  befallen  his  papers  in  Philadelphia, 
were  subsequently  used  by  his  son,  John  Drayton,  as  the 
basis  for  a  work  published  in  Charleston  in  1821,  entitled 
"  Memoirs  of  the  American  Revolution."  ' 

XIII. 

Another  contemporary  of  the  American  Revolution  who 
had  a  keen  perception  of  its  value  as  a  subject  for  historical 
treatment,  was  Mercy  Warren,  a  woman  distinguished  in 
those  times  by  the  vigor  of  her  intelligence,  her  wide  read- 
ing, her  wit,  her  social  charm,  her  'high-spirited  bearing 
amid  the  agitations  and  dangers  upon  which  her  life  was 
cast.  She  was  born  in  Barnstable,  Massachusetts,  in  1728. 
Being  the  daughter  of  James  Otis,  colonial  jurist  and  poli- 

illustrations,  in  1875,  in  connection  with  the  centennial  commemoration  of  that 
epoch-making  event.  A  delightful  sketch  of  Jonas  Clark,  written  by  \\  illiam 
Ware,  is  in  Sprague,  "  Annals,"  etc.,  i.  514—519. 

1  The  name  of  the  younger  Drayton  alone  is  allowed  to  appear  on  the  title- 
page — a  manifestation  of  almost  incredible  vanity  and  selfishness  on  his  part. 


420 


THE' AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 


tician,  sister  of  James  Otis,  Revolutionary  orator,  and  wife 
of  James  Warren,  able  and  trusted  leader  in  the  most 
aggressive  measures  of  the  Revolution,  it  may  be  said  of 
her  that,  from  childhood  to  old  age,  she  had  been  accus- 
tomed to  see  at  her  own  fireside  the  boldest,  the  most  accom- 
plished, the  most  sagacious  of  the  political  and  military 
chieftains  of  America,  to  hear  their  talk,  and  to  participate 
in  it.  She  was  admired  and  confided  in  by  John  Adams, 
Washington,  Jefferson ;  with  these  and  other  men  eminent 
in  the  affairs  of  her  country,  both  at  home  and  abroad,  she 
long  corresponded  on  terms  of  confidence;  and  as  she  was 
"  stimulated  to  observation  by  a  mind  that  had  not  yielded 
to  the  assertion,  that  all  political  attentions  lay  out  of  the 
road  of  female  life,"  '  she  became  an  expert  in  the  public 
transactions  of  the  world  in  her  day,  and  a  penetrating  judge 
of  the  characters  of  the  men  who  had  a  principal  share  in 
them. 

Upon  the  development  of  the  American  Revolution,  she 
resolved,  since  she  could  not  be  an  actor  in  it,  that  she 
would  be  a  delineator  of  it:  "At  a  period  when  every  manly 
arm  was  occupied,  and  every  trait  of  talent  or  activity  en- 
gaged, either  in  the  cabinet  or  the  field,  ...  I  have 
been  induced  to  improve  the  leisure  Providence  had  lent,  to 
record  as  they  passed,  in  the  following  pages,  the  new  and 
unexperienced  events  exhibited  in  a  land  previously  blessed 
with  peace,  liberty,  simplicity,  and  virtue."  3 

The  result  was  a  "  History  of  the  Rise,  Progress  and  Ter- 
mination of  the  American  Revolution,  Interspersed  with 
Biographical,  Political  and  Moral  Reflections,"— a  work 
which,  although  not  published  until  the  year  1805,  seems 
to  have  been  composed,  in  large  part,  almost  contempora- 
neously '  with  the  events  of  which  it  speaks. 

Even  a  casual  glance  is  enough  to  discover  to  us  that  this 
is  a  history  of  the  great  Anglo-American  Controversy  from 

I  Mercy  Warren,  "  History,"  etc.,  i,  Pref.  iv.  *  Ibid.  Pref.  iii. 

*  Fairly  to  be  inferred  from  sentences  in  the  first  three  pages  of  the  Preface. 


MERCY    WARREN.  421 

the  particular  point  of  view  of  the  Otises,  the  Warrens,  and 
the  Adamses  of  New  England.  Here  is  no  pretense  to  his- 
toric disinterestedness,  to  judicial  coolness  or  judicial 
breadth.  Here  from  beginning  to  end,  is  a  frank,  strong, 
well-spiced  story  of  a  renowned  race-quarrel,  by  one  who 
had  a  passionate  share  in  every  stage  of  it,  and  who  had  an 
honest  abhorrence  for  those — especially  among  her  own 
countrymen — who  took  the  side  opposite  to  her  own. 
These  people  are  "the  malignant  party"1;  to  describe 
their  ablest  leader  is  "  to  exhibit  the  deformed  features  " 
of  the  human  species ' ;  to  name  him  is  to  name  "  a  notorious 
parricide."3  Of  course,  with  this  tone  of  undisguised 
partisanship  ringing  through  the  book,  no  reader  of  it  can 
ever  be  off  his  guard.  Indeed,  one  comes  rather  to  enjoy 
the  naivet^,  the  verve,  the  piquant  flavor  of  this  heroic  vin- 
dictiveness,  as  an  amusing  survival  of  a  dispute  so  long 
dead,- — as  a  note  of  authenticity,  likewise,  in  a  document 
which  sprang  from  the  very  froth  and  ferment  of  those  high 
rages  of  which  it  gives  the  outward  manifestation. 

The  literary  form  of  the  work  is  not  to  be  despised.  Its 
chief  faults  are  diffuseness,  the  swamping  of  narrative  in  dis- 
quisition, the  solemn  announcement  of  ethical  and  political 
truisms.  Upon  the  whole,  however,  as  a  history  of  the 
American  Revolution,  it  is  a  life-like  and  a  powerful  de- 
lineation of  a  great  period,  and  by  a  writer  who  had,  and 
who  used,  extraordinary  opportunities  for  knowing  its  origin, 
its  growth,  its  vicissitudes,  its  ablest  men,  its  most  promi- 
nent events,  its  most  secret  passages.  Doubtless,  those  parts 
of  the  book  to  which  the  modern  reader  is  most  likely  to 
turn,  are  its  portraits  of  the  men  prominent  in  the  Revolu- 
tion on  either  side — more  particularly  of  the  men  toward 
whom  Mercy  Warren  was  unable  to  exhibit  that  twice-blest 
quality  somewhat  ironically  announced  in  her  baptismal 
name.  Not  a  few  of  these  character-sketches  have  a  neat- 
ness in  disapproval  and  a  discriminating  acridity  of  touch, 
which  must  have  been  keenly  enjoyed  by  almost  all  persons 

1  "  History,"  i.  60.  9  Ibid.  78.  •  Ibid.  123. 


422  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

excepting  the  subjects  of  them.  Governor  Francis  Ber- 
nard, for  example,  "  was  by  education  strongly  impressed 
with  high  ideas  of  canon  and  feudal  law,  and  fond  of  a 
system  of  government  that  had  been  long  obsolete  in  Eng- 
land, and  had  never  had  an  existence  in  America."1 
Thomas  Hutchinson  "  was  dark,  intriguing,  insinuating, 
haughty  and  ambitious  ;  while  *he  extreme  of  avarice 
marked  each  feature  of  his  character.  His  abilities  were 
little  above  the  line  of  mediocrity;  yet  by  dint  of  industry, 
exact  temperance,  and  indefatigable  labor,  he  became  master 
of  the  accomplishments  necessary  to  acquire  popular  fame. 
Though  bred  a  merchant,  he  had  looked  into  the  origin  and 
the  principles  of  the  British  constitution,  and  made  himself 
acquainted  with  the  several  forms  of  government  established 
in  the  colonies;  he  had  acquired  some  knowledge  of  the 
common  law  of  England,  diligently  studied  the  intricacies 
of  Machiavelian  policy,  and  never  failed  to  recommend  the 
Italian  master  as  a  model  to  his  adherents. "  a  As  to  General 
Gage,  "  it  was  indeed  unfortunate  for  him,  that  he  had  been 
appointed  to  the  command  of  an  army  and  the  government 
of  a  province,  without  the  talents  that  qualified  for  the  times. 
He  was  naturally  a  man  of  a  humane  disposition,  nor  had 
his  courage  ever  been  impeached ;  but  he  had  not  the  in- 
trigue of  the  statesman  to  balance  the  parties,  nor  the  sagac- 
ity necessary  to  defeat  their  designs ;  nor  was  he  possessed 
of  that  soldierly  promptitude  that  leaves  no  interval  between 
the  determination  and  execution  of  his  projects."  3  General 
Charles  Lee  "  was  plain  in  his  person  even  to  ugliness,  and 
careless  in  his  manners  to  a  degree  of  rudeness.  He  pos- 
sessed a  bold  genius  and  an  unconquerable  spirit :  his  voice 
was  rough,  his  garb  ordinary,  his  deportment  morose. 
:•  .  .  He  cherished  the  American  cause  from  motives  of 
resentment,  and  a  predilection  in  favor  of  freedom,  more 
than  from  a  just  sense  of  the  rights  of  mankind.  Without 
religion  or  country,  principle  or  attachment,  gold  was  his 
deity,  and  liberty  the  idol  of  his  fancy:  he  hoarded  the 
11  History,"  etc.,  i.  42.  *  Ibid.  79.  3Ibid.  241. 


WILLIAM  GORDON.  423 

former  without  taste  for  its  enjoyment,  and  worshipped  the 
latter  as  the  patroness  of  licentiousness  rather  than  the  pro- 
tectress of  virtue.  He  affected  to  despise  the  opinion  of  the 
world,  yet  was  fond  of  applause.  Ambitious  of  fame,  with- 
out the  dignity  to  support  it,  he  emulated  the  heroes  of 
antiquity  in  the  field,  while  in  private  life  he  sunk  to  the 
vulgarity  of  the  clown."  ' 

XIV. 

From  the  year  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  onward 
to  the  close  of  the  Revolution,  probably  no  other  man  in 
America  was  more  eager  and  more  indefatigable  in  the 
effort  to  obtain  materials — oral,  written,  and  printed — 
touching  the  history  of  that  great  movement  than  was  Wil- 
liam Gordon,  an  adoptive  American,  who,  born  in  England 
in  1740,  came  to  this  country  in  1770,  drawn  hither  by  his 
sympathy  with  the  American  cause,  and  who  from  1772  to 
1786  was  pastor  of  the  Third  Congregational  Church  in 
Roxbury,  Massachusetts.  A  blunt,  restless,  headstrong 
person,  quite  unhampered  by  shyness  or  reticence,  "  some- 
what vain,  and  not  accurate  nor  judicious,  very  zealous  in 
the  cause,  and  a  well-meaning  man,  but  incautious,""  he 
plunged  at  once  and  with  great  ardor  into  the  politics  of  his 
newly-chosen  country ;  and  at  the  end  of  four  years,  being 
"  struck  with  the  importance  of  the  scenes  that  were  open- 
ing upon  the  world,"  *  he  formed  the  resolution  to  record 
them  worthily,  for  the  benefit  of  mankind.  In  order  to 
qualify  himself  for  this  large  task,  he  made  his  purpose 
widely  known ;  traveled  up  and  down  the  land  in  pursuit  of 
knowledge  under  difficulties;  became  a  familiar  figure  in 
council,  congress,  and  camp ;  ransacked  manuscript  records  * ; 

1  "  History,"  etc.,  i.  292.  *  J.  Adams,  "Works,"  ii.  424. 

3  W.  Gordon,  "  History,"  etc.,  i.  Pref. 

4  Thus,  in  order  to  make  himself  acquainted  with  the  antecedent  history  of 
the  country,  he  even  read  "  near  thirty  folio  manuscript  volumes  "  of  the  records 
of  Massachusetts  Bay.     So,  also,  he  had  from  Congress  the  extraordinary  favor 
of  being  allowed  to  inspect  "  such  of  their  records  as  could  with  propriety  be 
submitted  to  the  perusal  of  a  private  person."     "  History,"  etc.,  Pref. 


424  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

begged  or  borrowed  letters,  memoranda,  and  all  sorts  of 
confidential  documents;  compared  notes  with  other  laborers 
in  the  same  field  ' ;  and  hobnobbing  with  leading  statesmen 
and  generals,"  set  their  talk  a  flowing  in  the  channel  of  those 
events  of  which  they  knew  best  the  inward  ^meaning,  and 
even  got  from  them  careful  written  statements*  of  fact,  as 
well  as  the  privilege  of  looking  into  their  own  "  papers  both 
of  a  public  and  private  nature." 

As  a  collector  of  materials  for  history,  therefore,  Gordon 
seems  to  have  had  the  true  method.  Had  he  the  true 
method,  also,  as  a  writer  of  history  ?  It  was  his  purpose, 
certainly,  that  the  very  truth  about  the  American  Revolu- 
tion should  be  told,,  even  at  the  risk  of  giving  mortal  offense 
to  any  person  or  party  concerned  in  it.  "I  shall  endeavor," 
he  wrote  in  1782,  "  that  what  I  write  shall  be  not  only  the 
truth,  but  the  truth  truly  represented ;  for  you  may  tell  the 
truth  so  as  to  make  a  lie  of  it  in  the  apprehensions  of  him 
who  reads  or  hears  the  tale."  " 

It  is  probable  that  in  the  actual  composition  of  his  work, 
he  did  not  go  very  far  until,  near  the  close  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, its  historic  character  had  been  placed  beyond  doubt  or 
reversal.  At  any  rate,  not  until  the  spring  of  1786  was  he 
quite  ready  to  send  the  book  to  press.4  For  the  purpose 

1  For  example,  with  David  Ramsay  of  South  Carolina,  who  permitted  him  to  see 
the  materials  for  his  "  History  of  the  War  in  Carolina."  "  History,"  etc. ,  Pref. 

9  He  derived  much  information  from  Washington,  Gates,  Greene,  Lincoln 
aud  Otho  Williams.  He  became  so  intimate  with  Gates  that  he  sometimes  ad- 
dressed him  as  "  My  dear  Horatio."  In  the  voluminous  papers  of  Gates,  still 
unpublished,  but  in  the  good  keeping  of  the  New  York  Historical  Society,  I 
noted  many  proofs  of  Gordon's  tact  and  diligence  in  drawing  from  that  offi- 
cer his  knowledge  of  Revolutionary  events  :  e.g.,  one  letter  in  1780  ;  three  in 
1781  ;  three  in  1782  ;  and  two  in  1783. 

3  MS.  letter  to  General  Gates,  16  October,  1782,  in  the  "  Gates  Papers." 

4 1  regard  Gordon's  book  as  belonging  only  in  part  to  the  period  treated  of  by 
me  in  the  present  work  :  it  was  prepared  during  the  Revolution  ;  it  was  chiefly 
written  and  published  after  the  Revolution.  This  is  why  I  here  speak  of  it  at 

11,  and  also  why  I  do  not  speak  of  it  at  greater  length— at  a  length,  indeed, 
somewhat  more  commensurate  with  its  real  importance  as  a  history  of  our 
Revolution  by  a  contemporary  observer. 


WILLIAM  GORDON.  42$ 

of  doing  so,  he  deemed  it  prudent  to  go  back  to  England, 
where,  indeed,  he  had  long  before  resolved  to  spend  the 
remainder  of  his  life.  So  early  as  the  year  1782,  he  had  ex- 
plained all  this  to  General  Gates,  in  a  letter  which  is  full  of 
significance  as  affecting  both  the  attitude  of  the  American 
people  at  tiiat  time  toward  the  history  of  their  Revolution, 
and  also  the  intended  frankness  of  his  own  narrative  in  blurt- 
ing out  a  good  deal  of  truth  about  it  that  would  be  disagree- 
able to  them:  "  The  eastern  country  is  so  altered  in  its 
manners,  and  through  the  contagions  of  the  times  the  face 
of  affairs  is  so  changed,  that  I  mean  after  the  war  to  return 
to  London,  where  my  nearest  and  dearest  friends  reside. 
.  .  .  Should  Great  Britain  mend  its  constitution  by  the 
shock  it  has  received,  and  the  dangerous  fever,  in  which  it 
has  been,  prove  the  occasion  of  its  working  off  its  bad 
humors,  life,  liberty,  property,  and  character  will  be  safer 
there  than  on  this  side  the  Atlantic ;  and  an  historian  may 
use  the  impartial  pen  there  with  less  danger  than  here.  The 
credit  of  the  country  and  of  individuals  who  now  occupy 
eminences  will  be  most  horribly  affected  by  an  impartial 
history." 

Soon  after  his  arrival  in  England,  however,  Gordon  made 
the  discovery — which  seems  to  have  surprised  him — that 
objections  to  an  impartial  history  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion were  not  confined  to  the  western  side  of  the  Atlantic. 
If  he  had  left  America  in  order  to  escape  from  one  set  of 
prejudices,  he  had  come  to  England  only  to  dash  his  head 
and  his  heart  against  another  set,  equally  bitter,  equally  un- 
relenting. His  old  friend,  John  Adams,  then  in  London  as 
American  envoy  near  the  Court  of  St.  James,  gave  long 
afterward,  in  a  letter  to  Elbridge  Gerry,  some  account  of 
poor  Gordon's  new  embarrassment:  "  It  is  with  grief  that  I 
record  a  fact,  which  I  ought  to  record,  relative  to  Gordon's 
history.  His  object  was  profit.  He  was  told  that  his  book 
would  not  sell,  if  printed  according  to  his  manuscript. 
He  was  told,  besides,  that  the  style  was  so  bold 

1  MS.  letter  to  Gates,  16  October,  1782,  in  the  "  Gates  Papers." 


426  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

that  it  would  damn  the  work,  and  that  many  things  were  so 
favorable  to  America  and  others  so  disgraceful  to  Britons 
that  neither  would  be  borne.  Accordingly,  the  style  and 
spirit  was  altered  and  accommodated  more  to  the  British 
taste  and  feelings."  '  In  one  particular,  at  least,  this  tes- 
timony of  John  Adams  seems  to  have  been  unfair  to 
Gordon.  Of  course,  Gordon  hoped  to  get  some  profit 
from  the  sale  of  his  book — in  the  preparation  of  which  he 
had  made  a  great  outlay,  not  only  in  time,  but  in  money 
also.  His  possible  failure  to  obtain  such  profit,  however, 
was  not  the  most  serious  consequence  with  which  he  was 
threatened,  should  he  dare  to  publish  his  book  just  as  he 
had  written  it;  for,  having  submitted  the  manuscript  to  an 
English  friend,  competent  to  advise  in  such  a  matter,  he 
was  assured  that,  besides  being,  as  the  English  would  think, 
"  too  favorable  to  the  Americans,"  it  was  full  of  what  the 
English  law  would  regard  as  libels, — "  libels  against  some 
of  the  most  respectable  characters  in  the  British  army  and 
navy;  and  that  if  he  possessed  a  fortune  equal  to  the  Duke 
of  Bedford's,  he  would  not  be  able  to  pay  the  damages  that 
might  be  recovered  against  him — as  the  truth  would  not  be 
allowed  to  be  produced  in  evidence."  * 

For  us,  of  course,  it  is  now  easy  to  see  precisely  what, 
under  such  circumstances,  Gordon  should  have  done:  he 
should  have  deposited  his  manuscript  in  some  safe  custody 
— there  to  remain  until,  in  a  later  age  and  long  after  he  him- 
self should  have  left  the  world,  the  English-speaking 
peoples  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  might  have  so  far 
.cooled  from  the  anger  generated  by  their  Great  Dispute  as 
to  be  willing  to  read  an  impartial  account  of  it.  To  such  a 
sacrifice  of  immediate  reputation,  and  especially  of  immedi- 
ate fortune,  Gordon  had  not  the  strength  to  submit.  Ac- 
cordingly, either  by  his  own  hand  or  by  the  hand  of  another, 

1  In  J.  T.  Austin,  "  The  Life  of  Elbridge  Gerry,"  Part  i.,  520. 
"'Recollections  of  a  Bostonian,"  a  series    of    letters  published  in  "The 
oston  Centinel,"  in  1821-1822,  and  reprinted  in  Niles,  "  Prin.  and  Acts  of  the 
Rev.,"  479-486.     The  passage  quoted  by  me  is  on  page  483. 


WILLIAM  GORDON.      .  427 

his  book  underwent  serious  mutilation:  its  form  was  en- 
tirely recast ;  a  multitude  of  expressions  were  toned  down ; 
many  details  of  fact  were  modified ;  entire  passages  of  the 
narrative,  amounting  to  an  hundred  pages  at  the  least,  were 
stricken  out  altogether.' 

All  this,  certainly,  is  most  lamentable ;  and  the  discovery, 
if  such  a  thing  were  possible,  of  the  unmutilated  manuscript 
of  Gordon's  "  History  of  the  Rise,  Progress,  and  Establish- 
ment of  the  Independence  of  the  United  States  of  Amer- 
ica, ' '  would  now  be  an  event  of  capital  interest  to  all  students 
of  modern  history.*  The  book,  as  we  have  it,  though  written 
by  a  man  who  strove  hard  to  be  accurate,  is  defaced  by 
many  errors  both  of  fact  and  of  opinion ;  and  yet  with  all  its 
faults  of  whatever  kind,  and  even  in  competition  with  the 
subsequent  historical  labors  of  more  than  a  century,  this  ac- 
count of  the  American  Revolution  holds  its  ground  as  one 
of  the  best  yet  produced  by  any  one  upon  that  vast  uprising 
of  human  nature.  It  can  hardly  be  possible  for  any  reader 
of  Gordon's  book,  to  resist  the  impression  that  he  was  an 
honest  man,  and  meant  to  be  a  truthful  and  a  fair  historian. 

1  The  chief  evidence  touching  the  mutilation  of  Gordon's  "  History"  may  be 
found  in  Austin,  "  The  Life  of  Elbridge  Gerry,"  Part  i.  520  ;  in  Niles,  "  Prin. 
and  Acts  of  the  Rev.,"  482-483  ;  and  in  "  The  Hist.  Mag.,"  vi.  82. 

*  "  The  History  of  the  Rise,  Progress,  and  Establishment  of  the  Independ- 
ence of  the  United  States  of  America  :  Including  an  Account  of  the  late  War, 
and  of  the  Thirteen  Colonies  from  their  Origin  to  that  Period,"  by  William 
Gordon,  D.D.,  was  "  printed  for  the  author  "  in  London  in  1788,  "  and  sold 
by  Charles  Dilly,  in  the  Poultry,  and  James  Buckland,  in  Pater-Noster  Row." 
It  consisted  of  four  dignified  volumes,  in  large  type  and  of  good  paper.  In 
1789,  there  appeared  at  New  York  the  first  American  edition,  wherein,  by  help 
of  small  type  and  thin  paper,  the  work  was  reduced  to  three  volumes,  of  mean 
and  impoverished  aspect.  The  English  edition,  besides  being  the  better  to  look 
at,  is  also  of  the  purer  text.  I  cannot  doubt  that  the  private  papers  of  Gordon 
are  worth  searching  for  in  England.  A  fairly-good  life  of  him  is  still  lacking. 
The  brief  sketch  in  the  "  Dictionary  of  National  Biography"  has  a  full  supply 
of  those  amusing  errors  of  detail  which  occur  in  so  many  of  its  articles  on  Anglo- 
American  subjects.  The  amplest  account  of  Gordon  which  I  have  met  with,  is 
by  James  Spear  Loring,  in  "  The  Historical  Magazine,"  vi.  41-49  ;  78-83. 
This,  however,  besides  being  disorderly  and  garrulous,  is  in  other  respects  un- 
satisfactory. 


428  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION. 

Everywhere,  also,  in  its  incidental  strokes  of  information,  in 
a  thousand  casual  hints  and  glances  of  meaning,  one  per- 
ceives the  immense  advantage  he  derived  from  his  intimate 
communication  with  the  great  civilians  and  soldiers  who 
conducted  the  Revolution  from  its  beginning  to  its  end.  It 
is  true  that  his  brief  residence  in  the  country  which  he  made 
his  own  with  so  much  ardor,  rendered  it  impossible  for  him 
to  see  the  real  relation  of  some  events,  to  understand  the  true 
character  of  some  persons ;  but  even  that  disadvantage  had 
its  compensation  in  his  freedom  from  local  and  hereditary 
bias,  in  the  unhackneyed  freshness  of  his  judgment,  in  a  sort 
of  aloofness  of  vision  which  gave  something  of  the  just  per- 
spective and  of  the  impartiality  that  are  conferred  by  actual 
distance  in  space  or  in  time.  Finally,  the  fact  speaks  well  for 
this  history  of  the  American  Revolution  that,  at  the  time  of 
its  publication,  it  dissatisfied  both  sides  in  the  controversy 
— a  valid  token  that  it  was  not  the  product  of  servility  to 
either  side. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

The  following  is  intended  to  be  a  complete  list  of  the  printed  materials — 
books,  pamphlets,  broadsides,  and  periodical  publications — cited  in  the  present 
work  on  "  The  Literary  History  of  the  American  Revolution."  Each  document 
is  mentioned  in  alphabetical  order,  either  according  to  its  author's  name,  or, 
where  that  is  unknown,  according  to  the  first  word  in  its  title,  excluding  the 
definite  and  indefinite  articles.  In  the  case  of  extremely  long  titles,  I  have 
sometimes  given  only  their  primary  and  more  distinguishing  portions.  More- 
over, in  the  footnotes  throughout  the  book,  I  have  sought  to  save  room  by  giv- 
ing, in  many  instances,  only  an  abridged  form  of  the  titles  therein  cited,  doing 
so,  however,  in  such  a  way  as  to  enable  the  reader,  by  turning  to  the  following 
list,  to  find  the  exact  title  referred  to,  as  well  as  the  particular  edition  used 
by  me. 

It  will  be  readily  understood  that  the  materials  included  in  this  list  form  but 
a  fraction  of  those  actually  examined  by  me  in  the  course  of  my  researches 
among  the  writings  which  have  survived  to  us  from  our  Revolutionary  period. 
Perhaps  I  ought  to  add  that  these  researches,  when  not  satisfied  within  my  own 
library  or  within  that  of  Cornell  University,  have  laid  upon  me  the  pleasant 
necessity,  during  the  past  twenty  years,  of  paying  visits  not  only  to  the  British 
Museum  and  to  the  Public  Record  Office  in  London,  but  to  the  chief  historical 
libraries  in  the  older  portions  of  our  republic — particularly  to  those  of  Rich- 
mond, Washington,  Baltimore,  Philadelphia,  New  York,  Brooklyn,  New 
Haven,  Providence,  Worcester,  Cambridge,  and  Boston. 


ADAIR,  JAMES,  The   History  of  the  American    Indians  ;   particularly  those 
Nations  adjoining  to  the  Mississippi,  East  and  West  Florida,  Georgia, 
South  and  North  Carolina,  and  Virginia. 
London:  1775. 

ADAMS,  ABIGAIL,  Correspondence  of  Miss  Adams,  Daughter  of  John  Adams, 
second  President  of  the  United  States.     Edited  by  her  Daughter.     Two 
volumes. 
New  York  and  London  :  vol.  i.  1841  ;  vol.  ii.  1842. 


429 


430 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


ADAMS,  AMOS,  A  Concise,   Historical  View  of  the  Perils,   Hardships,  Diffi- 
culties, and  Discouragements  which  have  attended  the  Planting  and  Pro- 
gressive  Improvement  of  New  England. 
Boston  :  1769. 

ADAMS,  CHARLES  FRANCIS,  editor.     See  the  Works  of  John  Adams. 
ADAMS,  CHARLES  FRANCIS,  editor.     See  Letters  of  John  Adams. 

ADAMS,  CHARLES  FRANCIS,  editor.     See  Letters  of  Mrs.  Adams,  the  Wife  of 
John  Adams. 

ADAMS,  HERBERT  BAXTER,  The  Life  and  Writings  of  Jared  Sparks,  Compris- 
ing Selections  from  his  Journals  and  Correspondence.     Two  volumes. 
Boston  :  1893. 

ADAMS,  JOHN,  Letters  of,  Addressed  to  His  Wife.     Edited  by  His  Grandson, 
Charles  Francis  Adams.     Two  volumes. 
Boston  :  1841. 

ADAMS,  JOHN,  The  Works  of.     With  a  Life  of  the  Author.     Notes  and  Illus- 
trations by  Charles  Francis  Adams.     Ten  volumes. 
Boston  :   1856. 

ADAMS,  JOHN,  Novanglus :  or,  A  History  of  the  Dispute  with  America,  from 
its  Origin  in  1754  to  the  Present  Time.     Written  in  1774. 
[See  The  Works  of  John  Adams,  iv.  3-177]. 

ADAMS,  JOHN.     See  Novanglus  and  Massachusettensis. 

ADAMS,  MRS.,  The  Wife  of  John  Adams,  Letters  of.     With  an  Introductory 
Memoir  by  her  Grandson,  Charles  Francis  Adams.     Two  volumes. 
Boston  :  1841. 

ADAMS,  SAMUEL,  The  True  Sentiments  of  America :  Contained  in  a  Collection 
of  Letters  sent  from  the  House  of  Representatives  of  the  Province  of 
Massachusetts  Bay  to  Several  Persons  of  high  Rank  in  this  Kingdom  ; 
together  with  certain  Papers  relating  to  a  supposed  Libel  on  the  Governor 
of  that  Province,  and  a  Dissertation  on  the  Canon  and  Feudal  Law. 
London  :  1768. 

[There  has  been  much  debate  over  the  authorship  of  the  documents  here 
collected  ;  but  it  is  now  well  ascertained  that  the  most  of  them  were  by 
Samuel  Adams.  Of  course,  the  "  Dissertation  "  was  by  John  Adams.] 

ADAMS,  ZABDIEL,  Massachussetts  Election  Sermon,  May  29,  1782. 
Boston  :  1782. 

ALEXANDER,  SAMUEL    DAVIES,   Princeton    College   During  the   Eighteenth 
Century. 

New  York  :  n.  d. 
[The  entry  of  copyright  is  of  the  year  1872.] 


BIBI.10GRAPH  Y.  43  r 

ALLEN,  ETHAN,  A  Vindication  of  the  Opposition  of  the  Inhabitants  of  Vermont 
to  the  Government  of  New  York. 
"  Printed  by  Alden  Spooner,  1779,  Printer  to  the  State  of  Vermont." 

ALLEN,  ETHAN,  Reason  the  Only  Oracle  of  Man  :  or,  A  Compenduous  System 
of  Natural  Religion.  Alternately  adorned  .with  Confutations  of  a  Variety 
of  Doctrines  incompatible  with  it  ;  Deduced  from  the  most  exalted  Ideas 
which  we  are  able  to  form  of  the  Divine  and  Human  Characters,  and  from 
the  Universe  in  General. 
Bennington  :  1784. 

ALLEN,  ETHAN,  A  Narrative  of  Colonel  Ethan  Allen's  Captivity.     Written  by 
Himself.     Burlington  :  1846. 

[This  edition  is  inaccurately  styled  "  fourth  edition."  It  also  leaves  off  the 
voluminous  title  given  to  the  book  by  the  author  himself.] 

ALLEN,    WILLIAM,   The  American   Biographical  Dictionary  :    Containing  an 
Account  of  the  Lives,  Characters,  and  Writings  of  the  most  eminent  Persona 
deceased  in  North  America,  from  its  first  Settlement. 
Third  Edition.     Boston  :  1857. 

ALMON,  J.,  Prior  Documents. 
London  :   1777. 

[The  above  is  the  convenient  running-title  of  a  book  which  has  a  different 
title  on  the  title-page,  as  follows :  A  Collection  of  Interesting  Authentic 
Papers,  relative  to  the  Dispute  between  Great  Britain  and  America,  shew- 
ing the  Causes  and  Progress  of  that  Misunderstanding,  from  176410  1775.] 

ALMON,  J.,   The   Remembrancer,  or  Impartial  Repository  of  Public  Events. 
For  the  Year  1776. 
Three  parts.     London  :  1776. 

ALMON,  J.,  The  Remembrancer,  or,  Impartial  Repository  of  Public  Events  for 
the  Year  1778  and  beginning  of  1779.     Volumes  vii.  and  viii. 
London  :    1779. 

AMERICAN  Archives  :  Fourth  Series.     Containing  a  Documentary  History  of 
the  English  Colonies  in  North  America,  From  the  King's  Message  to  Par- 
liament, of  March  7,   1774,  to  the   Declaration  of  Independence  by  the 
United  States.     Edited  by  Peter  Force.     Six  volumes. 
Washington  :  1837-1846. 

AMERICAN  Archives  :  Fifth  Series.     Containing  a  Documentary  History  of  the 
United  States  of  America,  From  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  July 
4,  1776,  to  the  Definitive  Treaty  with  Great  Britain,  September  3,   1783.. 
By  Peter  Force.     Three  volumes. 
Washington  :  1848-1853. 
FThe  Fifth  Series  is  unfinished.] 


43  2  BIBLIOGRA  PH  Y. 

AMERICAN  Chronicles  of  the  Times  (The),  The  First  Book  of.     [Colophon.  ] 
Philadelphia:  1774-1775. 

[This  edition,  which  I  found  in  the  Library  Company  of  Philadelphia,  is  in 
six  Chapters  forming  together  70  pp.  The  imprint  is  at  the  end  of  each 
Chapter.  The  first  Chapter  was  issued  in  October,  1774,  the  last  in  Feb- 
ruary, 1775.  In  the  library  of  the  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  is  an  edition  printed  by 
D.  Kneeland,  Boston  ;  containing  but  five  Chapters  without  paging,  the 
imprint  at  the  end  of  the  third  Chapter  giving  the  date  as  1775.  In  the 
library  of  the  late  Mr.  C.  Fiske  Harris  of  Providence,  was  an  edition  printed 
in  Boston,  by  John  Boyle,  1775,  likewise  having  only  five  Chapters,  and 
without  paging.  I  am  led  to  suspect  that  the  work  was  written  not  far 
from  Philadelphia  ;  in  short  that  it  was  one  of  the  innumerable  anonymous 
literary  hoaxes  of  Francis  Hopkinson.] 

AMERICAN  Gazette  (The).     No.  ii. 
London  :  1768. 

AMERICAN  History,  Magazine  of.     Volume  viii. 
New  York  :  1882. 

AMERICAN  Liberty  Song  (The). 
In  broadside,  n.  p  :  n.  d. 
[The  copy  used  by  me  is  in  the  library  of  the  Pa.  Hist.  Soc.] 

AMERICAN  Museum  (The)  :  or,  Repository  of  Ancient  and   Modern   Fugitive 
Pieces,  etc.,  Prose  and  Poetical.     Eleven  volumes. 
Philadelphia:  1787-1792. 

AMERICAN  Philosophical  Society,  Transactions  of.     Volume  iv. 
Philadelphia:  1799. 

ANDREWS,  JAMES  DEWITT,  editor.     See  The  Works  of  James  Wilson,  edition 
of  1896. 

ANDREWS,  JOHN,  Esq.,  of  Boston,  Letters  of,  1772-1776.     Compiled  and  edited 
from  the  original  MSS.,  with  an  Introduction,  by  Winthrop  Sargent. 
Cambridge  :  1866. 
[Reprinted  from  the  "  Proceedings  of  the  Mass.  Hist.  Soc."] 

ANDROS,  THOMAS,  The  Old  Jersey  Captive  :  or,  A  Narrative  of  the  Captivity 
of  Thomas  Andros  (now  Pastor  of  the  Church  in  Berkeley)  on  board  the 
Old  Jersey  Prison  Ship  at  New  York,  1781.  In  a  Series  of  Letters  to  a 
Friend,  suited  to  inspire  Faith  and  Confidence  in  a  Particular  Divine 
Providence. 
Boston  :  1833. 

ARBUTHNOT,  JOHN,  The  History  of  John  Bull. 

London,  Paris,  New  York,  and  Melbourne  :  1889. 

[This  is  one  of  the  volumes  in  Cassell's  National  Library.] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY.  433 

ARNOLD,  MATTHEW,  On  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature. 
London  :  1863. 

ATLANTIC  Monthly  (The).     A  Magazine  of  Literature,  Art,  and  Politics. 
Volume  xii.     Boston  :  1863. 
Volume  liv.     Boston  :  1884. 

AUSTIN,  JAMES  TRECOTHIC,  The  Life  of  Elbridge  Gerry,  With  Contemporary 
Letters. 

Part  i.    To  the  Close  of  the  American  Revolution.     Boston  :  1828. 
Part  ii.    From  the  Close  of  the  American  Revolution.     Boston  :  1829. 

BACKUS,  ISAAC,  A  History  of  New  England,  With  particular  Reference  to  the 
Denomination  of  Christians  called  Baptists.     .     .     .     Collected  from  most 
authentic  Records  and  Writings,  both  Ancient  and  Modern. 
Volume  i.     Boston  1777. 

Volume  ii.  Providence  :  1784,  [with  the  following  title]  A  Church  History 
of  New  England.  Extending  from  1690,  to  1784.  Including  a  concise 
View  of  the  American  War,  and  of  the  Conduct  of  the  Baptists  therein, 
with  the  present  State  of  their  Churches. 

Volume  iii.  Boston  :  1796,  [with  the  following  title]  A  Church  History  of 
New  England.  Extending  from  1783  to  1796.  Containing  an  Account  of 
the  Religious  Affairs  of  the  Country,  and  of  the  Oppressions  therein  on 
Religious  Accounts,  with  a  particular  History  of  the  Baptist  Churches  in 
the  Five  States  of  New  England. 

BACKUS,  ISAAC,  An  Abridgment  of  the  Church  History  of  New  England,  from 
1602  to  1804.  Containing  a  View  of  their  Principles  and  Practice,  De- 
clensions and  Revivals,  Oppression  and  Liberty.  With  a  concise  Account 
of  the  Baptists  in  the  Southern  Parts  of  America.  And  a  Chronological 
Table  of  the  Whole. 
Boston  :  1804. 

[This  Abridgment  was  re-printed  in  volume  i.  of  "  The  Baptist  Library," 
pages  89-181. 
Prattsville  :  1843.] 

BACKUS,  ISAAC,  A  History  of  New  England,  With  Particular  Reference  to  the 
Denomination  of  Christians  called  Baptists.     Second  Edition,  with  Notes 
by  David  Weston.     Two  volumes. 
Newton  :  1871. 

BALCH,  THOMAS,  editor.     See  The  Examination  of  Joseph  Galloway. 

BALDWIN,  EBENEZER,  Annals  of  Yale  College  to  1831. 
New  Haven  :  1831. 

BALLADS  and  Poems  relating  to  the  Burgoyne  Campaign,  Annotated  by  William 
Leete  Stone. 
Albany:   1893. 


434  BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

[This  collection  forms  No.  20  of  Munsell's  Historical  Series.  It  includes, 
besides  the  contemporary  verses  on  Burgoyn  e,  many  modern  commemorations 
in  verse  of  the  various  transactions  connected  with  his  campaign.  Indeed, 
most  of  the  materials  in  this  book  are  modern  ;  and  the  annotations  are  by  a 
writer  who  has  long  been  a  specialist  in  that  particular  topic  of  our  history.] 

BANCROFT,  EDWARD,  An  Essay  on  the  Natural  History  of  Guiana  in  South 
America.  Containing  a  description  of  many  curious  productions  in  the 
animal  and  vegetable  systems  of  that  country,  together  with  an  account  of 
the  religion,  manners,  and  customs  of  several  tribes  of  its  Indian  inhabitants  ; 
interspersed  with  a  variety  of  literary  and  medical  observations,  in  several 
letters  from  a  gentleman  of  the  medical  faculty,  during  his  residence  in  that 
country. 
London :  1769. 

BANCROFT,  EDWARD,  Remarks  on  the  Review  of  the  Controversy  between 
Great  Britain  and  her  Colonies. 
London  :  1769.     Re-printed  New  London  :  1771. 

BANCROFT,  EDWARD,  The  History  of  Charles  Wentworth,  Esq.     In  a  Series  of 
Letters.     Interspersed  with  a  Variety  of  Important  Reflections,  calculated 
to  improve  Morality,  and  promote  the  Economy  of  Human  Life.     Three 
volumes. 
London  :   1770. 

[I  am  indebted  to  the  American  Antiquarian  Society  for  the  loan  of  these 
extremely  rare  volumes.] 

BANCROFT,  EDWARD,  A  Narrative  of  the  Objects  and  Proceedings  of  Silas 
Deane  as  Commissioner  of  the  United  Colonies  to  France  :  made  to  the 
British  Government  in  1776.     Edited  by  Paul  Leicester  Ford. 
Brooklyn  :  1892. 

BANCROFT,  GEORGE,  History  of  the  United  States.     Ten  volumes. 
Boston  :   1869-1874. 

BANCROFT,  GEORGE,  History  of  the  United  States  of  America.     The  Author's 
Last  Revision.     Six  volumes. 
New  York:  1891. 

BARTON,  ANDREW,  Disappointment :  or,  The  Force  of  Credulity.     A  New 
American  Comic  Opera,  of  Two  Acts. 
New  York  :  1767. 

BARTON,  BENJAMIN  SMITH,  New  Views  of  the  Origin  of  the  Tribes  of  America. 
Philadelphia:  1797.          :    <  ^ 

BATTLE  OF  BROOKLYN  (The  :)  A  Farce  of  Two  Acts.     As  it  was  performed  on 
Long  Island  on  Tuesday,  the  27th  Day  of  August,  1776,  by  the  Representa- 
tives of  the  Tyrants  of  America  assembled  at  Philadelphia. 
New  York  :  1776. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY.  435 

BEARDSLEY,  EBEN  EDWARDS,  Life  and  Times  of  William  Samuel  Johnson. 
Second  Edition,  revised  and  enlarged. 
Boston  :    1886. 
[The  first  edition  was  published  in  1876.] 

BEARDSLEY,  EBEN  EDWARDS,  Life  and  Correspondence  of  the  Right  Reverend 
Samuel  Seabury,  D.D.     Second  edition. 
Boston  :  1881. 

BEATTY,  CHARLES,  The  Journal  of  a  Two  Months'  Tour  with  a  View  of  Pro- 
moting  Religion  among  the  Frontier  Inhabitants  of  Pennsylvania. 
London  :  1768. 

BELKNAP,  JEREMY,  D.D.,  The  Historian  of  New  Hampshire,  Life  of  ;  with 
Selections  from  his  Correspondence  and   Other  Writings.     Selected   and 
Arranged  by  his  Grand-Daughter. 
New  York:  1847. 

BELLAMY,  JOSEPH,  The  Works  of,  With  a  Memoir  of  His  Life  and  Character. 
Two  volumes. 
Boston  :  1853. 

BIGELOW,  JOHN,  editor.     See  The   Life  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  Written  by 
Himself. 

BIGELOW,  JOHN,  editor.     See  The  Complete  Works  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

BLACKWOOD'S  Edinburgh  Magazine.     Volume  xli.     December — June,  1837. 
Edinburgh  and  London  :   1837. 
Volume  lii.     July — December,  1842. 
Edinburgh  and  London  :  1842. 

BLAND,  RICHARD,  A  Fragment  on  the  Pistole  Fee,  claimed  by  the  Governor  of 
Virginia,  1753.     Edited  by  William  Chauncey  Ford. 
Brooklyn  :  1891. 

BLAND,  RICHARD,  A  Letter  to  the  Clergy  of  Virginia. 
Williamsburgh  :   1760. 

BLAND,  RICHARD,  An  Enquiry  into  the  Rights  of  the  British  Colonies ;  In- 
tended  as  an  Answer  to  "The  Regulations  lately  made  concerning  the 
Colonies,  and   the  Taxes  imposed  upon  them  considered."     In  a    Letter 
addressed  to  the  Author  of  that  Pamphlet. 
London  :    1769. 

BLEECKER,  ANN  ELIZA,  The  Posthumous  Works  of,  in  Prose  and  Verse.     To 
which  is  added  a  Collection  of  Essays,  Prose  and  Poetical,  by  Margaretta 
V.  Faugeres. 
New  York  :    1793. 


436  BIB  LI  OCR  A  PH  Y. 

BLOCKHEADS  (The) :  or,  the  Affrightened  Officers.     A  Farce. 
Boston  :  1776. 
[This  has  been  attributed  to  Mercy  Warren.] 

BLOCKHEADS  (THE),  or,  Fortunate  Contractor.  An  Opera  in  Two  Acts,  as  it 
was  performed  at  New  York.  The  Music  entirely  new,  composed  by 
several  of  the  most  eminent  Masters  in  Europe.  Printed  at  New  York. 
London  Re-Printed  for  G.  Kearsley,  1782. 

BOLTON,  ROBERT,  Jr.,  History  of  the   Protestant  Episcopal   Church   in   the 
County  of  Westchester,  from  its  Foundation,  A.D.,  1693,  to  A.D.,  1853, 
New  York:  1855. 

BOSTON  CHRONICLE,  (THE)  for  1769,  and  1770. 

BOSWELL,  JAMES,  Life  of  Johnson.     Edited  by  George  Birkbeck  Hill.     Six 
volumes. 
Oxford  :  1887. 

BOUCHER,  JONATHAN,  A  View  of  the  Causes  and  Consequences  of  the  Ameri- 
can  Revolution  ;  in   Thirteen   Discourses,   preached  in   North   America 
between  the  Years  1763  and  1775,  with  an  Historical  Preface. 
London:  1797. 

BOUCHER,  JONATHAN,  Glossary  of  Archaic  and  Provincial  Words.  Parts  i.  and 
ii. 

London  :  1832-1833. 
[The  work  was  thus  left  unfinished.     No  more  has  since  been  published.] 

BRACKENRIDGE,  HENRY  MARIE,  Biographical  Notice  of  Hugh  Henry  Bracken- 
ridge.     Appendix  to  the  latter's  Modern  Chivalry. 
Philadelphia:   1846. 

BRACKENRIDGE,  HUGH  HENRY,  The  Battle  of  Bunker's  Hill.  A  Dramatic 
Piece,  Of  Five  Acts,  In  Heroic  Measure.  By  a  Gentleman  of  Maryland. 
Philadelphia  :  1876. 

BRACKENRIDGE,  HUGH  HENRY,  The  Death  of  General  Montgomery  at  the 
Siege  of  Quebec.     A  Tragedy. 
Philadelphia :    1777. 

BRACKENRIDGE,  HUGH  MONTGOMERY,  Six  Political  Discourses  Founded  on  the 
Scripture. 
Lancaster  :  n.  d. 

[Hildeburn    gives    it  as    1778.      This    is  the    same    as    Hugh    Henry 
Brackenridge.] 

BRACKENRIDGE,  HUGH  HENRY,  Modern  Chivalry. 
Philadelphia  :   1846. 
[This  edition  contains  only  the  first  volume  of  the  work  ;  has  a  preface  and 


BIBLIOGRAPHY.  437 

a  biographical  notice  of  the  author,  by  his  son,  Henry  Marie  Brackenridge  ; 
and  illustrations  by  Darley.  The  first  volume  was  originally  published  in 
1796  ;  the  work  was  made  complete  in  two  volumes  in  1804-1807  ;  was  re- 
published  with  final  corrections  and  additions  by  the  author  in  1819, — the 
place  of  publication  in  each  case  being  Pittsburgh.] 

BRADFORD,  ALDEN,  Memoir  of  the  Life  and  Writings  of  Rev.  Jonathan  May- 
hew,  D.D. 
Boston  :  1838. 

BRECK,  SAMUEL,  Recollections  of,  With  Passages  from  His  Note-Books  (1771- 
1862.)     Edited  by  H.  E.  Scudder. 
Philadelphia:   1877. 

BRITISH  POETRY,  The  Family  Library  of.     Edited  by  James  T.  Fields  and 
Edwin  P.  Whipple. 
Boston  :  1880. 

BRYANT,  WILLIAM  CULLEN,  and  SYDNEY  HOWARD  GAY,  A  Popular  History 
of  the  United  States.     Four  volumes. 
New  York  :  1876-1881. 

BUCKLE,  HENRY  THOMAS,  History  of  Civilization  in  England.     Volume  i. 
Second  edition. 
London  :  1858. 

BULLOCK,  CHARLES  JESSE,  The  Finances  of  the  United  States  from  1775  to 
to  1789,  With  Especial  Reference  to  the  Budget. 
Madison  :  1895. 

[Bulletin  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin,  Economics,  Political  Science,  and 
History  Series,  volume  i.,  number  2.] 

BURGESS,  JOHN  W.,  Political  Science  and  Comparative  Constitutional  Law. 
Volume  i.  Sovereignty  and  Liberty. 
Volume  ii.  Government. 
Boston  and  London  :  1891. 

BURKE,  EDMUND,  The  Works  of.     Twelve  volumes. 
Boston  :  1871.     Fourth  edition. 

BURTON,    WILLIAM    EVANS,    The  Cyclopaedia   of  Wit  and   Humor.    Two 
volumes. 
New  York  :  1858. 

CALHOUN,  JOHN  CALDWELL,  The  Works  of.     Edited  by  Richard  K.  Cralle. 
Six  volumes. 

Volume  i.  Charleston  :  1851. 
Volumes  ii.-vi.  New  York  :  1855. 

CAMPBELL,  CHARLES,  History  of  the  Colony  and  Ancient  Dominion  of  Vir- 
ginia. 
Philadelphia:  1860. 


438  BIBLIOGRA  PH  Y. 

CAMPBELL,  THOMAS,  The  Complete  Poetical  Works  of.     With  a  Memoir  of 
his  Life,  and  an  Essay  on  his  Genius  and  Writings. 
New  York  :  1850. 

CARPENTER,  STEPHEN  CULLEN,  Memoirs  of  Thomas  Jefferson.  Two  volumes. 
New  York  :  1809. 

CARVER,  JONATHAN,  Travels  through  the  Interior  Parts  of  North  America,  in 
the  Years  1766,  1767,  and  1768. 
London  :  1778. 

CARVER,  JONATHAN,  The  New  Universal  Traveller  ;  containing  a  full  and  dis- 
tinct Account  of  all  the  Empires,  Kingdoms,  and  States  in  the  Known 
World. 

London  :  1779. 

[It  is  said  that  Carver  was  not  the  compiler  of  this  book,  and  that  he  was 
paid  for  the  use  of  his  name  upon  the  title-page.] 

CARVER,  JONATHAN,  A  Treatise  on  the  Culture  of  the  Tobacco  Plant ;  With  the 
Manner  in  which  it  is  usually  cured.     Adapted  to  Northern  Climates,  and 
designed  for  the  Use  of  the  Landholders  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland. 
Dublin  :  1779. 

[The  only  copy  known  to  me  is  in  the  library  of  Mr.  John  Nicholas  Brown, 
of  Providence.] 

CARVER,  JONATHAN,  Travels  through  the  Interior  Parts  of  North  America,  in 
the  Years  1766,  1767,  and  1768.     Third  edition,  with  an  Account  of  the 
Author. 
London  :  1781. 

CARVER,  JONATHAN,  Abridgment  of  his  Travels  in  "A  New  and  Complete 
Collection,"  etc.,  by  John  Hamilton  Moore. 

CARVER  Centenary  (The). 
St.  Paul :  1867. 

CARVER,  JONATHAN,  A  Short  History  and  Description  of  Fort  Niagara,  with 
an  Account  of  its  Importance  to  Great  Britain.  Written  by  an  English 

Prisoner,  1758.     Signed  J.  C r. 

Reprinted  from  The  Royal  Magazine,  for  September,  1759,  and  edited  by 
Paul  Leicester  Ford. 
Brooklyn :  1890, 

CELEBRATED  Speech  of  a  Celebrated  Commoner  (The). 
London :  1766. 

CHANNING,  WILLIAM  ELLERY,  The  Works  of.     Six  volumes.    Nineteenth  com- 
plete  edition. 
Boston  :  1 869. 


BIBLIOGRA  PH  Y.  439 

CHASTELLUX,  M.  LE    MARQUIS   DE,  Voyages  de,  dans  1'Amerique  Septen- 
trionale,  dans  les  annees  1780,  1781,  and  1782. 
Seconde  Edition.     A  Paris  :  1788. 
[Two  volumes.] 

CHAUNCY,  CHARLES,  A  Discourse  on  the  Good  News  from  a  Far  Country. 
Delivered  July  Twenty-fourth,  a  Day  of  Thanksgiving  to  Almighty  God 
.     .     .     on  Occasion  of  the  Repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act. 
Boston  :  1766. 

CHAUNCY,  CHARLES,  Trust  in  God,  the  Duty  of  a  People  in  a  Day  of  Trouble. 
A  Sermon  preached  May  30,  1770. 
Boston  :  1770. 

CHAUNCY,  CHARLES,  A  Letter  to  a  Friend,  giving  a  concise  but  just  Representa- 
tion of  the  Hardships  and  Sufferings  the  Town  of  Boston  is  exposed  to,  and 
must  undergo,  in  consequence  of  the  late  Act  of  the  British  Parliament. 
Boston  :  1774. 

CHAUNCY,  CHARLES,  The  Accursed  Thing  must  be  taken  away  from  among 
the  People,  if  they  would  reasonably  hope  to  stand  before  their  Enemies. 
A   Sermon  preached   at  the  Thursday-Lecture  in  Boston,  September  3, 
1778. 
Boston  :  1778. 

CHAUNCY,  CHARLES,  Salvation  of  All  Men,  illustrated  and  vindicated  as  a 
Scripture-Doctrine,   in  numerous  Extracts  from  a   Variety  of   pious  and 
learned  Men  who  have  purposely  writ  upon  the  Subject.    ...     By  One 
who  wishes  well  to  all  Mankind. 
Boston  :  1782. 

CHAUNCY,  CHARLES,  Divine  Glory  brought  to  View,  in  the  Final  Salvation  of 
All  Men.     A  Letter  to  the  Friend  of  Truth,  by  One  who  wishes  well  to 
all  Mankind. 
Boston  :  1783. 

CHAUNCY,  CHARLES,  The  Mystery  Hid  from  Ages  and  Generations,  made 
manifest  by  the  Gospel- Revelation  :  or,  the  Salvation  of  All  Men  the  Grand 
Thing  aimed  at  in  the  Scheme  of  God. 
London  :  1784. 

CHEETHAM,  JAMES,  The  Life  of  Thomas  Paine. 

New  York  :  1809. 
CHURCH,  BENJAMIN,  The  Times,  a  Poem  by  an  American. 

Boston  :  1765. 

CHURCH,  BENJAMIN,  Elegy  on  the  Death  of  the  Reverend  Jonathan  Mayhew, 
D.D.,  who  departed  this  Life,  July  gth,  Anno  Domini,  1766. 
Boston  :  n.  d. 


440 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


CHURCH,  BENJAMIN,  An  Address  to  a  Provincial  Bashaw.     O  Shame  !  where  is 
thy  Blush  ?    By  a  Son  of  Liberty.     Printed  in  the  Tyrannic  Administration 
of  St.  Francisco,  1769.     n.  p. 
[The  Provincial  Bashaw,  of  course,  is  Governor  Francis  Bernard.] 

CHURCH,  BENJAMIN,  An  Elegy  to  the  Memory  of   ...    the  Rev.  George 
Whitefield. 
Boston  :  1770. 

CHURCHMAN  (The).     An  Illustrated  Weekly  News-Magazine. 
New  York.     Founded  in  1845. 

CLARK,  GEORGE  ROGERS,  Sketch  of  His  Campaign  in  the  Illinois  in  1778-9, 
With  an  Introduction  by  Hon.  Henry  Pirtle   of  Louisville,  and  an  Ap- 
pendix containing  the  Public  and  Private  Instructions  to  Col.  Clark  ;  and 
Major  Bowman's  Journal  of  the  Taking  of  Post  St.  Vincents. 
Cincinnati :  1869. 
[Ohio  Valley  Historical  Series.     Number  three.] 

CLARK,  JONAS,  A  Sermon,  preached  at  Lexington,  April  19,  1776  :  .  .  .  To 
which  is  added  a  Brief  Narrative  of  the  principal  Transactions  of  That  Day. 
Boston  :  1777. 

[This  "  Brief  Narrative  "  was  reprinted  in  folio,  and  illustrated,  Boston  : 
I875-] 

CLARKE,  JOHN,  Sermon  at  the  Interment  of  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel  Cooper. 
Boston  :  1784.  ;    ;; 

CLARKE,  JOHN,  A  Discourse  delivered  at  the  First  Church  in  Boston,  February 
15,  1787,  at  the  Interment  of  the  Rev.  Charles  Chauncy,  etc. 
Boston  :  1787. 

COLLECTION  of  Scarce  and  Valuable  Tracts  (A).    .    .    .     Revised,  Augmented, 
and  Arranged  by  Walter  Scott.     Thirteen  volumes. 
London:  1809-1815, 

[This  collection  is  somewhat  improperly  lettered  on  the  back  as  "  Lord 
Somers's  Tracts."] 

COLUMBIAN  Muse  (The).     A  Selection  of   American    Poetry,   from   Various 
Authors  of  Established  Reputation. 
New  York  :  1794. 

CONDUCT  of  the  Late  Administration  Examined  (The).     With  an  Appendix, 
containing  Original  and  Authentic  Documents. 
London  :  1767. 

[This  celebrated  pamphlet  was  probably  by  Charles  Lloyd.  The  Appen- 
dix, which  contains  fifty-four  pages,  has  the  letters,  probably  written  by 
Governor  Bernard  and  others,  giving  an  account  of  the  disturbances  in 
Boston  in  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1765.] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY.  .  441 

CONNECTICUT  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  Memoirs  of.     Vol.  i.,  part  iv. 
New  Haven  :  1816. 

CONNECTICUT  Journal  and  New  Haven  Post-Boy  (The),  for  1770,  and  for  1773. 

CONSIDERATIONS  upon  the  Rights  of  the  Colonists  to  the  Privileges  of  British 
Subjects,  Introduced  by  a  Brief  Review  of  the  Rise  and  Progress  of  Eng- 
lish Liberty,  and  Concluded  with  some  Remarks  upon  our  present  Alarming 
Situation. 
New  York:  1766. 

CONTROVERSY  between  Great  Britain  and  her  Colonies  Reviewed  (The). 
Boston  :  1769. 
[Probably  by  William  Knox.] 

CONWAY,  MONCURE  DANIEL,  The  Life  of  Thomas  Paine.     With  a  History  of 
his  literary,  political,  and  religious  Career  in  America,  France,  and  Eng- 
land.    Two  volumes. 
New  York :  1892. 

CONWAY,  MONCURE  DANIEL, -editor.     See  The  Writings  of  Thomas  Paine. 

COOKE,  JOHN    ESTEN,  The  Virginia    Comedians  ;  or,  Old    Days  in  the  Old 
Dominion.     Two  volumes. 
New  York:  1883. 
[The  first  edition  was  published  in  same  place,  1854.] 

COOMBE,  THOMAS,  The  Harmony  between  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  Re- 
specting  the  Messiah. 
Philadelphia  :  1774. 

COOMBE,  THOMAS,  Edwin,  or,  The  Emigrant :  an  Eclogue,  to  which  are  added 
Three  Other  Poetical  Sketches. 
Philadelphia  :  1775. 

COOMBE,  THOMAS,  The  Peasant  of  Auburn,  or,  The  Emigrant.     A  Poem. 
Philadelphia  :  n.  d. 
[The  two  foregoing  titles  stand  for  the  same  poem.] 

COOPER,  MYLES,  The  American  Querist  :  or,  Some  Questions  Proposed  Rela- 
tive to  the  present  Disputes  between  Great  Britain  and  her  American  Colo- 
nies. By  a  North  American  :  n.  p.  1774. 

COOPER,  MYLES,  A  Friendly  Address  to  all  Reasonable  Americans,  On  the  Sub- 
ject of  Our  Political  Confusions  :  in  which  the  necessary  Consequences  of 
violently  opposing  the  King's  Troops,  and  of  a  general  Non-Importation, 
are  fairly  stated. 
New  York :  1774. 

COOPER,  MYLES,  A  Sermon  ...  at  Oxford, -December  13,  1776. 
Oxford  :   1777. 


442  .  BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

COOPER,  SAMUEL,  The  Crisis. 
Boston :  1754. 

CORRESPONDENCE  of  the  American  Revolution,  edited  by  Jared  Sparks.     Four 
volumes. 
Boston  :  1853. 

COWPER,  WILLIAM,  The  Works  of,  Comprising  his  Poems,  Correspondence, 
and  Translations,  with  a  Life  of  the  Author  by  the  Editor,  Robert  Southey. 
Eight  volumes. 
London  :  1854. 

CRALLE,  RICHARD  K.,  editor.     See  the  Works  of  John  Caldwell  Calhoun. 

CREASY,  SIR  EDWARD,  The  Imperial  and  Colonial  Constitutions  of  the  Britannic 
Empire,  excluding  Indian  Institutions. 
London :  1872. 

CREVECCEUR,  J.  HECTOR  ST.  JOHN  DE,  Letters  from  an  American  Farmer  : 
Describing  certain  Provincial  Situations,  Manners,  and  Customs,  not  gen- 
erally known  ;  and  conveying  some  Idea  of  the  late  and  present  interior 
Circumstances  of  the  British  Colonies  in  North  America.  Written  for  the 
Information  of  a  Friend  in  England,  by  J.  Hector  St.  John,  a  Farmer  in 
Pennsylvania.  A  new  Edition,  with  an  accurate  Index. 
London  :  1783. 

CREVEC<EUR,  J.  HECTOR  ST.  JOHN  DE,    Lettres  d'un   cultivateur   americain, 
ecrites  a  W.  S.  Ecuyer,  Depuis  1'annee  1770,  jusqu'  a  1781.     Traduites  de 
1'Anglois  par.   .   .   . 
Paris  :  1784. 

[Not  having  at  hand  the  French  copy  which  I  have  used,  I  borrow  this  title 
from  Sabin,  "  Dictionary,"  etc.,  v.  76.  My  impression  is  that  this  is  by 
no  means  the  first  French  edition.] 

CREVECCEUR,  J.  HECTOR  ST.  JOHN  DE,  Briefe  eines  Amerikanischen  Land- 
manns  an  den  Ritter  W.  S..,  in  den  Jahren  1770  bis  1781.  Aus  dem  Eng- 
lischen  ins  Franzbsische  .  .  .  und  jetzt  aus  dem  FranzOsichen  ubersetzt 
und  mit  einigen  Anmerkungen  begleitet  von  Johann  August  Ephraim 
Gotze.  Drei  Bander. 
Leipzig:  1788. 

CREVECCEUR,  J.  HECTOR  ST.  JOHN  DE,  Voyage  Dans  la  Haute  Pensylvanie  Et 
Dans  L'Etat  De  New  York,  Par  un  Membre  adoptif  de  la  Nation  Oneida. 
Traduit  et  public  par  1'auteur  des    Lettres  d'un   Cultivateur   Americain. 
Trois  tomes. 
Paris  :  1801. 

CRISIS,  (The),  or,  a  Full  Defence  of  the  Colonies. 
London  :  1766. 

[Written,  as  by  an  Englishman,  before  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act 
Argues  against  England's  right  to  tax  unrepresented  colonies.] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY.  443 

CURTIS,  GEORGE  T.ICKNOR,  Constitutional  History  of  the  United  States  from 
their  Declaration  of  Independence  to  the  Close  of  their  Civil  War.     In 
two  volumes.     Volume  i. 
New  York  :  1889. 

[The  author  died  without  having  published  the  second  volume,  which  was 
issued  in  1896.] 

CURWEN,  SAMUEL,  (Journal  and  Letters  of  the  Late),  Judge  of  Admiralty, 
etc.,  an  American  Refugee  in  England,  from  1775  to  1784,  comprising  Re- 
marks on  the  prominent  men  and  measures  of  that  period.  To  which  are 
added  biographical  notices  of  many  American  Loyalists  and  other  eminent 
persons.  By  George  Atkinson  Ward. 
New  York  and  Boston  :  1842. 

GUSHING,  WILLIAM,  Anonyms  :  A  Dictionary  of  Revealed  Authorship. 
Cambridge  :   1890. 

DEANE,  SILAS,  Paris  Papers  ;  or,  Mr.  Silas  Deane's  late  Intercepted  Letters,  to 
His  Brothers  and  Other  Intimate  Friends  in  America. 
New  York  :  n.  d. 

DEANE  Papers  (The)  :  Collections  of  the  New  York  Historical  Society,  for  the 
Years  1886,  1887,  and  1888. 

DEAS,  ANNE  IZARD,  editor.     See  Correspondence  of  Mr.  Ralph  Izard. 

DELANCEY,  EDWARD  FLOYD,  Philip  Freneau  the  Huguenot  Patriot-Poet  of 
the  Revolution,  and  his  Poetry  :  n.  p. 

[Reprinted  from  the  Proceedings  of  the  Huguenot  Society  of  America,  ii. , 
No.  2,  1891.] 

DELAPLAINE,  JOSEPH,   Delaplaine's  Repository  of  the  Lives  and  Portraits  of 
Distinguished  American  Characters. 

[Vol.  i.,  in  two  parts,  of  which  the  first  appeared  in  1815-1816,  and  the  sec- 
ond in  1817.  Of  vol.  ii.  only  the  first  part  ever  appeared,  and  that  in 
1818.  The  place  of  publication  was  Phila.] 

DEMOGEOT,  J.,  Histoire  de  la  Litterature  Fran9aise. 
Paris:  1860. 

DETAIL  and  Conduct  of  the  American  War,  under  Generals  Gage,  Howe,  and 
Burgoyne,  and  Vice  Admiral  Lord  Howe  :  With  a  very  full  and  correct 
State  of  the  Whole  of  the  Evidence,  as  given  before  a  Committee  of  the 
House  of  Commons  :  and  the  celebrated  Fugitive  Pieces  which  are  said  to 
have  given  Rise  to  that  celebrated  Enquiry.  The  Whole  Exhibiting  a  cir- 
cumstantial, connected,  and  complete  History  of  the  real  Causes,  Rise, 
Progress,  and  Present  State  of  the  American  Rebellion.  Third  Edition. 
London:  1780. 

[The  first  and  second  editions  of  this  work  were  under  a  different  title,  be- 
ginning with  the  words,  "  A  View  of  the  Evidence,"  etc.] 


444  BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

DEXTER,  HENRY  MARTYN,  The  Congregationalism  of  the- Last  Three  Hundred 
Years,  as  seen  in  its  Literature. 
New  York:  1880. 

DIAL  (The).     A  Monthly  Journal  of  Current  Literature.     Volumes  i-xxi. 
Chicago  :  1879-1896. 

[This  journal  has  been  edited  from  its  foundation  by  Mr.  Francis  F. 
Browne.] 

DICKINSON,  JOHN,  A  Reply  to  a  Piece  called  the  Speech  of  Joseph  Galloway, 
Esq. 
London:  1765, 

DICKINSON,  JOHN,  The  Late  Regulations  respecting  the  British  Colonies  on  the 
Continent  of  America,  Considered  in  a  Letter  from  a  Gentleman  in  Phila- 
delphia to  his  Friend  in  London. 
Philadelphia  :  n.d. 

[This  pamphlet,  at  first  published  anonymously,  was  reprinted  in  the  Wil- 
mington edition  of  Dickinson's  "  Political  Writings,"  i.  45-90,  where  the 
date  1765  is  given  to  it.] 

DICKINSON,   JOHN,    Lettres  d'un   Fermier  de   Pensylvanie  aux  habitans  de 
L'Amerique  Septentrionale.     Traduites  de  1'Anglois. 
Amsterdam  :  1769. 

DICKINSON,  JOHN,  The  Political  Writings  of.     Two  volumes. 
Wilmington :  1801. 

DICKINSON,  JOHN,  The  Writings  of.     Edited  by  Paul  Leicester  Ford.  Volume  i. 
Philadelphia:  1895. 

[The  work,  still  in  process  of  publication,  is  to  appear  in  three  volumes,  of 
which  the  first  two  are  devoted  to  the  Political  Writings,  and  the  third  to 
the  Correspondence.] 

DICTIONARY  of  National  Biography.     Edited  by  Leslie  Stephen  and  Sidney 
Lee.     Volume  xxii. 
London  :  1890. 

DISCOURSE  (A)  delivered  at  Providence    .     .     .     upon  the  25*  Day  of  July, 
1768,  at  the  Dedication  of  the  Tree  of  Liberty. 
Providence  :  1768. 

DOANE,  GEORGE  WASHINGTON,  editor.     See  The  Remains  of  Charles  Henry 
Wharton. 

DODGE,  JOHN,  A  Narrative  of  the  Capture  and  Treatment  of  John  Dodge,  by 
the  English  at  Detroit.     Written  by  Himself. 
Philadelphia  :  1779. 

DRAKE,  FRANCIS  SAMUEL,  Dictionary  of  American  Biography,  Including  Men 
of  the  Time. 
Boston  :   1872. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY.  445 

DRAYTON,  JOHN,  Memoirs  of  the  American  Revolution,  From  its  Commence- 
ment to  the  Year  1776  inclusive,  as  relating  to  the  State  of  South  Carolina, 
and  occasionally  referring  to  the  States  of  North  Carolina  and  Georgia. 
Two  volumes. 
Charleston  :  1821. 

DRAYTON,  WILLIAM  HENRY,  Letter  from  Freeman  of  South  Carolina  to  the 
Deputies  of  North  America,  assembled  in  the  High  Court  of  Congress. 
Charleston  :  1774. 

DUANE,  WILLIAM,  editor.     See  Diary  of  Christopher  Marshall. 

DUCHE,  JACOB,  Observations  on  a  Variety  of  Subjects,  Literary,  Moral  and 
Religious  ;  in  a  Series  of  Original  Letters,  written  by  a  Gentleman  of  For- 
eign Extraction,  who  resided  some  Time  in  Philadelphia. 
Philadelphia:  1774. 

[This  book  is  commonly  called  Caspipina's  Letters,  from  the  assumed  name 
ef  their  author,  Tamoc  Caspipina.] 

DUCHE,  JACOB    The  Duty  of  Standing  Fast  in  our  Spiritual  and  Temporal 
Liberties.     A  Sermon,  in  Christ  Church,  Philadelphia,  7  July,   1775,  be- 
fore the  First  Battalion,  etc. 
Philadelphia  :  1775. 
[This  sermon  was  published  in  London  the  same  year.] 

DUCHE,  JACOB,  The  American  Vine.     A  Sermon  preached  before  Congress, 
20  July,  1775. 
Philadelphia  :  1775. 

DUCHE,  JACOB,  Briefe,  welche  Beobachtungen  liber  verschiedene  Gegenstande 
der  Literatur,  Religion,  und  Moral  enthalten,  nebst  dem  Leben  des  Herren 
Penn.     Aus  dem  Englischen. 
Leipzig  :   1778. 

DUCHE,  JACOB,  Discourses  on  Various  Subjects.    Two  volumes.  Third  edition. 
London  :  1790.  • 

[The  first  edition  was  published  in  1779.] 

DUCHE,  JACOB,  The  Duche  Letter  to  General  Washington  :  n.p.  n.d. 

[This  is  a  pamphlet  of  8  pp.,  which  was  printed  from  a  copy  among  the 
Duche  MSS.  offered  for  sale  in  Philadelphia  in  1893.] 

DUFFIELD,  GEORGE,  A  Sermon  Preached  in  the  Third  Presbyterian  Church  in 
the  City  of  Philadelphia  on  Thursday,  December  n,  1783. 
Philadelphia:   1784. 

DULANY,  DANIEL,  Considerations  on  the  Propriety  of  imposing  Taxes  in  the 
British  Colonies,  for  the  Purpose  of  raising  a  Revenue  by  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment.    Second  edition. 
London  :  1766. 


446 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


DUYCKINCK,  EVERT  AUGUSTUS,  AND  GEORGE  LONG,  Cyclopaedia  of  American 
Literature  ;  embracing  Personal  and  Critical  Notices  of  Authors,  and  Selec- 
tions from  their  Writings.     From  the  earliest  Period  to  the  Present  Day  ; 
with  Portraits,  Autographs,  and  other  Illustrations.     Two  volumes. 
New  York :  1855. 

DUYCKINCK,  EVERT  AUGUSTUS  AND  GEORGE  LONG,  Cyclopaedia  of  American 
Literature,  etc.     Edited  by  Michael  Laird  Simons.     Two  volumes. 
Philadelphia :  n.d. 
[The  copyright  of  this  revised  edition  is  dated  1875.] 

DUYCKINCK,  EVERT  AUGUSTUS,  editor.     See  Philip  Freneau,  Poems  relating 
to  the  American  Revolution. 

EDINBURGH  Review,  or,  Critical  Journal  (The). 
Volume  viii.     Edinburgh  :   1806. 
Volume  Ixxxi.     Edinburgh  :  1845. 

EDWARDS,  MORGAN,  Materials  towards  a  History  of  the  American  Baptists. 
In  Twelve  Volumes. 

Volumes  i.  and  ii.     Philadelphia:  1770. 
[The  publication  was  never  carried  beyond  the  first  two  volumes.] 

ELIOT,  JOHN,  A  Biographical  Dictionary,  Containing  a  Brief  Account  of  the 
First  Settlers,    and   Other   Eminent   Characters  among  the    Magistrates, 
Ministers,  Literary  and  Worthy  Men,  in  New  England. 
Boston  :  1809. 

ELLIS,  GEORGE  EDWARD,  Half-Century  of  the  Unitarian  Controversy. 
Boston  :  1857. 

EMERY,  SAMUEL  HOPKINS,  The  Ministry  of  Taunton.     Two  volumes. 
Boston:  1853. 

EMMONS,  NATHANIEL,  The  Works  of,  edited  by  Jacob  Ide.     Six  volumes. 
Boston  :  1842. 

ENCYCLOPEDIA  Britannica  (The).     Ninth  edition.     Twenty-four  volumes. 
Edinburgh  :  1875-1888. 

EVANGELISCH-  lutherisches  Gesangbuch  der  Hannoverschen  Landeskirche. 
Hannover :    1888, 

EVANS,  ISRAEL,  A  Discourse  at  Easton,  to  the  Members  of  the  Western  Army 
on  their  Return  from  the  Expedition  against  the  Five  Nations. 
Philadelphia :  1779. 

EVANS,  NATHANIEL,  Poems  on  Several  Occasions,  With  Some  Other  Composi- 
tions. 
Philadelphia  :  1772. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY.  447 

EVEREST,  CHARLES  WILLIAM,  The  Poets  of  Connecticut ;  With  Biographical 
Sketches. 
Hartford  :  1844. 

FALL  of  British  Tyranny  (The) :  or,  American  Liberty  Triumphant.    The  First 
Campaign.     A  Tragi-Comedy  of  Five  Acts,  as  lately  planned  at  the  Royal 
Theatrum  Pandemonium  at  St.  James'.     The  Principal  Place  of  Action  in 
America.     Published  according  to  Act  of  Parliament. 
Philadelphia:  1776. 

FAMILIAR  Letters  of  John  Adams  and  His  Wife  Abigail  Adams,  During  the 
Revolution.  With  a  Memoir  of  Mrs.  Adams,  By  Charles  Francis  Adams. 
New  York:  1876. 

FEDERAL  and  State  Constitutions  (The),  Colonial  Charters,  and  Other  Organic 
Laws  of  the  United  States.    Compiled  under  an  Order  of  the  United  States 
Senate  by  Ben.  Perley  Poore,  Clerk  of  Printing  Records.     Second  edition. 
Two  Parts. 
Washington  :   1878. 

FELLOWS,  JOHN,  The  Veil  Removed  ;  Or  Reflections  on  David  Humphreys' 
Essay  on  the  Life  of  Israel  Putnam. 
New  York  :   1843. 

FEW  Political  Reflections  (A)  submitted  to  the  Consideration  of  the  British  Colo- 
nies, by  a  Citizen  of  Philadelphia. 
Philadelphia:   1774. 
[This  pamphlet  was  attributed  by  the  late  Lloyd  Smith  to  Richard  Wells.] 

FIELDS,  JAMES  T.,  editor.     See  British  Poetry,  The  Family  Library  of. 

FISKE,  JOHN,  Editor  (with  JAMES  GRANT  WILSON)  of  Appletons'  Cyclopaedia 
of  American  Biography.     Six  volumes. 
New  York  :  1887-1889. 

FISKE,  JOHN,  The  American  Revolution.     Two  volumes.     Third  edition. 
Boston  :   1891. 

FISKE,  NATHAN,  An  Historical  Discourse  Concerning  the  Settlement  of  Brook- 
field,  and  its  Distresses  during  the  Indian  Wars. 
Boston  :  1776. 

FISKE,  NATHAN,  An  Oration  Delivered  at  Brookfield,  November  14,  1781,  in 
Celebration  of  the  Capture  of  Lord  Cornwallis  and  his  whole  Army. 
Boston  :  n.  d. 

FISKE,  NATHAN,  The  Moral  Monitor  ;  or,  A  Collection  of  Essays  on  Various 
Subjects.     Two  volumes. 
Worcester:   1801. 


448  BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

FITCH,  THOMAS,  Reasons  why  the  British  Colonies  in  America  should  not  be 
charged  with  Internal  Taxes  by  Authority  of  Parliament,  Humbly  Offered 
for  Consideration,  In  Behalf  of  the  Colony  of  Connecticut. 
New  Haven  :  1764. 

FORCE,  PETER,  editor.      See  American  Archives,  Fourth  Series,  and  Fifth 
Series. 

FORD,  PAUL  LEICESTER,  Bibliotheca  Chaunciana.     A  List  of  the  Writings  of 
Charles  Chauncy.     Elzevir  Club  Series.     No.  6. 
Brooklyn  :  1884. 
[Ten  copies  printed.     My  copy  is  number  nine.] 

FORD,  PAUL  LEICESTER,  Bibliotheca  Hamiltoniana.     A  List  of  Books  written 
by  or  relating  to  Alexander  Hamilton. 
New  York:  1886. 

FORD,  PAUL  LEICESTER,  Check-List  of  American  Magazines  Printed  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century. 
Brooklyn:  1889. 

FORD,  PAUL  LEICESTER,  Some  Notes  towards  an  Essay  on  the  Beginnings  of 
American  Dramatic  Literature,  1606-1789. 

[Of  this  monograph  25  copies  were  printed  as  "  Manuscript  for  suggestion 
and  revision,"  1893  ;  for  one  of  which  I  am  indebted  to  the  courtesy  of  the 
author.] 

FORD,  PAUL  LEICESTER,  editor.     See  The  Writings  of  John  Dickinson.     New 
edition. 

FORD,  PAUL  LEICESTER,  editor.     See  the  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson. 
FORD,  PAUL  LEICESTER,  editor.     See  A  Narrative,  etc.,  of  Edward  Bancroft. 

FORD,  PAUL  LEICESTER,  editor.     See  Jonathan  Carver,  A  Short  History  and 
Description  of  Fort  Niagara. 

FORD,  PAUL  LEICESTER,  editor.     See  Isaac  Wilkins,  My  Services  and  Losses, 
etc. 

FORD,  WORTHINGTON  CHAUNCEY,  editor.     See  the  Writings  of  George  Wash- 
ington. 

FORD,  WORTHINGTON  CHAUNCEY,  editor.    See  the  Washington-Duche  Letters. 
FORD,  WORTHINGTON  CHAUNCEY,  editor.    See  Letters  of  William  Lee. 

FOSTER,  WILLIAM   EATON,   Stephen  Hopkins,   A  Rhode  Island  Statesman. 
A  Study  in  the  Political   History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century.     Two  parts. 
Providence  :  1884. 
[This  book  is  No.  19,  in  Rhode  Island  Historical  Tracts.] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY.  449 

FOUR  Dissertations  on  the  Reciprocal  Advantages  of  a  Perpetual  Union  between 
Great  Britain  and  her  American  Colonies. 
London  :    1766. 

FOWLER,  WILLIAM  CHAUNCEY,  Memorials  of  the  Chaunceys,  including  Presi- 
dent Chauncy,  his  Ancestors  and  Descendants. 
Boston  :  1858. 

Fox,  CHARLES  JAMES,  Memorials  and  Correspondence  of.     Edited  by  Lord 
John  Russell.     Three  volumes. 
London  :  1853-1854. 

FRANKLIN,  BENJAMIN,  The  Works  of.     Edited  by  Jared  Sparks.     Ten  vol- 
umes. 
Boston:  1847. 

FRANKLIN,  BENJAMIN,  The  Life  of,  Written  by  Himself.     Now  first  Edited 
from  Original  Manuscripts  and  from  His  Printed  Correspondence  and 
other  Writings.     Three  volumes. 
Philadelphia :  1874. 

FRANKLIN,  BENJAMIN,  The  Complete  Works  of.     Compiled  and  Edited  by 
John  Bigelow.     Ten  volumes. 
New  York:  1887-1888. 

FRANKLIN,  WILLIAM  TEMPLE,  Memoirs  of  the  Life  and  Writings  of  Benjamin 
Franklin.     First  edition,  Three  volumes. 
London  :   1818. 

FRENEAU,  PHILIP,  The   Poems  of.     Written   chiefly  during  the   Late  War. 
Philadelphia  :   1786. 

[This  is  the  first  collected  edition  of  Freneau's  poems  ;  and  the  only  copy 
I  have  ever  seen,  is  now  the  property  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  So- 
ciety. My  references  are  to  the  reprint  of  this  edition,  mentioned  in  the 
next  title.] 

FRENEAU,  PHILIP,  Poems  on  Various  Subjects,  but  Chiefly  Illustrative  of  the 
Events  and  Actors  in  the  American  War  of  Independence.     By  Philip 
Freneau.     Reprinted  from  the  Rare  Edition  printed  at  Philadelphia  in 
1786.     With  a  Preface. 
London  :  1861. 

[This  is  the  outside  title,  but  within  is  reproduced  the  old  title,  which  I 
have  used  in  my  citations.] 

FRENEAU,  MR.  PHILIP,  Miscellaneous  Works  of,  Containing  his  Essays  and 
Additional  Poems. 
Philadelphia  :  1788. 

[The  only  copy  ever  seen  by  me  is  in  the  library  of  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society.] 


450 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


FRENEAU,  PHILIP,  Poems  on  Several  Occasions  :  Poems  Written  between  the 
Years  1768  and  1794,  By  Philip  Freneau  of  New  Jersey.  A  new  edition, 
revised  and  corrected  by  the  author,  including  a  considerable  number  of 
pieces  never  before  published. 

Monmouth,  N.  J.  Printed  at  the  Press  of  the  Author  at  Mount  Pleasant, 
near  Middletown-Point  :  M,DCC,XCV,  and  of  American  Independence, 
XIX. 

FRENEAU,  PHILIP,  Poems  Written  and  Published  during  the  American  Revolu- 
tionary War,  and  now  Republished  from  the  Original  Manuscripts  ;  Inter- 
spersed  with   Translations   from    the    Ancients,   and   Other   Pieces   not 
heretofore  in  Print.     Third  edition.     Two  volumes. 
Philadelphia  :  1809. 

FRENEAU,  PHILIP,  Poems  relating  to  the  American  Revolution.     With  an  In- 
troductory  Memoir  and  Notes  by  Evert  A.  Duyckinck. 
New  York:  1865. 

FROTHINGHAM,  RICHARD,  The  Rise  of  the  Republic  of  the  United  States. 
Boston  :  1872. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  The  Speech  of  Joseph  Galloway,  Esq. ,  One  of  the  Mem- 
bers for  Philadelphia  County,  in  Answer  to  the  Speech  of  John  Dickinson, 
Esq.  ;  delivered  in  the  House  of  Assembly,  of  the  Province  of  Pennsylva- 
nia, May  24,  1764,  on  Occasion  of  a  Petition  drawn  up  by  Order,  and  then 
under  the  Consideration  of  the  House,  praying  his  majesty  for  a  Royal,  in 
lieu  of  a  Proprietary,  Government. 
Philadelphia  :  1764. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  Die  Rede  Herrn  Joseph  Galloways,  eines  der  Mitglieder 
des  Hauses  fur  Philadelphia  County,  zur  Beantwortung  der  Rede  welche 
Hr.John  Dickinson,  u.s.w.  Aus  dem  Englischen  ubersetzt.  Philadelphia, 
gedruckt  und  zu  finden  bey  Henrich  Miller,  in  der  Zweiten-strasse :  n.d. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH.  To  the  Public.  Folio.  One  leaf.  Philadelphia, 
September  29,  1764. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH.  Advertisement.  To  the  Public.  Folio.  One  leaf. 
Philadelphia,  December  20,  1765. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  A  Candid  Examination  of  the  Mutual  Claims  of  Great 
Britain  and  the  Colonies.     With  a  Plan  of  Accommodation  on  Constitu- 
tional Principles. 
New  York  :  1775. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  A  Reply  to  an  Address  to  the  Author  of  a  Pamphlet  en- 
titled A  Candid  Examination,  etc.,  by  the  Author  of  the  Candid  Examina- 
tion. 
New  York :  1775. 


BIBLIOGRAPH  Y.  45 1 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  Letters  to  a  Nobleman  on  the  Conduct  of  the  War  in  the 
Middle  Colonies. 
London  :  1779. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  A  Letter  to  the  Right  Hon.  Lord  Viscount  H-e,  On  his 
Naval  Conduct  of  the  American  War. 
London  :  1779. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  Observations  upon  the  Conduct  of  S-r  W-m  H-e  at  the 
White  Plains,  as  related  in  the  Gazette  of  Dec.  the  soth,  1776. 
London  :  1779. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  The  Examination  of  Joseph  Galloway,  Esq.,  late  Speaker 
of  the  House  of  Assembly  of  Pennsylvania,  Before  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, in  a  Committee  on  the  American  Papers.  With  explanatory  Notes. 
London  :  1779. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH.  A  Reply  to  the  Observations  of  Lieut.  Gen.  Sir  William 
Howe,  on  a  Pamphlet  entitled  Letters  to  a  Nobleman,  in  which  his  Mis- 
representations are  detected,  and  those  Letters  are  supported  by  a  Variety 
of  new  Matter  and  Argument.  ...  By  the  Author  of  Letters  to  a 
Nobleman. 
London  :  1780. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH.     An  Account  of  the  Conduct  of  the  War  in  the  Middle 
Colonies.     Extracted  from  a  late  Author.     Second  edition. 
London  :  1780. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  Historical  and  Political  Reflections  on  the  Rise  and  Prog- 
ress of  the  American  Rebellion. 
London  :   1780. 

GALLOWAY,   JOSEPH,  Plain  Truth  ;    or,  A  Letter  to  the  Author  of  Dispas- 
sionate Thoughts  on  the  American  War. 
London  :  1780. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  Cool  Thoughts  on  the  Consequences  to  Great  Britain  of 
American  Independence  ;  on  the  Expense  of  Great  Britain  in  the  Settle- 
ment and  Defense  of  the  American  Colonies  ;  on  the  Value  and  Import- 
ance of  the  American  Colonies  and  the  West  Indies  to  the  British  Empire. 
London  :  1 780. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  A  Letter  from  Cicero  to  the  Right  Hon.  Lord  Viscount 
H-e  :  Occasioned  by  his  late  Speech  in  the  H-e  of  C-ns. 
London  :   1781. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  Letters  from  Cicero  to  Catiline  the  Second.     With  Cor- 
rections and  Explanatory  Notes. 
London  :  1781. 


452 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  Fabricius  ;  or,  Letters  to  the  People  of  Great  Britain,  on 
the  Absurdity  and  Mischiefs  of  Defensive  Operations  Only  in  the  Ameri- 
can War,  and  on  the  Causes  of  the  Failure  in  the  Southern  Operations. 
London  :  1782. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  Political  Reflections  on  the  Late  Colonial  Governments, 
in  which  their  original  Constitutional  Defects  are  pointed  out,  and  shewn 
to  have  naturally  produced  the  Rebellion  which  has  unfortunately  termi- 
nated in  the  Dismemberment  of  the  British  Empire.     By  an  American. 
London  :  1783. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  Observations  on  the  Fifth  Article  of  the  Treaty  with 
America,  and  on  the  Necessity  of  appointing  a  Judicial  Enquiry  into  the 
Merits  and  Losses  of  the  American  Loyalists. 
London  :  1783. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  The  Claim  of  the  American  Loyalists  Reviewed  and 
Maintained  upon  incontrovertible  Principles  of  Law  and  Justice. 
London  :  1788. 

GALLOWAY,  JOSEPH,  The  Examination  of  Joseph  Galloway,  Esq.,  by  a  Com- 
mittee of  the  House  of  Commons.     Edited  by  Thomas  Balch. 
Philadelphia  :  1855. 

GAY,  EBENEZER,  Two  Discourses  in  Boston,  July  27,  1766,  on  the  Decease  of 
Rev.  Jonathan  Mayhew. 
Boston  :  1766. 

GAY,  SYDNEY  HOWARD,  editor,  in  association  with  WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT, 
in  the  preparation  of  A  Popular  History  of  the  United  States. 

GENTLEMAN'S  Magazine  and  Historical  Chronicle  (The). 
Volume  xxxvii.     L«ndon  :  1767. 
Volume  xlvi.     London  :  1776. 

OILMAN,  CAROLINE  HOWARD,  editor.     See  Letters  of  Eliza  Wilkinson. 
GOEDEKE,  KARL,  editor.     See  Schillers  samtliche  Werke. 

GOLDSMITH,  OLIVER,  The  works  of.     Edited  by  Peter  Cunningham.     Four 
.volumes. 
London  :  1854. 

GOODRICH,  SAMUEL  GRISWOLD,  Recollections  of  a  Lifetime.     Two  volumes. 
New  York:  1857. 


GORDON,  WILLIAM,  The  Separation  of  the  Jewish  Tribes,  after  the  death  of 
Solomon,   accounted  for,    and   applied  to  the  present  day,  In  a  sermon 
preached  before  the  General  Court,  on  Friday,  July  the  4th,  1777,  being 
the  anniversary  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence. 
Boston  :  1777. 


BIBLIOGRAPH  K.  45  3 

GORDON,  WILLIAM,  The  History  of  the  Rise,  Progress,  and  Establishment  of 
the  Independence  of  the  United  States  of  America :    Including  an  Ac- 
count of  the  late  War,  and  of  the  Thirteen  Colonies  from  their  Origin  to 
that  Period.     Four  volumes. 
London  :    1788. 

[The  running  title   through   the  book  is  The  History  of  the  American 
Revolution.] 

GORDON,  WILLIAM,  History  of  the  Rise,  Progress,  and  Establishment  of  the 
Independence  of  the  United  States  of  America,  including  an  Account  of  the 
late  Civil  War.     Three  volumes. 
New  York  :  1789. 

GOSSE,  EDMUND,  Questions  at  Issue. 
New  York:  1893. 

GRANT,  ANNE,  Memoirs  of  an  American  Lady  ;  With  Sketchs  of  Manners  and 
Scenes  in  America,  as  they  Existed  before  the  Revolution.     With  a  Memoir 
of  Mrs.  Grant,  by  James  Grant  Wilson. 
Albany  :   1876. 

GRAYDON,  ALEXANDER,  Memoirs  of  His  Own  Time.  With  Reminiscences  of 
the  Men  and  Events  of  the  Revolution.  Edited  by  John  Stockton  Littell. 
Philadelphia:  1846. 

GREEN,  JACOB,  A  Vision  of  Hell,  and  a  Disco  very  .of  some  of  the  Consulta- 
tions and  Devices  there  in  the  Year  1767.  By  Theodoras  Van  Shermain. 
n.p.  n.d. 

GREEN,  JOHN  RICHARD,  A  Short  History  of  the  English  People. 
New  York:  1883. 

GREENE,   GEORGE  WASHINGTON,   The   Life  of  Nathaniel  Greene.      Three 
volumes. 
New  York :  1871. 

GRISWOLD,  RUFUS  W.,  The  Poets  and  Poetry  of  America.     Fourth  edition. 
Philadelphia:   1843. 

HALE,  EDWARD  EVERETT,  and  EDWARD  EVERETT,  Jr.,  Franklin  in  France. 
From  Original  Documents,  most  of  which  are  now  published  for  the  First 
Time.  Part  1,,- Boston  :  1887  ;  Part,  ii.,  Boston  :  1888. 

HAMILTON,  ALEXANDER,  A  Full  Vindication  of  the  Measures  of  the  Congress, 
from  the  Calumnies  of  their  Enemies  ;  \r.  Answer  to  a  Letter  under  the 
signature  of  A.  W.  Farmer.     Whereby  his  Sophistry  is  exposed,  his  Cavils 
confuted,  and  his  Wit  ridiculed. 
New  York  :   1774. 


454  BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

HAMILTON,  ALEXANDER,  The  Farmer   Refuted :    or,  A  more  impartial  and 
comprehensive  View  of  the  Dispute  between  Great  Britain  and  the  Colonies  : 
intended  as  a  further  Vindication  of  the  Congress,  in  Answer  to  a  Letter 
from  A.  W.  Farmer,  entitled  a  View  of  the  Controversy,  etc. 
New  York:  1775. 

HAMILTON,   ALEXANDER,   The  Works  of.     Edited  by  Henry  Cabot  Lodge. 
Nine  volumes. 
New  York:  1885-1886. 

HANSARD,  T.  C.,  The  Parliamentary  History  of  England.     Volumes  xv.,  xvi., 
and  x vii. 
London  :  1812. 

HART,  OLIVER,  Dancing  Exploded. 
Charleston  :  1778. 

HARVARD  University.     Library  Bulletin.     June,  1878 — October,  1882. 
Cambridge  :  1882. 

HARVARD   University,   Library  of.      Bibliographical  Contributions.     Edited 
by  Justin   Winsor,    Librarian.       No.    8.     Calendar  of  the  Arthur   Lee 
Manuscripts. 
Cambridge  :  1882. 

HAWKS,  FRANCIS  LISTER,  Contributions  to  the  Ecclesiastical  History  of  the 
United  States.     Volume  ii.     A  Narrative  of  Events  connected  with  the 
Rise  and  Progress  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in  Maryland. 
New  York:  1839. 

HENRY,  WILLIAM  WIRT,  Patrick  Henry  :  Life,  Correspondence  and  Speeches. 
Three  volumes. 
New  York  :  1891. 

HILDEBURN,  CHARLES  RICHE,  A  Century  of  Printing.     The  Issues  of  the  Press 
in  Pennsylvania  1685-1784.     Two  volumes. 
Philadelphia  :  1885-1886. 

HILDEBURN,  CHARLES  RICHE,  Sketches  of  Printers  and  Printing  in  Colonial 
New  York. 
New  York  :  1895. 

HILDEBURN,  CHARLES  RICHE,  Francis  Hopkinson,  in  Pennsylvania  Magazine 
of  History  and  Biography,  ii.,  314-324. 

HILDRETH,  RICHARD,  The  History  of  the  United  States  of  America.     Six 
volumes. 
New  York  :    1871. 

HILL.  GEORGE  BIRKBECK,  editor.     See  James  Boswell,  Life  of  Johnson. 


BIB  LI 0  GRA  PH  Y.  455 

HILL,  GEORGE  BIRKBECK,  editor.     See  Letters  of  Samuel  Johnson. 

HILLS,  GEORGE  MORGAN,  History  of  the  Church  in  Burlington,  New  Jersey  ; 
Comprising  the  Facts  and  Incidents  of  Nearly  Two  Hundred  Years,  from 
Original  Contemporaneous  Sources. 
Trenton  :  1876. 

HISTORICAL  Account  of  Bouquet's  Expedition  against  the  Ohio  Indians,  in 
1764.     With  Preface  by  Francis   Parkman,      .     .     .     and  a   Translation 
of  Dumas'  Biographical  Sketch  of  General  Bouquet. 
Cincinnati  :  1868. 

[Part  of  Ohio  Valley  Historical  Series.     See  also,  William  Smith,  An  His- 
torical  Account,  etc.] 

HISTORICAL  Magazine  (The),  and  Notes  and  Queries  concerning  the  Antiqui- 
ties, History,  and  Biography  of  America.     Volume  vi. 
New  York:  1862. 

HOLMES,  ABIEL,  The  Life  of  Ezra  Stiles. 
Boston  :   1798. 

HOLMES,  ABIEL,  The  Annals  of  America  from  the  Discovery  by  Columbus  in 
the  Year  1492  to  the  Year  1826.     Second  edition.     Two  volumes. 
Cambridge  :   1829. 

HOPKINS,  SAMUEL,  The  Works  of,  With  a  Memoir  of  His  Life  and  Character. 
Three  volumes. 
Boston  :  1854. 

HOPKINS,  STEPHEN,  An  Historical  Account  of  the  Planting  and  Growth  of 
Providence. 

First  published  in  The  Providence  Gazette  in  1762  and  1765. 
[Reprinted  in  Collections  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  2  series, 
ix.   166-203.     Boston :   1822. 

Reprinted  in  Collections  of  the  Rhode  Island  Historical  Society,  vii.     13-6 
5.     Providence  :   1885. 

The  value  of  the  last  reprint  is  greatly  enhanced  by  the  annotations  of  Mr. 
William  Eaton  Foster.] 

HOPKINS,   STEPHEN,   The    Rights    of    Colonies    Examined.     Published    by 
Authority. 
Providence:   1765. 
[No  copy  of  the  original  edition  is  known  to  be  in  existence.] 

HOPKINSON,  FRANCIS,  On  the  Reciprocal  Advantages  of  a  Perpetual  Union 
between  Great  Britain  and  her  American  Colonies.     The  last  of  Four  Dis- 
sertations on  that  subject,  written  for  John  Sargent's  Medal  in  1766. 
London  ;   n.  d.. 
[A  re-print  of  the  first  edition,  published  in  Philadelphia,  1766.] 


456  BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

HOPKINSON,  FRANCIS,  The  Miscellaneous  Essays  and  Occassional  Writings  of. 
Three  volumes. 
Philadelphia  :  1792. 

[The  latter  half  of  the  third  volume  contains,  in  separate  paging,  1-204, 
Hopkinson's  Poems  on  Several  Subjects.] 

HOPKINSON,  FRANCIS,  The  Old  Farm  and  the  New  Farm  :  A  Political  Allegory. 
With  an  introduction  and  historical  notes  by  Benson  J.  Lossing.     Sec- 
ond edition. 
New  York :  1864. 

HOSMER,  JAMES  KENDALL,  Samuel  Adams. 
Boston:  1885. 
[In  the  American  Statesmen  Series.] 

HOSMER,  JAMES  KENDALL,  The  Life  of  Thomas  Hutchinson,  Royal  Governor 
of  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay. 
Boston:  1896. 

HOUGH,  FRANKLIN  BENJAMIN,  editor.     See  Journal  of  the  Siege  of  Detroit  by 
Robert  Rogers. 

HOVEY,  ALVAH,  A  Memoir  of  the  Life  and  Times  of  the  Rev.  Isaac  Backus. 
Boston :  1859. 

HOWARD,  MARTIN,  A  letter  from  a  Gentleman  at  Halifax,  to  his  Friend  in 
Rhode  Island,  containing  Remarks  upon  a  Pamphlet  entitled  The  Rights 
of  Colonies  examined. 
Newport:  1765. 

HOWARD,  MARTIN,  A  Defense  of  the  Letter  from  a  Gentleman  at  Halifax,  to 
His  Friend  in  Rhode  Island. 
Newport :  1765. 

HOWELL,  REDNAP,  A  Fan  for  Fanning  and  a  Touchstone  to  Tryon.     By 
Regulus. 
Boston  :  1771. 

[I  saw  a  copy  of  this  rare  pamphlet  in  the  Lenox  Library.     It  is  also  re- 
printed in  the  North  Carolina  Magazine,  for  February  and  March,  1859.] 

HOWELLS,  WILLIAM  DEAN,  A  Traveler  from  Altruria. 
New  York:  1894. 

HUMPHREYS,  DAVID,  The  Miscellaneous  Works  of. 
New  York  :   1790. 

HUTCHINSON,  PETER  ORLANDO,  editor.     See  The  Diary  and  Letters  of  Thomas 
Hutchinson. 

HUTCHINSON,  THOMAS,  The  Case  of  the  Provinces  of  Massachusetts  Bay  and 
New  York,  respecting  the  Boundary  Line  between  the  two  Provinces. 
Boston  :  1764. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY.  457 

HUTCHINSON,  THOMAS,  The   History  of  the  Colony  of   Massachusetts   Bay, 
from  the  first    Settlement   thereof   in  1628,  until  its  Incorporation  with 
the  Colony  of  Plymouth,  Province  of  Maine,  etc.,  by  the  Charter  of  King 
William  and  Queen  Mary,  in  1691.     Volume  i.     Second  edition. 
London  :  til  DCC  LX. 

[The  first  edition  was  published  in  Boston,  1764.  This  second  edition  was 
published  in  London  in  1765,  but  by  an  error  the  final  letter  V.  in  the  in- 
tended date  was  left  off.  This  mistake  has  led  to  many  errors  in  subsequent 
writers  alluding  to  this  book.] 

HUTCHINSON,  THOMAS,  The  History  of  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay, 
from  the  Charter  of  King  William  and  Queen  Mary,  until  the  Year  1750. 
Volume  ii.     Second  edition. 
London  :    1768. 

[The  first  edition  of  this  volume  was  published  in  Boston  in  1767.  An 
edition  of  this  and  the  first  volume,  "  with  additional  Notes  and  Correc- 
tions," was  published  in  Boston  in  1795.] 

HUTCHINSON,  THOMAS,  A  Collection  of  Original  Papers  relative  to  the  History 
of  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay. 
Boston  :  1769. 

HUTCHINSON,  Governor,  and  Lieut.  Governor  OLIVER,  etc.,  The  Let- 
ters of.  Printed  at  Boston.  And  Remarks  thereon.  With  the 
Assembly's  Address,  and  the  Proceedings  of  the  Lords  Committee  of 
Council,  Together  w>h  the  Substance  of  Mr.  Wedderburn's  Speech  relat- 
ing to  those  Letters.  And  the  Report  of  the  Lords  Committee  to  His 
Majesty  in  Council.  Second  edition. 
London :  1774. 

HUTCHINSON,  THOMAS,  Strictures  upon  the  Declaration  of  the  Congress  at 
Philadelphia  :  In  a  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,  etc. 
London  :    1776. 

HUTCHINSON,  THOMAS,  The  History  of  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay, 
from  the  Year  1750,  until  June,  1774.     Volume  iii. 
London :   1828. 

HUTCHINSON'S  Massachusetts  (Last  Edition  of  Volumes  i.  and  ii.,  Boston,  1795, 
and  only  Edition  of  Volume  iii.,  London,  1828).     Index  of  Persons  and 
Places  Mentioned  in.     Made  by  J.  Wingate  Thornton,   Historiographer, 
and  somewhat  corrected  by  Charles  L.  Woodward,  Book  Peddler. 
New  York :  1879. 

HUTCHINSON,  THOMAS,  Esq.,  B.A.  (Harvard),  LL.D.  (Oxon.),  The  Diary  and 
Letters  of  His  Excellency,  Captain-General  and  Governor-in-Chief  of  His 
Late  Majesty's  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  in  North  America  ;  With 
an  Account  of  his  Administration  when  he  was  Member  and  Speaker  of  the 
House  of  Representatives,  and  his  Government  of  the  Colony  during  the 


458  BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

difficult  Period  that  preceded  the  War  of  Independence.     Compiled  from 

the  Original  Documents  still  remaining  in  the  Possession  of  his  Descendants, 

by  Peter  Orlando  Hutchinson.  one  of  his  Great-Grandsons. 

Volume  i.,  Boston  :  1884. 

Volume  ii.,  Boston:  1886,  * 

INGERSOLL,  JARED,  Mr.  Ingersoll's  Letters  relating  to  the  Stamp  Act. 
New  Haven  :  1766. 

INGLIS,  CHARLES,  The  True  Interest  of  America  Impartially  Stated,  in  Certain 
Strictures  on  a  Pamphlet  intitled  Common  Sense.     By  an  American. 
Second  edition. 
Philadelphia  :  1776. 

INGLIS,  CHARLES,  Letters  of  Papinian,  in  which  the  Conduct,  Present  State, 
and  Prospects  of  the  American  Congress  are  examined. 
London  :  1779. 
[This  is  a  reprint  of  a  New  York  edition.] 

IZARD,  Mr.  RALPH,  of  South  Carolina,  Correspondence  of,  From  the  Year  1774 
to  1804.     With  a  Short  Memoir.     Volume  i. 
New  York :  1844. 

[This  work  was  edited  by  Izard's  daughter,  Anne  Izard  Deas,  whose  name 
appears,  not  on  the  title-page,  but  beneath  the  preface,  called  "  Advertise- 
ment." No  publication  has  been  made  of  the  subsequent  volumes  called 
for  by  the  plan  above  indicated.] 

JAY,  JOHN,  The  Correspondence  and  Public  Papers  of.     Edited  by  Henry  P. 
Johnston.     Four  volumes. 
New  York  :  1890-1893. 

JEFFERSON,  THOMAS,  The  Writings  of.     Edited  by  H.  A.  Washington.     Nine 
volumes. 
New  York:  1853-1854. 

JEFFERSON,  THOMAS,  The  Writings  of.    Collected  and  edited  by  Paul  Lei- 
cester  Ford.     Volumes  i.  to  viii. 
New  York  :  1892-1897. 
[The  publication  of  this  work  is  still  in  progress.] 

JENYNS,  SOAMK,  The  Works  of.     Edited  by  Charles  Nelson  Cole.     Four  vol. 
umes. 
London :  1790. 

JENYNS,  SOAME,  The  Objections  to  the  Taxation  of  Our  American  Colonies  by 
the  Legislature  of  Great  Britain,  Briefly  Considered.     Second  edition. 
London  :  1765. 

JOHNSON,  SAMUEL,  A  Dictionary  of  the  English  Language.     Two  volumes. 
London  :  1755. 


BIBLIOGRA  PHY.  459 

JOHNSON,  SAMUEL,  Taxation  no  Tyranny  :  An  Answer  to  the  Resolutions  and 
Address  of  the  American  Congress.     The  Third  Edition. 
London  :  1775. 

JOHNSON,  SAMUEL,  Letters  of.     Collected  and  Edited  by  George  Birkbeck  Hill. 
Two  volumes. 
New  York  :  1891. 

JOHNSTON,  HENRY  P.,  Yale  and  Her  Honor-Roll  in  the  American  Revolution, 
I775-I783- 
New  York:  1888. 

JOHNSTON,  HENRY  P. ,  editor.    See  The  Correspondence  and  Public  Papers  of 
John  Jay. 

JOURNALS  of  the  American  Congress  :  From  1774  to  1788.     Four  volumes. 
Washington  :  1823. 

JUNIUS  :  Including  Letters  by  the  Same  Writer  under  Other  Signatures  ;  to 
which  are  added  His  Confidential  Correspondence  with  Mr.  Wilkes,  and 
His  Private  Letters  to  Mr.  H.  S.  Woodfall.  A  New  and  Enlarged  Edition. 
With  New  Evidence  as  to  the  Authorship,  and  an  Analysis  by  the  Late  Sir 
Harris  Nicholas,  G.  C.  M.  G.  By  John  Wade.  Two  volumes. 
London  :  1890. 

JUVENALIS,  D.  JUNII,  Saturae.     Erklart  von  Andreas  Weidner,  Direktor  des 
Gymnasiums  zu  Dortmund.     Zweite  umgearbeitete  Auflage. 
Leipzig  :  1889. 

KENNET,  WHITE,  An  Historical  Register  and  Chronicle  of  English  Affairs  be- 
fore  and  after  the  Restoration  of  King  Charles  II. 
London  :  1744. 

KETTELL,  SAMUEL,  Specimens  of  American  Poetry,  with  Critical  and  Biographi- 
cal Notices.     Three  volumes. 
Boston  :  1829. 

KINGSLEY,  JAMES  LUCE,  Life  of  Ezra  Stiles. 
New  York:  1855. 
[This  is  part  of  volume  xvi.,  of  Sparks's  Library  of  American  Biography.] 

KINGSLEY,  WILLIAM  LATHROP,  editor.     See  Yale  College. 
KNOWLES,  JAMES,  editor.     See  The  Nineteenth  Century. 

LAMB,  CHARLES,  The  Works  of.     Four  volumes. 
Boston  :  1862. 

LANGDON,  SAMUEL,  A  Sermon  before  the  Congress    ...    at  Watertown, 

May  31,  1775. 
Watertown  :  1775. 


460  BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

LARGE  Additions  to  Common  Sense. 
Philadelphia  :  1776- 

[A  miscellany  of  writings  by  various  authors, — Candidas,  Demopilus, 
Sincerus,  an  English  American,  and  others,— all  bearing  on  the  political 
situation.  It  was  sold  as  a  separate  pamphlet  at  half  price  to  the  purchasers 
of  the  first  two  editions  of  "  Common  Sense  "  ;  and  it  was  annexed  to  the 
third  edition,  published  by  Robert  Bell.] 

LATROBE,  JOHN  HAZLEHURST  BONEVAL,  Biographical  Sketch  of  Daniel  Dulany. 
Philadelphia:  1876. 
[In  the  Pennsylvania  Magazine  of  History  and  Biography,  iii.  i-io.] 

LAURENS,  HENRY,  A  Narrative  of  the  Capture  of  Henry  Laurens,  of  His  Im- 
prisonment in  the  Tower  of  London,  etc.,  1780,  1781,  1782. 
Charleston  :  1857. 

[This  forms  part  of  volume  i.  of  Collections  of  the  South  Carolina  Histori- 
cal Society, — the  text  extending  from  page  1 8  to  page  68,  and  the  appendix 
from  page  69  to  page  83.] 

LAURENS,  HENRY,  of  South  Carolina,  Correspondence  of.     Edited  by  Frank 
Moore. 

New  York:  1861. 

[This  is  the  first  volume  of  "Materials  for  History,"  etc.,  and  the  only 
one  which  has  ever  appeared.] 

LAURENS,  HENRY,  A  Protest  against  Slavery. 
New  York:  1661. 
[This  is  a  reprint  of  Laurens's  letter  of  August  14,  1776.] 

LAURENS,  JOHN,  Army  Correspondence  of,   in  the  Years  1777-8.     With  a 
Memoir  by  William  Gilmore  Simms. 
New  York  :  1867. 

LECKY,  WILLIAM  EDWARD  HARTPOLE,  A  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century.     New  edition.     Seven  volumes. 
London  :  1892. 

LEE,  ARTHUR,  The  Monitor. 
London  :  1768. 

[First  published  in  Virginia,  and  reprinted  in  the  American  Gazette,  No. 
2,  189-218.] 

LEE,  ARTHUR,  The  Political  Detection  ;  or,  The  Treachery  and  Tyranny  of 
Administration,  both  at  Home  and  Abroad,  displayed  in  a  Series  of  Let- 
ters, signed  Junius  Americanus. 
London  :  1770. 

LEE,  ARTHUR,  An  Appeal  to  the  Justice  and  Interests  of  the  People  of  Great 
Britain,  in  the  present  Disputes  with  America.     By  an  Old  Member  of 
Parliament. 
London  :  1774. 


BIBLIOGRAPH  Y.  46 1 

LEE,  ARTHUR,   Manuscripts  in  the  Library  of  Harvard  University.     Biblio- 
graphical Contributions,  edited  by  Justin  Winsor. 
Cambridge  :  1882. 
[See,  also,  the  Harvard  Bulletin,  from  June,  1878,  to  October,  1882.] 

LEE,  CHARLES,  Strictures  on  a  Pamphlet  entitled  A  Friendly  Address  to  all 
Reasonable   Americans  on  the  Subject  of  Our  Political  Confusions,   ad- 
dressed to  the  People  of  America. 
Boston  :  1775. 

LEE,  CHARLES,  Esquire,  Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  the  Late,     .     .     .     Second  in 
Command  in  the  Service  of  the  United  States  of  America  during  the  Revo- 
lution :  To  which  are  added  His  Political  and  Military  Essays,  also,  Letters 
to  and  from  many  distinguished  Characters  both  in  Europe  and  America. 
London  :  1792. 

LEE,  RICHARD  HENRY,  Life  of  Arthur  Lee,  LL.D.     .     .     .     With  his  politi- 
cal and  literary  Correspondence  and  his  Papers  on  diplomatic  and  political 
Subjects  and  the  Affairs  of  the  United  States  during  the  same  Period. 
Two  volumes. 
Boston  :  1829. 

LEE,  SIDNEY,  editor.     See  Dictionary  of  National  Biography. 

LEE,  WILLIAM,  Letters  of.     Collected  and  Edited  by  Worthington  Chauncey 
Ford.     Three  Volumes. 
Brooklyn:  1891. 

LEONARD,  DANIEL,  Massachusettensis :  or,  a  Series  of  Letters,  containing  a 
faithful  State  of  many  important  and  striking  Facts  which  laid  the  Founda- 
tion of  the  present  Troubles  in  the  Province  of  the  Massachusetts-Bay  ; 
interspersed  with  Animadversions  and  Reflections,  originally  addressed  to 
the  People  of  that  Province,  and  worthy  the  Consideration  of  the  true 
Patriots  of  this  Country.  By  a  Person  of  Honor  upon  the  Spot. 
London:  1776. 

LEONARD,  DANIEL.     See  Novanglus  and  Massachusettensis. 

LESCURE,   M.  DE,  Correspondance  secrete  inedite  sur  Louis  XVI.,  Marie- 
Antoinette,  la  Cour  et  Ville,  de  1777  a  1792.     Publiee  d'apres  les  Manu- 
scrits  de  la  Bibliotheque  Imperiale  de  Saint-Petersbourg,  avec  une  Preface, 
des  Notes,  et  un  Index  Alphabetique. 
Paris:  1866. 
[Two  volumes.] 

LETTER  (A)  from  a  Virginian  to  the  Members  of  the  Congress  to  be  Held  at 
Philadelphia,  on  the  First  of  September,  1774. 
Boston  :   1774. 

[In  the  absence  of  other  testimony,  I  am  inclined,  from  the  evidence  of 
thought  and  style,  to  attribute  this  pamphlet  to  Jonathan  Boucher.] 


462  BIBLIOGRA  PH  Y. 

LETTERS  to  the  Ministry,  from  Governor  Bernard,  General  Gage,  and  Com- 
modore Hood. 
London  :  n.  d. 
[This  is  a  reprint  of  the  edition  published  in  Boston  in  1769.] 

LIBERTY,  a  Poem,  Lately  Found  in  a  Bundle  of  Papers  said  to  be  Written  by 
a  Hermit  in  New  Jersey. 
Philadelphia:  1769. 

LIBRARY  (The)  of  American  Biography.     Edited  by  Jared  Sparks.     Twenty- 
four  volumes. 
Boston  :  1845-1847. 
[First  series,  in  ten  volumes:   second  series  in  fourteen  volumes.] 

LIND,  JOHN,  An  Answer  to  the  Declaration  of  the  American  Congress. 
London:  1776. 

LIPPINCOTT'S  Monthly  Magazine.     A  Popular  Journal  of  General  Literature, 
Science,  and  Politics.     Volume  xliii. 
Philadelphia:  1889. 

LITTELL,  JOHN  STOCKTON,  editor.     See  Alexander  Graydon,  Memoirs  of  His 
Own  Time. 

LODGE,  HENRY  CABOT,  Alexander  Hamilton. 
Boston:  1882. 

LODGE,  HENRY  CABOT,  editor.     See  The  Works  of  Alexander  Hamilton. 
LOSSING,  BENSON  J.,  editor  of  reprint  of  TrumbulTs  M'Fingal. 

New  York  :  1857. 

[The  copy  used  by  me,  is  of  the  year  1864.] 

LOYALIST  (The)  Poetry  of  the  Revolution. 
Philadelphia:  1857. 

[This  book  was  admirably  edited  by  Winthrop  Sargent,  who,  not  placing 
his  name  upon  the  title-page,  avowed  his  connection  with  the  work  by  sub- 
scribing to  the  Preface  the  initial  letters  of  his  name.] 

LOYAL  (The)  Verses  of  Joseph  Stansbury  and  Doctor  Jonathan  Odell,  relating 
to  the  American  Revolution.     Now  first  edited  by  Winthrop  Sargent. 
Albany:  1860. 

McCoRMiCK,  SAMUEL  JARVIS,  editor.     See  Samuel  Peters,  A  General  History 

of  Connecticut.     American  edition  of  1877. 
MCMAHON,  JOHN  VAN  LEAR,  An  Historical  View  of  the  Government  of  Mary- 

land  from  its  Colonization  to  the  Present  Day.    Vol.  i. 

Baltimore :  1831. 

[No  subsequent  volume  ever  appeared.] 

MCMASTER,  JOHN  BACH,  Benjamin  Franklin  as  a  Man  of  Letters- 
Boston:  1895. 


BIBLIOGRA  PI1 V.  463 

MADISON,  JAMES,  Letters  and  Other  Writings  of.     Four  volumes. 
Philadelphia:  1867. 

MAGAZINE  (The)  of  American  History. 
Volume  viii.     New  York  :   1882. 
Volume  x.     New  York  :  1883. 

MARSHALL,  CHRISTOPHER,  Extracts  from  the  Diary  of,  Kept  in  Philadelphia 
and  Lancaster,  during  the  American  Revolution,  1774-1781.     Edited  by 
William  Duane. 
Albany  :  1877. 

MASSACHUSETTS  (The)  Historical  Society,  Collections  of.    2  Series.   Volume  ix. 
Boston  :   1822. 

MASSACHUSETTS  (The)  Historical  Society.     Proceedings.    Vol.  vi. 
Boston:   1863. 

MATERIALS  for  History  Printed  from  Original  Manuscripts.     With  Notes  and 
Illustrations.     By  Frank  Moore. 
New  York  :  Printed  for  the  Zenger  Club  :  1861. 

[Only  one  volume,  that  containing  the  Correspondence  of  Henry  Laurens, 
has  ever  appeared.] 

MAY,  Sir  THOMAS  ERSKINE,  The  Constitutional  History  of  England,  1760- 
1860.     Two  volumes. 

_^      London:   1861. 

[Third  edition,  with  a  new  supplementary  chapter,  in  three  volumes,  Lon- 
don, 1871.] 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Seven  Sermons  .  .  .  Preached  as  a  Lecture  in  the  West 
Meeting  House  .  .  .  Begun  the  first  Thursday  in  June,  and  ended  the  last 
Thursday  in  August,  1748. 
Boston  :  1749. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  A  Discourse  concerning  Unlimited  Submission  and  Non- 
Resistance  to  the  Higher  Powers,  with  some  Reflections  on  the  Resistance 
made  to  King  Charles  the  First,  and  on  the  Anniversary  of  his  Death, — 
in  which  the  mysterious  Doctrine  of  that  Prince's  Saintship  and  Martyr- 
dom is  unriddled. 
Boston  :  1750. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Sermon  on  the  Death  of  Frederick,  Prince  of  Wales. 
Boston  :  1751. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Massachusetts  Election  Sermon  for  May  29,  1754. 
Boston:  1754. 

[The  titles  of  this  and  the  previous  article  are  not  here  given  with  exact- 
ness.] 


464  BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Two  Sermons  .  .  .  in  Boston  .   .  .  November  23,  1755, 
occasioned  by  the  Earthquakes  ...  on  the  Tuesday  Morning  and  Satur- 
day Evening  preceding. 
Boston  :  1755. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  A  Discourse  .  .  .  occasioned  by  the  Earthquakes  in 
November,  1755;  delivered  December  18  following. 
Boston :  1755. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Sermons  upon  the  following  Subjects,  etc.  .  .  . 
Boston:  1755. 

[A  very  copious  title-page,  whereon  are  spread  out  the  subjects  of  the 
fourteen  sermons  contained  in  the  book.  My  copy  is  the  London  re-print 
of  the  year  1756.] 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Two  Discourses  delivered  November  23,  1758  ;  being 
...  a  Day  of  Public  Thanksgiving,  relating  more  especially  to  the  Suc- 
cess of  His  Majesty's  Arms  and  those  of  the  King  of  Prussia  the  last  year. 
Boston  :  n.  d. 

[These  discourses  contain  stirring  tributes  to  the  genius  and  heroism  of 
Frederick,  and  to  the  politico-religious  significance  of  his  victories.] 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Two  Discourses,  delivered  October  25,1759,  being  .  .  . 
a  Day  of  Public  Thanksgiving  for  the  Success  of  His  Majesty's  Arms,  more 
particularly  in  the  Reduction  of  Quebec. 
Boston  :  1759. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  A  Sermon  occasioned  by  the  Great  Fire  in  Boston,  .  .  . 
March  20,  1760. 
Boston:  1760. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Two  Discourses,  delivered  October  9,  1760,  being  .  .  . 
a  Day  of  Public  Thanksgiving  for  the  Success  of  His  Majesty's  Arms, 
more  especially  in  the  entire  Reduction  of  Canada. 
Boston :  1760. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  A  Discourse  occasioned  by  the    Death  of  the  Hon. 
Stephen  Sewall,  Esq.,  Chief-Justice  of  the  Superior  Court  of  Judicature, 
etc. 
Boston:  1760. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Practical  Discourses,  delivered  on  Occasion  of  the 

Earthquakes  in  November,  1755. 

Boston:  1760. 

[This  is  the  date  of  their  first  publication.] 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  A  Discourse  occasioned  by  the  Death  of  King  George 
I.  and  the  happy  Accession  of  His   Majesty  King  George   III 

delivered  January  4,  1761. 

Boston:  1761. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY.  465 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Striving  to  Enter  in  at  the  Strait  Gate,  Explained  and 
Inculcated,  ...  in  Two  Sermons. 
Boston  :   1761. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Two  Sermons  on  the  Nature,  Extent  and  Perfection  of 
the  Divine  Goodness. 
Boston  :   1763. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Christian  Sobriety,  being  Eight  Sermons  on  Titus  ii.,  6, 
preached  with  a  special  View  to  the  Benefit  of  the  Young  Men,  etc. 
Boston :  1763. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Observations  on  the  Charter  and  Conduct  of  the  Society 
for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in  Foreign  Parts. 
Boston:  1763. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Answer  to  a  Candid  Examination  in  Defence  of  the 
Charter  of  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel. 
Boston  :  1764. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Remarks  on  an  anonymous  Tract,  entitled  An  Answer 
to  Dr.  Mayhew's  Observations,  etc. 
Boston  :  1764. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  A  Letter  of  Reproof  to  Mr.  John  Cleaveland  of  Ips- 
wich, occasioned  by  a  Defamatory  Libel  published  under  his  Name,  etc. 
Boston  :   1 764. 

MAYHEW,  JONATHAN,  Popish  Idolatry.     A  Discourse  at  the  Dudleian  Lecture, 
May  8,  1765. 
Boston:   1765. 

MAYHEW,   JONATHAN,    The    Snare    Broken.      A    Thanksgiving    Discourse, 
preached  at  the  Desire  of  the  West  Church  in  Boston,  N.  E.,  Friday, 
May  23,  1766,  occasioned  by  the  Repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act. 
Boston:   1766. 

MEIGS,  JOSIAH,  An  Oration  pronounced  before  a  Public  Assembly  in  New 
Haven,  on  the  Fifth  Day  of  November,  1781,  at  the  Celebration  of  the 
Glorious  Victory  over  .  .  .  Cornwallis  at  Yorktown . 
New  Haven  :   1782. 

MEIGS,  RETURN  JONATHAN,  A  Journal  of  Occurrences  which  happened  within 
the  Circle  of  Observation  in  the  Detachment  commanded  by  Colonel  Ben- 
edictine Arnold,  consisting  of  Two  Battalions  which  were  detached  from 
the  Army  at  Cambridge  in  the  year  1775  :  n.  p.  ;  n.  d. 

MILTON,  JOHN,  The  Prose  Works  of.     With  a  Preface,  Preliminary  Remarks, 
and  Notes,  by  J.  A.  St.  John.     Five  volumes. 
London  :  n.  d. 
VOL.  n. — 30 


466  BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

MINER,  CHARLES,  History  of  Wyoming,  In  a  Series  of   Letters  to  His  Son, 
William  T.  Miner. 
Philadelphia:  1845. 

MONTHLY  Anthology  (The);  or  Magazine  of  Polite  Literature.     Ten  volumes. 
Boston:  1803-1811. 

MONTHLY  Review  (The) ;  or,  Literary  Journal :  By  Several  Hands.     Volume 
xxxix. 
London  :  1768. 

MOORE,  FRANK,  Songs  and  Ballads  of  the  American  Revolution. 
New  York:  1856. 

MOORE,  FRANK,  Diary  of  the  American  Revolution.     From  Newspapers  and 
Original  Documents.     Two  volumes. 
New  York  and  London  :  1859-1860. 

MOORE  FRANK,  Illustrated  Ballad  History  of  the  American  Revolution.    1765- 
1783- 

New  York :  1876. 

[This  work  was  to  be  published  by  subscription  and  in  "  Parts  "  of  about 
sixty  pages  each.  With  the  issue  of  Part  vi.,  the  work  was  discontinued. 
No  formal  narrative  is  attempted ;  but  the  selections  from  contemporary 
writings,  in  prose  and  verse,  are  "  collected  and  arranged  in  a  somewhat 
confused  oider,  with  annotations.] 

MOORE,  FRANK,  editor.     See  Materials  for  History. 

MOORE   FRANK,  editor.     See  Correspondence  of  Henry  Laurens. 

MOORE,  GEORGE  HENRY,  John  Dickinson,  the  Author  of  the  Declaration  on 
taking  up  Arms  in  1775.     With  a  Fac-simile  of  the  Original  Draft. 
New  York:  1890. 

MOORE,  JOHN  HAMILTON,  A  New  and  Complete  Collection  of  Voyages  and 
Travels. 
London  :  n.  d. 
[Contains  an  abridgement  of  Jonathan  Carver's  Travels.] 

MORLEY,  JOHN,  Edmund  Burke  :  A  Historical  Study. 
London  :   1 867. 

MORSE,  JOHN  TORREY,  Jr.,  The  Life  of  Alexander  Hamilton.    Two  volumes. 
Boston  :  1876. 

MORSE,  JOHN  TORREY,  Jr.,  Thomas  Jefferson. 
Boston:  1883. 

MORSE,  JOHN  TORREY,  Jr.,  Benjamin  Franklin. 
Boston:  1889. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY.  467 

MOTLEY  Assembly  (The) :  a  Farce,  Published  for  the  Entertainment  of  the 
Curious. 
Boston  :  1779. 

NATIONAL  (The)  Portrait  Gallery  of  Distinguished  Americans.     Conducted  by 
James  B.  Longacre,  and  James  Herring.     Second  volume. 
Philadelphia,  New  York,  and  London  :  1835. 

NEILL,  EDWARD  DUFFIELD,   Reverend  Jacob   Duche,  the  First  Chaplain  of 
Congress. 
[See  Pennsylvania  Magazine  of  History  and  Biography,  ii.  58-73.] 

NEW  (The)  London  Gazette,  from  September  6,  1765,  to  November  i,  1765. 
[Manuscript  copies  of  five  essays  therein  by  Stephen  Johnson,  made  under 
the  direction  of  Professor  E.  E.  Salisbury  of  Yale  College,  and  placed  at 
my  disposal  by  his  courtesy.] 

NILES,  H.,  Principles  and  Acts  of  the  Revolution  in  America. 
Baltimore  :    1822. 

NINETEENTH  Century  (The).    A  Monthly  Review.    Edited  by  James  Knowles. 
Number  131,  January,  1888. 
London  :    1888. 

NOTES  and  Queries  :  A   Medium  of  Intercommunication  for  Literary  Men, 
General  Readers,  etc.     Ninety-two  volumes. 
London  :  1849-1895. 

NOVANGLUS  and  Massachusettensis  ;  or,  Political  Essays,  published  in  the 
Years  1774  and  1775,  on  the  principal  points  of  Controversy  between  Great 
Britain  and  her  Colonies.  The  former  by  John  Adams,  late  President  of 
the  United  States  ;  the  latter  by  Jonathan  Sewall,  then  King's  Attorney 
General  of  the  Province  of  Massachusetts-Bay.  To  which  are  added  a 
number  of  Letters  lately  written  by  President  Adams  to  the  Honorable 
William  Tudor,  some  of  which  were  never  before  published. 
Boston  :  1819. 

[This  book  was  published  under  the  auspices  of  John  Adams.  The  posi- 
tive announcement,  made  upon  the  title  page,  that  Sewall  was  the  author 
of  "  Massachusettensis,"  is  repeated  in  the  Preface,  written  by  John 
Adams,  who  there  gives  a  sketch  of  the  man  whom  he  says  he  "  knew" 
from  the  first  to  be  the  writer  with  whom  he  had  held  controversy.  Two 
years  afterward,  he  learned  that  for  nearly  fifty  years  he  had  been  attribu- 
ting these  letters  to  the  wrong  man,  and  that  they  were  in  reality  the  work 
of  Daniel  Leonard.  Apparently  as  a  compliment  to  President  Adams,  an 
absurd  arrangement  is  given  to  the  two  sets  of  letters  :  those  of  Novanglus 
are  placed  before  the  letters  of  Massachusettensis,  which  preceded  them  in 
time,  and  to  which  they  are  a  reply.  Accordingly,  he  who  reads  the  book 
intelligently,  is  obliged  to  read  it  backwards.] 


468 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


OBSERVATIONS  on  the  Reconciliation  of  Great  Britain  and  the  Colonies.    .    .   . 
By  a  Friend  of  American  Liberty. 
Philadelphia:  1776. 

[According  to  Sabin,  Mr.  Franklin  Burdge  attributes  this  pamphlet  to 
Jacob  Green.  This  opinion  cannot  be  adopted,  if  we  accept  the  testimony 
of  Green's  son,  President  Ashbel  Green,  who  states  that  Green  was  one  of 
the  early  advocates  of  Independence.  This  pamphlet  deprecates  a  resort 
to  Independence.] 

OCCUM,  SAMSON,  A  Sermon  Preached  at  the  Execution  of  Moses  Paul,  an 
Indian. 
Salem  :  1773. 

OPPRESSION,  a  Poem  by  an  American.     With  Notes  by  a  North  Briton. 
Boston  :  1765. 
[This  is  a  reprint  of  the  original  edition  as  published  in  London.] 

ORATIONS  Delivered  at  the  Request  of  the  Inhabitants  of  the  Town  of  Boston, 
to  commemorate  the  Evening  of  the  Fifth  of  March,  1770,  When  a  num- 
ber of  Citizens  were  killed  by  a  Party  of  British  Troops,  in  a  Time  of 
Peace. 

Boston  :  n.  d. 
[The  Preface  is  dated  Boston,  January,  1785.] 

OSGOOD,  DAVID,  A  Sermon  on  Thanksgiving  Day,  December  n,  1783. 
Boston  :  1784. 

OTHER  Side  of  the  Question  (The) ;  or,  A  Defence  of  the  Liberties  of  North 
America.     In   Answer  to  a  late  "  Friendly   Address  to  all   Reasonable 
Americans  on  the  Subject  of  our  Political  Confusions."    By  a  Citizen. 
New  York  :  1774. 

[The  copy  used  by  me  belonged  to  George  Bancroft,  and  is  now  in  the 
Lenox  Library.] 

OTIS,  JAMES,  The  Rudiments  of  Latin  Prosody  ;  With  a  Dissertation  on  Let- 
ters and  the  Principles  of  Harmony  in  Poetic  and  Prosaic  Composition. 
Collected  from  Some  of  the  best  Writers. 
Boston  :  1 760. 

OTIS,  JAMES,  A  Vindication  of  the  Conduct  of  the  House  of  Representatives  of 
the  Province  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay,  more  particularly  in  the  last  Ses- 
sion of  the  General  Assembly. 
Boston  :  1762. 

OTIS.  JAMES,  The  Rights  of  the  British  Colonies  Asserted  and  Proved.  Sec- 
ond edition. 

London  :  n.  d. 
OTIS,  JAMES,  A  Vindication  of  the  British  Colonies,  against  the  Aspersions  of 

the  Halifax  Gentleman,  in  his  Letter  to  a  Rhode  Island  Friend. 

London :   1769. 

[My  references  are  to  this  copy,  in  the  library  of  Cornell   University ; 

which,  however,  I  compared  with  the  original  Boston  edition,  as  loaned 

me  by  the  librarian  of  Harvard  College.] 


BIBLIOGRAPHY.  469 

OTIS,  JAMES,  Brief  Remarks  on  the  Defence  of  the  Halifax  Libel  on  the 
British-American  Colonies. 
Boston  :  1765. 

OTIS,  JAMES,  Considerations  on  behalf  of  the  Colonists,  In  a  Letter  to  a  Noble 
Lord.     Second  edition. 
London:    1765. 

PAINE,  THOMAS,  A  Dialogue  between  the  Ghost  of  General  Montgomery,  just 
arrived  from  the  Elysian  Fields,  and  an  American  Delegate,  in  a  Wood 
near  Philadelphia. 
Philadelphia:  1776. 

New  York  :  Privately  Reprinted.     1865. 

[On  page  36  of  the  second  volume  of  the  present  work,  I  refer  to  the 
above  tract  as  "  confidently  attributed  to  Paine,"  and  at  the  same  time  I 
call  attention  to  certain  literary  qualities  in  it  which  seem  to  suggest  that  it 
was  from  some  other  writer.  I  have  since  recalled  the  fact  that  soon  after 
the  publication  of  the  "  Dialogue,"  Paine  himself  publicly  denied  that  he 
was  its  author.] 

PAINE,  THOMAS,  The  Political  Writings  of.     Two  volumes. 
Boston :  1870. 

PAINE,  THOMAS,  The  Writings  of.     Collected  and  Edited  by  Moncure  Daniel 
Conway.     Four  volumes. 
New  York:  1894-1896. 

[This  collection  may  fairly  be  regarded  as  the  final  edition  of  the  writings 
of  Paine.  Those  of  his  writings  which  were  produced  before  the  close  of 
the  period  embraced  in  my  work,  occupy  the  first  volume  and  the  first  131 
pages  of  the  second  volume  of  Conway's  edition.  As  my  own  chapters  on 
Paine  were  written  long  before  the  publication  of  the  latter,  my  references, 
unless  otherwise  stated,  are  to  the  Boston  edition  of  Paine,  1870.] 

PARKMAN,  FRANCIS,  The  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,  and  the  Indian  War  after  the 
Conquest    of   Canada.       Ninth    edition,    revised    with    Additions.       Two 
volumes. 
Boston  :   1880. 

PARTON,  JAMES,  The  Life  and  Times  of  Benjamin  Franklin.     Two  volumes. 
Boston  :   1892. 

PATER,  WALTER  H.,  Studies  in  the  History  of  the  Renaissance. 
London  :  1873. 

PATRIOT  (The)  Preachers   of  the   American  Revolution.     With   Biographical 
Sketches.     1766-1783. 
n.  p.  :    1860. 
[The  entry  for  copyright  is  in  the  Southern  District  of  New  York.] 


470 

PENNSYLVANIA  (The)  Magazine  of  History  and  Biography. 
Volume  ii.     Philadelphia  :  1878. 
Volume  iii.      Philadelphia:    1879. 

PENNSYLVANIA,  Memoirs  of  the   Historical  Society  of.     Volume  i.     Being  a 
republication,  edited  by  Edward  Armstrong. 
Philadelphia:   1864. 

PERRY,  THOMAS  SERGEANT,  Life  and  Letters  of  Francis  Lieber. 
Boston:  1882. 

PKTERS,  SAMUEL,  A  General  History  of  Connecticut,  From  its  First  Settlement 
under  George  Fenwick,  Esq.,  to  its  Latest  Period  of  Amity  with  Great 
Britain  ;  Including  a  Description  of  the  Country,   and  many  curious  and 
interesting  Anecdotes.     To  which  is  added  an  Appendix,  wherein  new  and 
the  true  Sources  of  the  present  Rebellion  in  America  are  pointed  out,  to- 
gether with  the  particular  Part  taken  by  the  People  of  Connecticut  in  its 
Promotion.     By  a  Gentleman  of  the  Province.      Second  edition. 
London  :  1782. 
[The  first  edition  appeared  in  London,  in  1781.] 

PETERS,  SAMUEL,  A  General  History  of  Connecticut,  etc. 
Reprint  of  the  first  London  edition,  New  Haven  :   1829. 

PETERS,  SAMUEL,  A  General  History  of  Connecticut,  etc. 

Reprint  of  the  first  London  edition,  with  addition  to  the  appendix,  notes, 
and  extracts  from  letters,  verifying  many  important  statements  made  by 
the  author,  by  Samuel  Jarvis  McCormick. 
New  York :  1877. 

PETERS,  SAMUEL,  A  History  of  the  Reverend  Hugh  Peters,  A.M. 
New  York  :   1807. 

PICKERING,  OCTAVIUS,  The  Life  of  Timothy  Pickering.     Volume  i. 
Boston  :   1867. 

[Upon   the  author's  death,   the  work,  left  by  him   unfinished,  was  com- 
pleted,  in  three  additional  volumes,  by  Charles  Wentworth  Upham.] 

PITT,  WILLIAM,  Earl  of  Chatham,  Correspondence  of.     Ed.  by  William  Stan- 
hope Taylor,  Esq.,  and  Captain  John  Henry  Pringle.     Four  volumes. 
London  :   1838-1840. 

PLAIN  Truth,   Addressed  to  the  Inhabitants  of  America  ;  Containing  Remarks 
on  a  late   Pamphlet  entitled  Common   Sense     .     .     .     Written  by  Can- 
didus. 
Philadelphia:   1776. 

POORE,  BEN.  PERLEY,  Editor.     See  the  Federal  and  State  Constitutions. 
POPE,  ALEXANDER,  The  Works  of,  In  Nine  Volumes,  Complete,  With  his  Last 

Corrections,   Additions   and    Improvements,     .     .     .     together  with   the 

Commentary  and  Notes  of  Mr.  Warburton. 

London  :   1753. 


BIBLIOGKA  PH  Y.  47 1 

PORTKK,   ELII-HALKT.  A  Sermon  at  the  First  Religious  Society,  Roxbury,  on 
Thanksgiving  Day,  December  n,  1783. 
Boston  :   1784. 

POWER  and  Grandeur  (The)  of  Great  Britain  founded  on  the  Liberty  of  the 
Colonies  ;  and  the  Mischiefs  attending  the  Taxing  them  by  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment Demonstrated. 
New  York  :   1768. 

PRINGLK,  JOHN  HENRY,  editor,     See  William  Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham,    Cor- 
respondence of. 

PRIOR  Documents.     See  J.  Almon. 

PRIOR,  Sir  JAMES,  Life  of  Edmond  Malone. 
London :   1860. 

PROUD,   ROBERT,  The  History  of  Pennsylvania,  in  North  America,  From  the 
original  Institution  and  Settlement  of  that  Province,  under  the  first  Pro- 
prietor and  Governor  William  Penn,  in  1681,  till  after  the  Year  1742.   Two 
volumes. 
Philadelphia:    1797-1798. 

QUINCY,   ELIZA  SUSAN,  editor.     See  Josiah  Quincy,   Memoir  of  the   Life  of 
Josiah  Quincy,  Junior. 

QIINCY'S  Massachusetts  Reports.  Reports  of  Cases  argued  and  adjudged  in 
the  Superior  Court  of  Judicature  of  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay, 
Between  1761  and  1772.  By  Josiah  Quincy,  Junior.  .  .  /.  Edited  by 
his  great-grandson,  Samuel  M.  Quincy.  With  an  Appendix  upon  the 
Writs  of  Assistance. 
Boston  :  1865. 

[This  Appendix  is  an  important  contribution  to  the  history  of  the  subject, 
and  is  by  Mr.  Justice  Gray,  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States.] 

QUINCY,  JOSIAH,  Junior,  Observations  on  the  Act  of  Parliament  Commonly 
Called  the  Boston  Port-Bill ;  with  Thoughts  on  Civil  Society  and  Standing 
Armies. 
Boston  :   1774. 

QUINCY,  JOSIAH.  Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Josiah  Quincy,  Junior,  of  Massachu- 
setts Bay  :   1744-1775.     Third  Edition.     Edited  by  Eliza  Susan  Quincy. 
Boston:   1875. 

RANDALL,  HENRY  STEPHENS,  The  Life  of  Thomas  Jefferson,    Three  volumes. 
New  York :   1858. 

REED,  WILLIAM  BRADFORD,  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Joseph  Reed.     Two 
volumes. 
Philadelphia  :   1847. 


472  BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

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posed upon  them,  considered. 
London  :  1765. 

[In  his  own  copy  of  this  important  pamphlet,  Jared  Sparks  wrote  :  "By 
Geo.  Grenville.  Some  say  by  Mr.  Campbell,  one  of  the  agents  for  Georgia, 
but  without  proof."  Whether  actually  written  by  Grenville  or  not,  it  un- 
doubtedly was  written  under  his  eye,  and  may  be  taken  as  representing 
him.] 

RESIGNATION.     In  Two  Parts,  and  A  Postscript  to  Mrs.  B. 
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[The  "Postscript,"  at  least,  was  probably  by  Elizabeth  Fergusson  ;  and 
"  Mrs.  B."  is  believed  to  have  been  Mrs.  Boudinot.] 

RHODE  ISLAND  Historical  Society  (The),  Collections  of.     Volume  vii. 
Providence  :  1885. 

ROBINSON,   HENRY  CRABB,   Diary,    Reminiscences,  and  Correspondence  of. 
Selected  and  edited  by  Thomas  Sadler.    Two  volumes.     Third  edition. 
London  and  New  York  :  1872. 

ROBINSON,  MATTHEW,  (afterward  Lord  Rokeby),  Considerations  on  the  Meas- 
ures Carrying  on  with  respect  to  the  British  Colonies  in  North  America. 
Boston  :  1774. 
[Originally  printed  in  London.] 

RODGERS,  JOHN,  The  Divine  Goodness  Displayed  in  the  American  Revolution  ; 
A  Sermon  Preached  in  New  York,  December  II,  1783. 
New  York  :  1783 
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RODGERS,  JOHN,  Sermon  at  Princeton,  May  6th,  1795,  occasioned  by  the  death 
of  Rev.  John  Witherspoon. 
New  York:  1795. 

ROGERS,  Major  ROBERT,  Journals  of  :  Containing  an  Account  of  the  several 
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London  :  1765. 

[A  very  corrupt  edition  of  this.work,  under  the  title  of  "  Reminiscences  of 
the  French  War,"  etc.,  was  published  at  Concord,  New  Hampshire,  in 
1831-] 

ROGERS,  ROBERT,  A  Concise  Account  of  North  America :  Containing  a  De- 
scription of  the  several  British  Colonies  on  that  Continent,  including  the 
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London  :  1765. 


BIB  LI  OCR  A  PH  Y.  473 

ROGERS,  ROBERT,  Ponteach  :  or  the  Savages  of  America.     A  Tragedy. 
London:  1766. 

[I  first  saw  a  copy  of  this  very  rare  book  in  the  library  of  Mr.  John  Nicho- 
las Brown,  Providence,  R.  I.,  and  subsequently  used  the  copy  in  the  Fiske 
Harris  Collection  now  belonging  to  the  library  of  Brown  University. 
_  That  it  was  written  by  Rogers,  either  wholly  or  in  part,  is  a  matter  of 
inference.] 

ROGERS,  ROBERT,  Journal  of  the  Siege  of  Detroit.  Edited  by  Franklin  B. 
Hough. 

Albany  :  1860. 
[This  forms  part  of  No.  iv.  of  Munsell's  Historical  Series.]     . 

RUSSELL,  Lord  JOHN,  editor.  See  Memorials  and  Correspondence  of  Charles 
James  Fox. 

SABIN,  JOSEPH,  A  Dictionary  of  Books  relating  to  America,  From  its  Discovery 
to  the  Present  Time.  Nineteen  volumes,  together  with  a  part  of  volume  xx. 
New  York:  1868-1892. 

SABINE,  LORENZO,  Biographical  Sketches  of  Loyalists  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion, with  an  Historical  Essay.     Two  volumes. 
Boston  :  1864. 

SADLER,  THOMAS,  editor.     See  Diary,  etc.,  of  Henry  Crabb  Robinson. 

ST.  JOHN,  JAMES  AUGUSTUS,  editor.     See  The  Prose  Works  of  John  Milton. 

SALMON,  THOMAS,  A  New  Geographical  and  Historical  Grammar.     Eleventh 
edition. 
London  :   1769. 

SAMPSON,  EZRA,  Sermon  at  Roxbury  Camp,  before  Colonel  Cotton's  Regiment, 
July  20,  1775. 
Watertown  :  1775. 

SANDERSON,  JOHN,  Biography  of  the  Signers  of  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence.    Nine  volumes. 
Philadelphia :   1823-1827. 

SANFORD,  ENOCH,  History  of  the  Town  of  Berkley,  Mass. 
New  York  :  1872. 

SARGENT,   WINTHROP,  editor.     See  the  Loyal  Verses  of  Stansbury  and  Odell. 
SARGENT,  WINTHROP,  editor.     See  The  Loyalist  Poetry  of  the  Revolution. 
SARGENT,  WINTHROP,  editor.     See  Letters  of  John  Andrews. 
SAVAGE,  JAMES,  editor.    See  The  History  of  New  England,  by  John  Winthrop. 

SCHARF,  JOHN  THOMAS,  History  of  Maryland,  From  the  Earliest  Period  to  the 
Present  Day.     Three  volumes. 
Baltimore  :   1879. 


474 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


SCHILLER,  The  Poems  and  Ballads  of.     Translated  by  Sir  Edward   Bulwer 

Lytton,  Bart.     Tauchnitz  edition. 

Leipzig  :  1844. 
SCHILLER,   The  Poems  and   Ballads  of.     Translated  by  Sir  Edward  Bulwer 

Lytton,  Bart.     From  the  Last  London  Edition. 

New  York:  1866. 
SCHILLERS  samtliche  Werke  in  fiinfzehn  Banden.      Mit  Einleitungen  von  Karl 

Goedeke. 

Stuttgart. 

[These  volumes,  which  are  without  date,  are  a  part  of  the  Cotta'sche 

Bibliothek  der  Weltlitteratur.] 

SCOTT,  SIR  WALTER,  editor.     See  a  Collection  of  Scarce  and  Valuable  Tracts. 

SCOTT,  SIR  WALTER,  The  Poetical  Works  of,  with  a  Memoir  of  the  Author. 
Nine  volumes. 
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SCOTT,  SIR  WALTER,  The  Journal  of  :  From  the  Original  Manuscript  at  Ab- 
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SCUDDKR,  HORACE  ELISHA,  editor.     See  Recollections  of  Samuel  Breck. 

SEABURY,  SAMUEL,  Free  Thoughts  on  the  Proceedings  of  the  Continental  Con 
gress,  held  at  Philadelphia  September  5,  1774  :  wherein  their  Errors  are 
exhibited,  their  Reasonings  confuted,  and  the  fatal  Tendency  of  their 
Non-Importation,  Non-Exportation,  and  Non-Consumption  Measures  are 
laid  open  to  the  plainest  Understandings  ;  and  the  only  Means  pointed  out 
for  preserving  and  securing  our  present  happy  Constitution.  ...  By 
a  Farmer, 
n.  p.  1774. 

SEABURY,  SAMUEL,  The  Congress  Canvassed  ;  or,  An  Examination  into  the 
Conduct  of  the  Delegates,  at  their  Grand  Convention  held  in  Philadelphia, 
September  i,  1774.     Addressed  to  the  Merchants  of  New  York.     By  A. 
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SEABURY,  SAMUEL,  A  View  of  the  Controversy  between  Great  Britain  and  her 
Colonies  :  Including  a  Mode  of  determining  their  present  Disputes,  finally 
and  effectually,  and  of  preventing  all  future  Contentions.  In  a  Letter  to 
the  Author  of  A  Full  Vindication  of  the  Measures  of  the  Congress  from  the 
Calumnies  of  their  Enemies.  By  A.  W.  Farmer,  Author  of  Free  Thoughts, 
etc. 
New  York  :  1774. 

SEABURY,  SAMUEL,  An  Alarm  to  the  Legislature  of  the  Province  of  New  York, 
occasioned  by  the  present  Political  Disturbances  in  North  America  :  Ad- 
dressed to  the  Honorable  Representatives  in  General  Assembly  Convened. 
New  York  :  1775. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY.  475 

SEABUKY,  SAMUEL,  The  Republican  Dissected,  or,  The  Anatomy  of  an  Ameri- 
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New  York  :  1775. 

[Advertised  in  Rivington's  New  York  Gazetteer  for  April  20,  1775,  as 
"  speedily  to  be  published."  I  have  found  no  evidence  that  it  ever  saw 
the  light.] 

SECRET  Journals  of  the  Acts  and  Proceedings  of  Congress,  From  the   First 
Meeting  thereof  to  the  Dissolution  of  the  Confederation,  by  the  Adoption 
of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.     Four  volumes. 
Boston  :  1821. 

SEDGWICK,  THEODORE,  Jun.,  A  Memoir  of  the  Life  of  William  Livingston. 

New  York  :  1833.  . 
SEWALL,  JONATHAN.     See  Novanglus  and  Massachusettensis. 

SEWALL,  JONATHAN,  The  Americans  Roused,  in  a  Cure  for  the  Spleen  ;  or, 
Amusement  for  a  Winter's  Evening  :  Being  the  Substance  of  a  Conversa- 
tion on  the  Times,  over  a  Friendly  Tankard  and  Pipe. 
New  England  :  Printed. 
New  York,  Re-printed,  by  James  Harrington  :  n.  d. 

SIMMS,    WILLIAM    GILMORE,    editor.      See  Army  Correspondence  of    John 
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SIMONS,  MICHAEL  LAIRD,  editor.     See  Duyckinck,  Cyclopaedia  of  American 
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SLOANE,  WILLIAM  MILLIGAN,  The  French  War  and  the  Revolution. 
New  York  :  1893. 

SMITH,  GOLD  WIN,  The  United  States.     An  Outline  of  Political  History  1492- 
1871. 
New  York  :  1893. 

SMITH,  HORACE  WEMYSS,   Life  and  Correspondence  of  the  Reverend  William 
Smith,  D.D.     Two  volumes. 
Philadelphia:  1880. 

SMITH,  SYDNEY,  The  Works  of.     Fourth  edition.     Three  volumes. 
London  :  1848. 

SMITH,  WILLIAM,  An  Historical  Account  of  the  Expedition  against  the  Ohio 
Indians  in  the  Year  1764,  under  the  Command  of  Henry  Bouquet,  Esquire, 
Colonel  of  Foot,  and  now  Brigadier  General  in  America. 
Cincinnati :   1868. 

[This  is  a  reprint  of  the  London  edition  of  1766,  under  the  modern  title  of 
"  Historical  Account  of  Bouquet's  Expedition  against  the  Ohio  Indians  in 
1764,"  and  forming  one  of  the  "  Ohio  Valley  Historical  Series."] 

SMITH,  WILLIAM,  D.D.,  Late  Provost  of  the  College  and  Academy  of  Phila- 
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Philadelphia  :   1803. 


476  BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

SMYTH,  ALBERT  H.,  The  Philadelphia  Magazines  and    their   Contributors 
1741-1850. 
Philadelphia  :  1892. 

SOUTH  CAROLINA  Historical  Society,  Collections  of.     Volume  i. 
Charleston  :  1857. 

SOUTHEY,  ROBERT.     See  the  Works  of  William  Cowper. 
SPARKS,  JARED,  editor.     See  the  Writings  of  George  Washington. 
SPARKS,  JARED,  editor.     See  the  Works  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 
SPARKS,  JARED,  editor.     See  the  Library  of  American  Biography. 
SPARKS,  JARED,  editor.     See  Correspondence  of  the  American  Revolution. 

SPRAGUE,  WILLIAM  B.,  Life  of  Timothy  Dwight,  in  Sparks's  Library  of  Ameri- 
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SPRAGUE,  WILLIAM  B.,  Annals  of  the  American  Pulpit;  or  Commemorative 
Notices  of  Distinguished  American  Clergymen  of  Various  Denominations, 
From  the  early  Settlement  of  the  Country  to  the  Year  1855.     With  His- 
torical Introductions.     Nine  volumes. 
New  York  :  1859-1869. 

STATUTES  (The)  at  Large.     Vol.  ix. 
London  :  1765. 

STEDMAN,  EDMUND  CLARENCE,  Poets  of  America. 

Boston  and  New  York  :  1885. 
STEPHEN,  LESLIE,  History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century. 

Two  volumes.     Second  edition. 

London :  1881. 

STEPHEN,  LESLIE,  editor.     See  Dictionary  of  National  Biography. 
STILES,  EZRA,  Oratio  Funebris  pro  Exequiis  Jonathan  Law. 

Novi  Londini :  1751. 
STILES,  EZRA,  In  Gratulatione  Nobilissimi  et  amplissimi  Viri  B.  Franklini 

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Stiles,  Nonis  Februarii,  MDCCLV. 

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STILES,  EZRA,  A  Discourse  on  the  Christian  Union  :  the  Substance  of  which 

was  delivered  before  the   Reverend  Convention    of   the  Congregational 

Clergy  in  the  Colony  of  Rhode  Island,  assembled  at  Bristol,  April  23,  1760. 

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STILES,  EZRA.     A  Discourse  on  Saving  Knowledge  :  Delivered  at  the  Install- 
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the  First  Congregational  Church  in  Newport,  Rhode  Island,  Wednesday, 
April  ii,  1770. 
Newport:  1770. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY.  4/7 

STILES,  EZRA,  Oratio  Inauguralis  habita  in  Sacello  Colegii  Yalensis. 
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STILES,  EZRA,  The  United  States  elevated  to  Glory  and  Honor.  A  Sermon 
preached  before  His  Excellency,  Jonathan  Trumbull,  Esq.,  LL.D.,  Gover- 
nor of  and  Commander  in  Chief,  and  the  Honorable  the  General  Assembly, 
of  the  State  of  Connecticut,  convened  at  Hartford,  at  the  anniversary  elec- 
tion, May  8th,  1783. 
New  Haven:  1783. 

STILES,  EZRA,  A  Funeral  Sermon,  delivered     ...     at  the  Interment  of  the 
Reverend  Mr.  Chauncey  Whittelsey. 
New  Haven  :  1787. 

STILES,  EZRA,  A  History  of  Three  of  the  Judges  of  King  Charles  I.     Major 
General  Whalley,  Major  General  Goffe,  and  Colonel  Dixwell. 
Hartford:  1794. 

[The  larger  portion  of  Stiles's  writings  have  never  been  printed.  Many  of 
his  manuscripts  are  in  the  possession  of  Yale  University,  and  consist  of 
about  fifty  volumes,  besides  many  papers  not  bound.] 

STILLE,  CHARLES  J  ANEW  AY,  A  Memoir  of  the  Reverend  William  Smith,  D.D., 
Provost  of  the  College  Academy  and  Charitable  School  of  Philadelphia. 
Philadelphia:  1869. 

STILLE,  CHARLES  JANEWAY,  The  Life  and  Times  of  John  Dickinson.     1732- 

1808. 
Philadelphia:  1891. 

STONE,  WILLIAM  LEETE,  editor.  See  Ballads  and  Poems  relating  to  the  Bur- 
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STORK,  WILLIAM,  A  Description  of  East-Florida;  With  a  Journal  Kept  by 
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SUMNER,  CHARLES,  The  Works  of.     Fifteen  volumes. 
Boston:  1870-1883. 

TAYLOR,  WILLIAM  STANHOPE.  See  William  Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham,  Corre- 
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THACHER,  JAMES,  A  Military  Journal  during  the  American   Revolutionary 
War,  from   1775  to  1783.     With  an  Appendix,  containing  Biographical 
Sketches  of  several  General  officers.     Second  edition. 
Boston  :  1827. 
[A  later  edition,  with  expanded  title,  was  published  in  Hartford,  in  1862.] 

THACHER,  JAMES,  American  Medical  Biography  :    or,   Memoirs  of  Eminent 
Physicians  who  have  flourished  in  America.     To  which  is  prefixed  a  Suc- 
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Settlement  of  the  Country.     Two  volumes. 
Boston  :  1828. 


478  BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

THACHER,  OXENBRIDGE,  Considerations  on  Lowering  the  Value  of  Gold  Coins 
Within  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay. 
Boston  :  1761. 

THACHER,  OXENBRIDGE.     The  Sentiments  of  a  British  American. 
Boston:  1764. 

THACKERAY,  WILLIAM  MAKEPEACE,  The  Four  Georges. 
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THACKERAY,   WILLIAM    MAKEPEACE,    Miscellaneous    Essays,   Sketches  and 
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London  :  1886. 

THOMAS,  ISAIAH,  The  History  of  Printing  in  America.     Two  volumes. 
Albany:  1874. 

THOMSON,  JAMES,  Complete  Works  of.     With  Life,  Critical  Dissertation,  and 
Explanatory  Notes,  by  the  Rev.  George  Gilfillan. 
New  York:  1854. 

THORNTON,  JOHN  WINGATE,  The  Pulpit  of  the  American  Revolution  :  or,  the 
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TICKNOR,  GEORGE,  Life,  Letters  and  Journals  of.     Two  volumes. 
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TILGHMAN,  TENCH,  Memoir  of     ...     Together  with  an  Appendix  con- 
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Albany :  1876. 

TRUE  (The)  Sentiments  of  America  :  Contained  in  a  Collection  of  Letters  sent 
from  the  House  of  Representatives  of  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay 
to  Several  Persons  of  high  Rank  in  this  Kingdom  :  together  with  certain 
Papers  relating  to  a  supposed  Libel  on  the  Governor  of  that  Province,  and 
a  Dissertation  on  the  Canon  and  the  Feudal  Law. 
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TRUMBULL,  BENJAMIN,  A  Complete  History  of  Connecticut,  Civil  and  Ecclesi- 
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volumes. 
New  Haven :  1818. 

TRUMBUI.L,  JAMES  HAMMOND,  The  Origin  of  M'Fingal. 
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BIBLIOGRAPH  \ '.  479 

TRUMBULL,  JAMES  HAMMOND.    The  True-Blue  Laws  of  Connecticut  and  New 
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Colonies,  and  some  Blue-Laws  of  England  in  the  Reign  of  James  I. 
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TRUMBULL,  JAMES  HAMMOND,  The  Rev.  Samuel  Peters,  His  Defenders  and 
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TRUMBULL,  JOHN,  An  Essay  on  the   Use  and  Advantages  of  the  Fine  Arts, 
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Philadelphia:   1775. 

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Hartford  :   1782. 

[For  M'Fingal  in  its  completed  form,  this  is  the  editio  princeps.     I  have 

used  the  reprint  of  it,  edited,  with  introduction  and  notes  by  Benson  J. 

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TRUMBULL,  JOHN,  The  Poetical  Works  of. 

Hartford:  1820. 
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before  unpublished. 

Philadelphia  :   1837. 
TUDOR,  WILLIAM,  The  Life,  of  James  Otis. 

Boston:   1823. 

TURGOT,  M  DE,   Ministre  d'etat,  CEuvres,   Precedees   et   accompagnees  de 
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Tome  neuvieme. 
Paris  :   1810. 

UPHAM,  CHARLES  WENTWORTH,  The  Life  of  Timothy  Pickering.     Volumes 
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[By  E.  F.  Slafter,  the  authorship  of  this  bunch  of  doggerel  is  attributed  to 
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480  BIB  LI  OCR  A  PH  Y. 

VILLEMAIN,  ABEL  FRANCOIS,  Cours  de  Litteratare  Frar^aise  :  Tableau  de  la 
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[The  portion  of  this  work  devoted  to  the  eighteenth  century  is  in  four 
volumes.] 

WADE,  JOHN,  editor.     See  Junius. 

WARBURTON,  WILLIAM,  editor.     See  the  Works  of  Alexander  Pope. 

WARD,  GEORGE  ATKINSON,  editor.  See  Journal  and  Letters  of  the  Late 
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WARREN,  MERCY,  The  Adulateur.     A  Tragedy  as  it  is  now  Acted  in  Upper 
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Boston  :  1773. 

WARREN,  MERCY,  The  Group,  As  lately  Acted  and  to  be  Re-Acted  to  the 
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WARREN,  MERCY,  Poems  Dramatic  and  Miscellaneous. 
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INDEX. 


BY  MORTIMER  A.  FEDERSPIEL,  PH.D.,  LL.B.,  LATE  FELLOW  IN 
AMERICAN  HISTORY,  CORNELL  UNIVERSITY. 


ABEN,  Ezra,  ii.  331. 

"About  Savannah,"  Tory  ballad,  ii. 
70-72. 

Adair,  James,  "  History  of  the  Ameri- 
can Indians,"  i.  10,  154-156;  writ- 
ten among  the  Indians,  i.  154;  its 
style,  i.  154-155  ;  its  value  and 
charm,  i.  155;  theory  as  to  origin  of 
the  Indians,  i.  155  ;  sympathizes 
with  his  fellow-colonists,  i.  155-156. 

Adams,  Abigail,  wife  of  John  Adams, 
as  a  letter-writter,  i.  13  ;  on  "Com- 
mon Sense,"  i.  473. 

Adams,  Amos,  i.  10 ;  "Concise  His- 
torical View,"  ii.  385. 

Adams,  Charles  Francis,  opinion  as  to 
Hutchinson,  ii.  395. 

Adams,  Herbert  B.,  "Life  and  Writ- 
ings of  Jared  Sparks,"  ii.  362  note. 

Adams,  John,  5.  124,  370  note,  508 ; 
ii.  65,  83,  195  note,  308,  395  note, 
421  ;  as  a  letter- writer,  i.  13  ;  notes 
on  Otis's  speech,  i.  33-35  ;  his  opin- 
ion of  this  speech,  i.  35-36 ;  of 
Thacher's  speech,  i.  32  ;  of  struggle 
between  governor  and  house  (1762), 
i.  40;  of  Otis's  "Vindication,"  i. 
43-44  ;  on  Samuel  Adams's  revision 
of  Otis's  work,  i.  38  ;  as  a  political 
thinker,  i.  93-94  ;  literary  vivacity, 
i.  94  ;  essays  on  passage  of  Stamp 
Act,  i.  93,  94-99  ;  publication,  i.  99  ; 
regards  Anglo-American  dispute  as 
one  between  individualism  and  cor- 
porate authority,  i.  94-95  ;  deems 
Reformation  which  peopled  Amer- 
ica an  uprising  of  individualism,  i. 
95—96  ;  hence  American  antagonism 
to  tyranny,  i.  96-97  ;  thinks  Stamp 
Act  a  device  of  tyranny,  i.  97  ;  be- 
lieves resistance  is  battling  for  hu- 
man nature,  i.  97-98  ;  the  spirit  of 
English  liberty  still  lives,  i.  98  ;  on 


mingsof  the  Revolution,  i.  122; 
eulogizes  Mayhew,  i.  123  ;  his  de- 
scription of  Hopkinson,  i.  162-163, 
167,  168  ;  compared  with  Hopkin- 
son, i.  1 68  ;  on  repeal  of  Stamp  Act, 
i.  224  ;  on  number  of  Loyalists,  i. 
298,  300  ;  estimate  of  the  letters  of 
"  Massachusettensis,"  i.  357;  mis- 
taken as  to  their  date,  i.  357  note  ; 
as  to  their  authorship,  i.  note  357- 
358  ;  on  Leonard,  i.  358,  359  ;  writ- 
ings compared  with  Leonard's,  i. 
360  ;  on  battle  of  Lexington,  i.  366  ; 
notes  on  speeches  of  Galloway,  i. 
372-373  5  replies  to  "  Massachuset- 
tensis" in  the  essays  of  "  Novan- 
glus,"  i.  391  ;  their  reputation,  i. 
391-392  ;  their  merits  and  defects, 
i.  392  ;  Trumbull's  legal  preceptor, 
i.  427  ;  portrayed  as  Honorius  in 
"M'Fingal,"  i.  432,  433-436,437, 
438,  440  ;  his  descriptions  of  Paine, 
i.  455-456  ;  is  reputed  author  of 
"Common  Sense,"  i.  470-471  ;  on 
identity  of  Provost  Smith  and 
"Cato,1"  i.  487  note;  identity  of 
Cannon  and  "  Cassandra,"  i.  490 
note  ;  his  opinion  of  Jefferson,  i. 
495,  497  ;  on  committee  to  draft  re- 
ply to  Lord  North,  i.  497  ;  criticisms 
of  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
i.  501-502,  504-505,  507-508  ;  on 
Samuel  Adams  as  a  writer,  ii.  2-3  ; 
speeches  compared  with  those  of 
Samuel  Adams,  ii.  5-6  ;  Wells  on 
his  authorship  of  the  Mass,  con- 
stitution, ii.  10  note  ;  on  Living- 
ston's speech,  ii.  18  note  ;  contempt 
for  Dickinson,  ii.  33-34;  as  described 
by  Loyalists,  ii.  58  ;  reply  to  Shir- 
ley, ii.  58  ;  satirized  by  Odell,  ii. 
109,  no,  112  ;  cites  lines  on  George 
III.,  ii.  161  ;  on  Mercy  Warren,  ii. 


485 


485 


INDEX. 


Adams,  John  (Continued}. 

193  ;  in  Mercy  Warren's  "  Adula- 
teur,"  ii.  193;  in  "The  Fall  of 
British  Tyranny, "ii.  204  ;  on  Revo- 
lutionary clergy,  ii.  279  ;  report  of 
Samuel  Adams's  speech  on  opening 
prayers,  ii.  288  ;  on  "  first  prayer  in 
Congress,"  ii.  289  ;  on  Duffield,  ii. 
313,  314  ;  on  Stiles's  book,  ii.  334  ; 
on  standing  of  Hutchinson,  ii.  397 
note  ;  on  his  dangerous  character,  ii. 
note  397-398  ;  on  Hutchinson  in 
England,  ii.  403  note :  Hutchinson 's 
description  of,  ii.  407-408  ;  Mercy 
Warren's  relation  to,  ii.  420  ;  his 

r'  lion  of  Gordon,  ii.  423  ;  on  Gor- 
's  "  History,"  ii.  425-426. 
Adams,  Samuel,  i.  508  ;  ii.  65,  421  ; 
revises  work  of  Otis,  i.  38,  505  ; 
rank  among  Revolutionary  leaders, 
i.  122,  123  ;  as  Jeremiah  in  "  The 
American  Chronicles,"  i.  263,  265- 
266  ;  Galloway  on,  i.  380  ;  signs 
letter  favoring  reconciliation  (1774), 
i.  459 ;  reputed  author  of  "  Common 
Sense,"  i.  470  ;  compared  with  Jef- 
ferson, i.  497  ;  reputation  since  the 
Revolution,  ii.  1-2;  his  literary  work 
always  practical,  ii.  2  ;  influence  as 
a  Revolutionary  writer,  ij:'£-3pfearly 
career,  ii.  3-4 ;  early  absorption  in 
politics,  ii.  3-4 ;  an  oppositionist 
and  destructive  statesman,  ii.  4-5  ; 
public  positions  occupied  by,  ii.  5  ; 
becomes  director  of  the  opposition 
policy,  ii.  5-6;  disinterestedness 
and  simplicity,  ii.  6  ;  democratic 
ways,  ii.  6  ;  contemporary  renown 
for  astuteness  and  influence,  ii.  6-7  ; 
priority  as  champion  of  Revolution- 
ary measures,  ii.  7-8  ;  the  first  to 
shape  public  opinion  thereon,  ii. 
8-9  ;  journalistic  instinct,  ii.  8  ;  lit- 
erary disguises,  ii.  8-9 ;  diligence, 
•  ii,  9  ;  outline  of  his  literary  labors, 
ii.  o-io ;  method  in  work,  ii.  n  ; 
traits  as  a  writer  and  controversial- 
ist, ii.  11-12;  consistency  of  his 
public  career,  ii.  13-16  ;  his  control- 
ling principle  individualism,  ii.  13  ; 
applies  it  to  his  doctrine  of  liberty, 
ii.  13-14  ;  of  loyalty,  ii.  14-15  ;  of 
civic  duty,  ii.  15  ;  of  domestic  life, 
ii.  15-16  ;  insists  upon  the  due  sub- 
ordination of  the  military  power,  ii. 
16  ;  predictions  of  Independence, 
u.  16-17  I  as  described  by  Loyalists, 
H.  58  ;  Tory  prophecy  on,  ii.  75  ; 


satirized  by  Odell,  ii.  109,  1 10, 1 12  ; 
in  Mercy  Warren's  "  Adulateur,"ii. 
193  ;  moves  for  opening  prayers  in 
Congress,  ii.  288;  opinion  of  Hutch- 
inson, ii.  note  397-398;  Hutchin- 
son's  description  of,  ii.  407-408. 

Adams,  Zabdiel,  election  sermon,  ii. 
308. 

Addison,  Joseph,  i.  210  ;  influence  on 
Trumbull,  i.  193-194,  213-214  ; 
Epilogue  to  his  "  Tragedy  of  Cato," 
ii.  225. 

"  Address  of  the  House  of  Burgesses." 
See  Jefferson,  Thomas. 

Admiralty  courts  in  the  colonies,  ex- 
tension of,  i.  45  ;  objections  to  this, 
i.  54,  66. 

"Adulateur,  (The)."  See  Warren, 
Mercy. 

"Advertisement."  See  Hopkinson, 
Francis. . 

Aitkin,  Robert,  Paine  writes  for  his 
magazine,  i.  454,  455. 

Akenside,  Mark,  English  poet,  i.  37, 

415. 

"Alarm  to  the  Legislature  of  New 
York."  See  Seabury,  Samuel. 

Alden,  John,  ancestor  of  Seabury,  i. 
350. 

Alexander,  S.  D.,  his  "  Princeton 
College "  criticised,  ii.  99  note  ; 
cited,  ii.  312  note. 

Allen,  Colonel  Ethan,  character,  ii. 
229  ;  a  prisoner  of  war,  ii.  229  ; 
"  Narrative  of  Colonel  Ethan  Allen's 
Captivity,"  ii.  229-237  ;  editions,  ii. 
note,  229-230  ;  its  quality,  ii.  230  ; 
reasons  for  the  severities  bestowed 
upon  him,  ii.  230-231  ;  experience 
with  General  Prescott,  ii.  231-232  ; 
voyage  to  England,  ii.  233  ;  treat- 
ment there,  ii.  233-235  ;  sent  back  to 
America,  ii.  235-236;  on  parole  in 
New  York,  ii.  236  ;  on  sufferings  of 
American  prisoners,  ii.  236-237 ; 
other  writings,  ii.  note  237-238  ;  in 
"  The  Fall  of  British  Tyranny,"  ii. 
206. 

Allen,  William,  erroneously  ascribes 
compilation  to  Hutchins,  i.  152 
note  ;  errs  as  to  date  of  "  Monitor," 
i.  245  note  ;  cited,  ii.  411  note. 

Allibone,  Samuel  Austin,  erroneously 
ascribes  compilation  to  Hutchins,  i. 
152  note  ;  errs  as  to  date  of  "  Moni- 
tor," i.  245  note. 

Almon,    John,    "  Prior    Documents, 
cited,  i.  80  note,  459  note  ;   "  Re- 


INDEX. 


487 


membrancer,"  cited,  i.  473  note,  492 
note  ;  reprints  Hopkins's  "Rights," 
i.  65  note  ;  Otis's"  Considerations," 
i.  86  note  ;  essays  of  "  Novanglus," 
i.  391  ;  "  The  True  Sentiments  of 
America,"  ii.  10  note. 

Alpin,  John,  verses  on  Mayhew  at- 
tributed to,  i.  124  note. 

Alva,  Duke  of,  i.  5 10. 

"American  Archives."  See  Force, 
Peter. 

"American  Chronicles."  See  "First 
Book,  "etc. 

American  colonies,  evade  revenue  laws, 
i.45  ;  new  British  policy  toward 
(1763-4),  i.  44-47  ;  commercial  pros- 
perity of,  secured  by  removing  tax- 
restriction,  i.  57-59 ;  how  notifica- 
tion of  Stamp  Act  was  received,  i. 
60-61,  66  ;  alleged  English  protec- 
tion of,  i.  67,  83,  83  ;  opposed  to 
tyranny,  i.  95-98  ;  constitutional  re- 
sistance advocated,  i.  108-110,  327  ; 
first  union,  i.  112-113,  223  ;  feeling 
of,  expressed  in  "Oppression,"  i. 
115-120  ;  fear  Anglican  bishops,  i. 
133-135,  ii.  280;  Mayhew  on  right 
of  resistance,  i.  137-138  ;  plea  for 
union  of,i.  130-140  ;  happiness  over 
repeal  of  Stamp  Act,  1.223-225 ;  essay 
on  union  with  Great  Britain,  i.  225- 
226  ;  confidence  disturbed  by  De- 
claratory Act,  i.  226-227  ;  political 
anxiety,  i.  227—229  ;  united  to  Eng- 
land through  crown  only,  i.  229- 
231,  273,  386,  392  ;  this  doctrine  de- 
nounced, i.  343  ;  distrust  increases 
(1767),  i.  231  ;  Townshend's  meas- 
ures concerning,  i.  231—232  ;  their 
effect,  i.  232-234  ;  rights  asserted 
and  resistance  advocated,  i.  234- 
236  ;  arrival  and  ejection  of  com- 
missioners of  customs,  i.  239  ;  Brit- 
ish troops  summoned  from  Halifax, 
i.  239  ;  gravity  of  situation  (1768),  i. 
239-243  ;  resolutions  of  parliament 
increase  political  tension,  i.  243 ; 
outline  of  ministerial  measures  tow- 
ard (1763-75),  i.  246-250;  imprecate 
tea,  i.  253-257  ;  humorous  version 
of  tea-troubles  resulting  in  political 
union,  i.  259-266  ;  critical  character 
of  1774,  i.  267-269,  295  ;  change  in 
process  of  governmenlal  discipline, 
i.  269  ;  action  on  Boston  port-bill,  i. 
270  ;  demand  for  political  union,  i. 
270-271,  273  ;  legal  opposition  de- 
manded, i.  274-275  ;  political  matu- 


rity of,  1.  275  ,  transfer  of  seat  of 
British  empire  to,  predicted,  i.  275- 
276  ;  theory  of  opposition  chal- 
lenged, i.  276-278  ;  accused  of  in- 
consistency, i.  277  ;  permanent  po- 
litical union,  i.  266,  279  ;  allegorical 
history  of  events  producing  this 
union,  i.  281-290;  methods  of  op- 
position, i.  331-332  ;  determine  on 
commercial  war,  i.  332-334  ;  results 
of  this  policy  depicted,  i.  335-344  ; 
home  rule  proposed,  i.  345-346, 
372,  377-378,  394-395  5  character 
of  people,  i.  360-361 ;  heirs  of  Eng- 
lish spirit,  i.  98,  243,  360-361,  511  ; 
groundlessness  of  complaints,  i.  361, 
362,  363-365  ;  nature  of  dispute 
with  England,!.  375  ;  military  com- 
petence, i.  399  ;  outbreak  of  war,  i. 
402;  military  events  of  1775,  i.  402- 
403  ;  English  contempt  for,  i.  408- 
409  ;  Freneau's  apostrophe  to,  i. 
418  ;  national  greatness  predicted, 
i.  423-424  ;  love  for  the  mother 
country,  i.  55-56,  70,  227-228,  288, 
424  ;  change  in  this  sentiment,  i. 
406-407,  464-465  ;  loyalty  of,  i.  51, 
58, 68-69,  89, 120, 228-229,236,  325- 
326;  prior  to  1776  do  not  desire 
Independence,  i.  458—462  ;  new  era 
in  politics  of,  i.  464 ;  connection 
with  England  not  necessary  for  pros- 
perity, i.  465  ;  disadvantages  of  this 
connection,  i,  465-468  ;  Declaration 
of  Independence  expresses  senti- 
ments of,  i.  506-508  ;  Crevecceur's 
description  of,  ii.  349  ;  comforts  and 
opportunities  of  rural  life  in,  ii. 
352-354- 

American,  Crevecceur's  definition  of, 
"•  349-350. 

American  episcopate.     See  Church  of 
England. 

"  American    Gazette,"    cited,    i.    245 
note. 

"  American  Hero,  (The)."    See  Niles, 
Nathaniel. 

"  American  Historical  Review,"  cited, 
ii.  411  note. 

"America  Independent."     See  Fre- 
neau,  Philip. 

"American     Liberty    Song,"    verses 
from,  imprecating  tea,  i.  254. 

American  literature  during  the  Revo- 
lution, the  promise  of,  i.  4—6  ;   the 
note  of,  i.  6  ;  its  amount  and  causes, 
i.  7-9  ;  two  classes  of  writings,  i.  9 
those   resulting    from   non-Revolu- 


488 


INDEX. 


American  Literature  (Continued). 
tionary  interests  classified,  i.  9-12  ; 
first  group,  spiritual  interests,  i.  9- 
10  ;  second  group,  interest  in  nature 
and  primitive  races,  i.  10 ;  third 
group,  the  historic  interest,  i.  10-11 ; 
interest  in  literature  in  its  higher 
sense,  i.  1 1  ;  those  resulting  directly 
from  the  Revolution  classified,  i. 
12-27  ;  first  class,  correspondence, 
i.  12-14  ;  reasons  for  its  develop- 
ment, i.  12-13  I  some  of  the  best 
letter-writers,  i.  13-14;  second  class, 
State  Papers,  i.  14-16  ;  service  ren- 
dered by,  i.  14-16  ;  present  to  Eu- 
rope the  condition  of  America,  i. 
15-16;  third  class,  oral  addresses, 
i.  16-17  ;  their  traits,  i.  16-17 ; 
fourth  class,  political  essays,  in 
newspapers  or  pamphlets,  i.  17-22  ; 
place  occupied  by  newspapers,  i. 
17-18  ;  uncommon  merit  of  political 
essays  in  newspapers  explained,  i. 
18-19  ;  place  occupied  by  the  pam- 
phlet, i.  19—20 ;  power  and  worth  of 
these  essays,  i.  20-22  ;  fifth  class, 
political  satires  in  verse,  i.  22-26 ; 
its  prominence  and  causes  thereof, 
i.  22-26  ;  sixth  class,  popular  lyric 
poetry,  i.  26-27 ;  frankness  and 
rariety  of,  i.  26-27  ',  seventh  class, 
minor  literary  facetiae,  i.  27  ;  eighth 
class,  dramatic  compositions,  i.  27  ; 
ninth  class,  prose  narratives,  i.  27  ; 
method  of  treatment  and  value  of 
these  writings,  i.  28-29  '.  importance 
as  interpretations  of  the  Revolution, 
i.  28  ;  literature  as  the  expression 
of  society,  i.  28-29  '.  the  humanistic 
and  historic  interest  attaching  to, 
i.  29  ;  humorous,  i.  61-63,  257-266, 
279-291 ;  Loyalist  entrance  into,  i. 
74  ;  character  of,  in  Boston,  i.  184- 
185  ;  lack  of  poetic  life  there,  i. 
185-187  ;  beginnings  of  new  life  in 
verse  and  prose,  in  New  England, 
i.  II,  187,  193-221  ;  in  the  Middle 
colonies,  i.  11,  157-162,  168-171, 
1/3-183  ;  most  brilliant  event  in,  i. 
234,  236  ;  Loyalist  literature  prior 
to  1774,  i.  293-295  ;  its  period  of 
greatest  activity  in  argumentative 
literature,  i.  295-296;  change  in 
character  of  (1775),  i.  406-407  ; 
Declaration  of  Independence  as  a 
specimen  of,  i.  519-521  ;  of  the 
Loyalists,  1776-83,  ii.  51-53  ;  its 
amoaiu,  ii.  51 ;  its  character,  ii.  51- 


53  ;  cynical  tone  during  early  part 
of  1777,  ii.  161-162. 

"American  Museum,"  cited,  i.  179 
note. 

"American  Patriot's  Prayer  (The)," 
ii.  177-178  ;  its  authorship,  ii.  note 
178-179. 

"  American  Querist."  See  Cooper, 
Myles. 

"American  Soldier's  Hymn,  The," 
ii.  179-180. 

"American  Times  (The)."  See 
Odell,  Jonathan. 

"  Americans  Roused  (The)."  See 
Sewall,  Jonathan. 

Amherst,  Sir  Jeffrey,  his  contempt  for 
Americans,  i.  409. 

Andre,  Major  John,  ii.  102,  165  ; 
Odell's  connection  with,  ii.  106 ; 
ballad  on,  ii.  181-182  ;  compared 
with  Hale,  ii.  183. 

Andrews,  Isaac,  Woolman's  compan- 
ion, ii.  341-342. 

Andrews,  James  de  Witt,  edits 
"  Works  of  Wilson,"  i.  273  note. 

Andros,  Edmund,  ii.  410. 

Andros,  Thomas,  career,  ii.  239,  242 
note;  "The  Old  Jersey  Captive," 
ii.  238-242  ;  describes  the  prison- 
ship  "Old  Jersey"  and  the  ways 
of  life  and  death  thereon,  ii.  239- 
242. 

Anne,  Queen,  writers  of,  their  influ- 
ence, i.  193-194,  291. 

' '  Another  Prophecy  "  by  the  ' '  Genius 
of  America,"  ii.  162-163. 

Anson,  George,  English  navigator,  ii. 
88. 

"  Appletons'  Cyclopaedia  of  American 
Biography,"  criticised  in  notes,  i. 
245.  37°*  "•  286,  307  ;  cited  in 
notes,  i.  368,  393,  ii.  321. 

Apthorp,  Rev.  East,  ii.  195  note. 

Arbuthnot,  John,  "  History  of  John 
Bull,"  i.  283  note  ;  compared  with 
Hopkinson's  "Pretty  Story,"  i. 
291  ;  Franklin  compared  with,  ii. 
368. 

Aristophanes,  i.  198. 

Arnold,  Benedict,  ii.  89,  157,  182, 
263,  417  ;  his  treason  compared 
with  Lee's,  i.  400  note  ;  pre-Rev- 
olutionary  occupation,  ii.  57  ; 
Odell's  connection  with,  ii.  106 ; 
satires  on,  ii.  164-165  ;  in  "  The 
Death  of  General  Montgomery,"  ii. 
219,  220,  222. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  on  literature,  i.  29. 


INDEX. 


489 


Arnold,  Oliver,  as  a  Revolutionary 
song-writer,  ii.  173. 

Articles  of  Confederation,  Drayton's 
speech  against,  i.  492  :  first  draft 
written  by  Dickinson,  ii.  25. 

"  Association  (The),"  i.  332-334 ; 
fidelity  to,  a  test  of  political  recti- 
tude, ii.  53-54  ;  many  forced  to  sign, 

ii-  54-55- 

"  Atlantic  Monthly,"  cited,  338  note  ; 
361  note. 

Auchmuty,  Samuel,  Loyalist  clergy- 
man, i.  436,  439. 

Austin,  J.  T.,  "Life  of  Gerry," 
cited,  ii.  426  note,  427  note. 

Backus,  Isaac,  i.  10  ;  career,  ii.  391  ; 
"  History  of  New  England,  with 
Particular  Reference  to  the  Bap- 
tists," ii.  392-394  ;  motive  in  writing 
history,  ii.  392-393  ;  method  strictly 
scientific,  ii.  393-394  ;  value  of  his 
work,  ii.  394. 

Baker,  Sir  Richard,  ii.  398. 

Balch,  Thomas,  notes  in  "  Examina- 
tion of  Galloway,"  cited  in  notes, 
i.  370,  380,  381. 

Ballads  of  the  Revolution,  "A  New 
Song  to  an  Old  Tune,"  i.  256-257  ; 
"  The  King's  Own  Regulars,"  i. 
409-411  ;  "The  Rebels,"  ii.  55; 
"Camp  Ballad,"  ii.  142-143; 
"  Date  Obolum  Belisario,"  ii.  145- 
146  ;  "  The  Battle  of  the  Kegs,"  ii. 
148-149  ;  characteristics  of,  ii.  180  ; 
"Liberty's  Call,"  ii.  180  ;  "A 
Song  for  the  Red  Coats,"  ii.  181  ; 
"  The  Fate  of  John  Burgoyne,"  ii. 
181  ;  "Brave  Paulding  and  the 
Spy,"  ii.  181-182;  "Battle  of 
King's  Mountain,"  ii.  182  ;  "  The 
Wyoming  Massacre,"  ii.  182  ; 
"  Bold  Hawthorne,"  ii.  182-183  '< 
"  Hale  in  the  Bush,"  ii.  184-186. 

Bancroft,  Edward,  character  and 
works,  i.  244  note. 

Bancroft,  George,  opinion  of  trial  for 
writs  of  assistance,  i.  32  note  ;  al- 
leged statement  on  authorship  of 
"  Some  Thoughts"  criticised,  i.  57 
note  ;  on  Gage's  arrival  at  Boston, 
i.  288  note;  his  copy  of  "The 
Other  Side,"  i.  395  note  ;  quotes 
\Vhately  on  Taxation,  i.  46  ;  Gren- 
ville  on  Taxation,  i.  306  ;  Sand- 
wich on  Americans,  i.  408  ;  "  His- 
tory of  the  United  States,"  cited, 
i.  237  note,  238  note  ;  revives  the 


reputation   of    Samuel  Adams,   ii. 

1-2. 
Baptists,  history  of,  by  Edwards,  ii. 

387-391  ;  by  Backus,  ii.  392-394. 
Barlow,    Joel,    as    a    Revolutionary 

song-writer,  ii.  173. 
Barney,  Captain  Joshua,  ii.  264 
Barre,  Isaac,  friend  of  American  colo- 
nies, i.  224,  256,  309,  312,  482  ;  as 

colonel   in   "  The   Fall   of   British 

Tyranny, "ii.  200,  203. 
Bartol,     Cyrus     Augustus,    eulogizes 

Mayhew,  i.  122-123. 
Barton,  Andrew,  perhaps  an  assumed 

name  for  Col.  Thomas  Forrest,  ii. 

192  note  ;    ' '  Disenchantment  ;   or, 

The  Force  of  Credulity,"  a  comic 

opera,  ii.  192. 
Barton,  B.  S.,  on  Adair's  "  History," 

i-  155- 

Bartram,  John,  ii.  349. 
"  Battle  of  Brooklyn  (The),"  a  farce 

satirizing  American  leaders,  ii.  208- 

209. 
"  Battle    of    Bunker's    Hill   (The)." 

See  Brackenridge,  H.  H. 
"  Battle  of  King's  Mountain,"  a  Rev- 
olutionary ballad,  ii.  182. 
"  Battle  of  the  Kegs."     See  Hopkin- 

son,  Francis. 
Beardsley,  Eben  Edwards,  "  Life  of 

Seabury,"  cited  in  notes,  i.  350,  351, 

353,  354,  355- 

Beattie,  James,  Scotch  poet,  i.  37. 

Beatty,  Charles,  connection  with  Duf- 
field,  ii.  315  note. 

Bedford,  Duke  of,  ii.  426. 

Behn,  Aphra,  alleged  source  of  ex- 
pressions in  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, i.  504. 

Belknap,  Jeremy,  prays  for  king  (Oct, 
22,  1775),  i.  461. 

Bell,  Robert,  ii.  178  note. 

Bellamy,  Joseph,  religious  writer,  i. 
10,  204. 

Berkeley,  George,  i.  206  note  ;  pre- 
diction of,  i.  275-276  ;  Stiles's  ora- 
tion on  death  of,  ii.  333  note. 

Bernard,  Sir  Francis,  governor  of 
Massachusetts,  ii.  13  ;  struggle  with 
the  house,  i.  40-41,  43  ;  poem  on, 
i.  185  ;  summons  troops  to  Boston, 
i.  239 ;  ridiculed  in  "  American 
Chronicles,"  i.  260,  263  ;  his  copy 
of  "Strictures,"  i.  499  note;  on 
Samuel  Adams  as  a  writer,  ii.  3; 
probable  letter  of,  on  Hutchin- 
son's  loss  of  manuscripts,  ii.  400- 


490 


INDEX. 


401  ;  Mercy  Warren's  portrait  of, 
ii.  422. 

Bicldle,  Nicholas,  Freneau's  poem  on 
the  death  of,  ii.  248. 

Biddle,  Owen,  ii.  40. 

Bigelow,  John,  "Works  of  Frank- 
lin," criticised,  ii.  362  note ;  cited 
in  notes,  i.  117,  230,  237,  246,  248, 
404-406,  460,  ii.  363,  365-367,  368, 
370-371,  373-380. 

Billop,  Christopher,  i.  439. 

Blackstone,  Sir  William,  i.  427,  ii.  12. 

"  Blackwood's  Magazine,"  cited,  i. 
150  note;  on  Mrs.  Hunter's 
"  Death-Song,"  i.  179. 

Blair,  Hugh,  ii.  320. 

Blake,  Robert,  British  admiral,  ii.  88. 

Bland,  Richard,  his  "Enquiry"  an- 
nouncing Anglo-American  union 
through  crown  only,  i.  229-231  ;  its 
character,  i.,  230-231  ;  other  writ- 
ings, i.  231  note. 

"Blasted  Herb  (The),"  verses  from, 
imprecating  tea,  i.  254. 

Bleecker,  Ann  Eliza,  on  Ethan  Allen, 
ii.  229. 

"  Blockade  (The)."  See  Burgoyne, 
John. 

"  Blockheads ;  or,  Fortunate  Contrac- 
tor," an  opera  satirizing  the  French 
alliance,  ii.  227. 

"  Blockheads ;  or,  The  Affrighted 
Officers,"  a  farce  celebrating  the 
British  evacuation  of  Boston,  ii.  207- 
208  ;  attributed  to  Mercy  Warren, 
ii.  207  note. 

Boileau-Despreaux,  Nicholas,  French 
poet,  i.  196. 

"Bold  Hawthorne,  "a  Revolutionary 
ballad,  ii.  182  183. 

Bolton,  Robert,  Jr.,  "History  of  the 
I'rotestant  Episcopal  Church," 
cited,  i.  353  note. 

Bolton,  Thomas,  opinion  of  Samuel 
Adams,  ii.  3. 

Booth,  a  Loyalist,  i.  436. 

Borden,  Ann,  becomes  wife  of  Fran- 
cis Hopkinson,  i.  166. 

Boston,  seat  of  intellectual  activity,  i. 
184-185  ;  poetic  poverty  of,  i.  185- 
187  ;  arrival  and  ejection  of  com- 
missioners of  customs,  i.  239 ; 
troops  summoned  to,  i.  239  ;  its 
treatment  of  the  tea  ships,  i. 
249-250,  259,  287  ;  action  on  port 
I.  i.  270  ;  humorous  account  of 
British  treatment  of,  i.  26i-26s 
287-290. 


"Boston  Chronicle,"  Trumbull's 
essays  published  in,  i.  194. 

"Boston  Gazette,"  cited,  i.  47  note, 
52  note  ;  on  "  Common  Sense,"  i. 
473-474- 

"  Boston  Morning  Post,"  on  papers 
of  first  Congress,  i.  331. 

Boston  port  bill,  i.  269,  humorous 
account  of  its  origin,  i.  259-260, 
288  ;  action  of  colonies  on,  i.  270- 
271. 

Boswell,  James,  "  Life  of  Johnson," 
cited,  i.  24  note,  81  note. 

Botetourt,  Lord,  Governor  of  Virginia, 
response  of  Burgesses  to,  i.  495. 

Boucher,  Jonathan,  career,  i.  316- 
317  ;  frankness  and  courage,  i.  317- 
320;  intellectual  sincerity,  i.  321; 
part  before  1774,  i.  294-295  ;  resists 
attempts  to  silence  him,  i.  319-320  ; 
ejection,  i.  328;  "Letter  from  a 
Virginian,"  attributed  to,  i.  278 
note;  "View  of  the  Causes  and 
Consequences  of  the  American 
Revolution,"  i.  320-328  ;  its  char- 
acter, i.  320-321  ;  opposes  prevalent 
evils,  i.  321-322 ;  treatment  of 
slaves,  i.  322  note  ;  believes  in  di- 
vine origin  and  authority  of  govern- 
ment, i.  322-323  ;  denounces  oppo- 
site theory,  i.  323-324  ;  Revolution- 
ary leaders,  i.  324—325 ;  denies 
equality  of  all  men,  i,  325  ;  depicts 
decay  of  loyalty  in  Virginia,  i.  325— 
326  ;  defines  Whig  and  low-church- 
man, i.  326  ;  on  American  episco- 
pate,!. 326-327;  laments  ministerial 
policy,  i.  327  ;  advocates  constitu- 
tional resistance,  i.  327  ;  believes  in 
irresistible  power  of  submission,  i. 
327-328  ;  materials  on,  i.  328  note  ; 
relations  with  Washington,  i.  328 
note  ;  ascribes  ' '  Westchester  Far- 
mer "  pamphlets  to  Seabury,  i.  351 
note ;  Washington  to,  on  Indepen- 
dence, i.  460  ;  on  power  of  political 
sermons,  ii.  278  ;  representative 
Loyalist  preacher,  ii.  279  note. 

Bouchier,  Jonathan,  grandson  of  pre- 
ceding, contributions  from  Bou- 
cher's "Autobiography,"  i.  328 
note  ;  cited,  i.  317-318,  320,  322 
note. 

Bouquet,  Henry,  i.  10  ;  military  jour- 
nal in  "  Historical  Account  of  Bou- 
quet's Expedition,"  i.  151-152. 

Bowdoin,  James,  on  authorship  of 
preface  in  Wood's  "  New  England 


INDEX. 


491 


Prospect,"  i.  52  note  :  Hutchinson's 
description  of,  ii.  407. 

Brackenridge,  Henry  Marie,  his  biog- 
raphy of  his  father,  ii.  297  note. 

Brackenridge,  Hugh  Henry,  i.  173; 
literary  merit  of  his  dramatic  poems, 
ii.  210-21 1  ;  "  The  Battle  of  Bunk- 
er's Hill,"  ii.  211-218;  motive  of 
this  drama,  ii.  211  ;  outline,  ii.  211- 
218 ;  "  The  Death  of  General 
Montgomery,"  ii.  218—224  ;  its  pur- 
pose, ii.  218-219;  outline,  ii.  219- 
224  ;  editor  of  "  The  United  States 
Magazine,"  ii.  19,  257  ;  chaplain  in 
the  army,  ii.  297  ;  previous  career, 
ii.  297-299;  "Six  Political  Dis- 
courses," ii.  299-302;  chant  of'! 
patriotic  hatred  and  vengeance,  ii.  ' 
300-301  ;  prophetic  woes  upon  the 
enemy,  ii.  301-302. 

Bracton,  Henry  de,  i.  427. 

Bradford,  Alden,  "Life  of  Mayhew," 
cited  in  notes,  i.  122,  125,  127-129, 
131,  138-140;  edits  Massachusetts 
State  papers,  ii.  411  note. 

Bradford,  William,  printer,  ii.  36 
note,  167  note. 

"Brave  Paulding  and  the  Spy,"  a 
Revolutionary  ballad,  ii.  181-182. 

Brevoort,  Henry,  Scott  to,  on  poem 
of  Freneau's,  i.  179  note. 

"  Brief  Narrative."  See  Clark, 
Jonas. 

"  Brief  Remarks."    See  Otis,  James. 

"British  Prison-Ship  (The)."  See 
Freneau,  Philip. 

Brown,  John  Nicholas,  his  copy  of 
Carver's  "Treatise."  i.  148  note; 
of  "  1'onteach,"  ii.  192  note. 

Brunswick,  Duke  of,  Scott's  apostro- 
phe, to,  i.  178. 

Brush,  Crean,  Loyalist,  satirized  by 
Trumbull,  i.  436,  439. 

Bryant,  William  Cullen,  and  S.  H. 
Gay,  quote  Shelburne  on  Declara- 
tory Act,  i.  226. 

Buckland,  James,  ii.  427  note. 

Buckle,  Henry  Thomas,  on  influence  of 
Declaration  of  Independence,  i.  519. 

Buckminster,  Joseph,  as  student  at 
Vale,  i.  193. 

Bullock,  Charles  J.,  "  Finances  of  the 
United  States,"  cited,  ii,  62  note. 

Bulwer-Lytton,  Sir  Edward,  translates 
Schiller's  "  Nadowessiers  Toten- 
lied."  i.  150  note. 

Burdge,  Franklin,  on  Green's  pam- 
phlet, ii.  294  note. 


Burgess,  John  W.,  on  principle  of 
parliamentary  representation,  i.  307. 

Burgoyne,  General  John,  i.  256,  402 
note;  ii.  19,  61,  92,  141,  154,  173, 
258,  271  ;  satirized  by  Freneau,  i. 
419-420;  terror  inspired  by  his  in- 
vasion, ii.  143-144 ;  his  proclama- 
tion, ii.  144;  burlesqued  by  Hop- 
kinson,  ii.  144-145  ;  object'  of  his 
invasion,  ii.  162  ;  epigrams  on,  ii. 
163-164;  ballads  on  campaign 
against,  ii.  181  ;  as  Mr.  Caper  in 
"  The  Fall  of  British  Tyranny,"  ii. 
200,  205-206  ;  "  The  Blockade,"  a 
farce,  ii.  207;  in  "The  Battle  of 
Bunker's  Hill,"  ii.  212;  Freneau's 
invectives  against,  ii.  253-255. 

Burke,  Edmund,  i.  518  note  ;  ii.  66; 
friend  of  American  colonies,  i. 
256,  309,  312-313,482  ;  his  opinion 
of  Americans,  i.  8  ;  on  repeal  of 
Stamp  Act,  i.  224  ;  admires  the 
"Farmer's  Letters,"  i.  238;  on 
taxing  tea,  i.  249  ;  derides  ministe- 
rial policy,  i.  250-251 ;  on  taxing  the 
colonies,  i.  510-511  ;  as  Bold  Irish- 
man in  "The  Fall  of  British  Tyr- 
anny," ii.  200-203. 

Burleigh,  Baron,  ii.  84. 

Burns,  Robert,  participates  in  the 
reformation  of  English  verse,  ii. 
274. 

Burr,  Aaron,  ii.  222. 

Bushnell,  Charles  Ira,  edits  Meigs's 
"  Journal,"  ii.  417  note. 

Bushnell,  David,  invents  machines  to 
float  down  the  Delaware,  ii.  note 
147-148. 

Bute,  Earl  of,  ii.  169,  213,  327  ;  satir- 
ized in  "  Oppression,"  i.  116-119; 
in  "American  Chronicles,"  i.  253, 
263  ;  as  Lord  Paramount  in  "  The 
Fall  of  British  Tyranny,"  ii.  199- 
203,  206. 

Butler,  Samuel,  influence  on  Trum- 
bull, i.  211  ;  resemblances  and  dis- 
similarities between  "  Hudibras  " 
and  Trumbull's  "  M'Fingal,"  i.  443- 
445,  447  ;  not  (he  master  of  Trum- 
bull, i.  445-446 ;  his  object  in 
"  Hudibras,"  i.  448. 

Byron,  Admiral,  n.  128. 

Byron,  Lord,  as  a  satirist,  i.  22-23  \ 
Crevecoeur's  influence  on,  ii.  358. 

Caesar.  Julius,  i.  89,  98,  181,  ii.  410. 
Calhoun,  John  C.,  criticises  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  i.  503  ;   con- 


492 


INDEX. 


siders  its  preamble  the  chief  obstruc- 
tion to  slavery,  i.  517. 

Calvin,  John,  Mayhew  attacks,  i.  125. 

Camden,  Lord,  friend  of  American 
colonies,  i.  224,  256,  309,  313,  482  ; 
as  Lord  Justice  in  "The  Fall  of 
British  Tyranny,"  ii.  200,  202, 
203. 

"Camp  Baliad."  See  Hopkinson, 
Francis. 

"  Campaign  in  the  Illinois."  See 
Clark,  George  Rogers. 

Campbell,  Charles,  criticises  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  i.  504. 

Campbell,  Colonel,  in  "  The  Death 
of  Montgomery,"  ii.  222. 

Campbell,  Thomas,  debt  to  Freneau, 
i.  177-178,  179-180  ;  Crevecoeur's 
influence  on,  ii.  358. 

"  Candid  Examination."  See  Gallo- 
way, Joseph. 

Cannon,  James,  "Cassandra"  in 
Hopkinson's  "  Prophecy,"  i.  490. 

Carey,  Matthew,  reprints  "The  Im- 
partial Chronicle,"  ii.  18  note. 

Carey,  William.  See  Hutton,  Laur- 
ence. 

Carleton,  Sir  Guy,  ii.  61,  233,  264  ; 
treatment  of  prisoners  in  "  The 
Death  of  General  Montgomery,"  ii. 
222-224. 

Carmontelle,  ii.  361. 

Carpenter,  Stephen  Cullen,  criticises 
Declaration  of  Independence,  i. 
504. 

Carver,  Jonathan,  i.  10  ;  in  1763,  i. 
141-142  ;  traits,  i.  143  ;  plan  for 
tour  of  discovery,  i.  142-143 ; 
its  character,  i.  143 ;  expedition 
into  the  Northwest,  5.  143-147 ; 
descriptions  of  Indians  and  their 
lands,  i.  144-145  ;  failure,  i.  146  ; 
goes  to  England  for  aid,  i.  146- 
147  ;  why  government  refuses  it, 
i.  147;  struggle  in  England,  i. 
147-148  ;  publishes  his  "  Travels," 
i.  148  ;  other  publications,  i.  148  ; 
stain  upon  character  of,  i.  note  148- 
149  I  dies  in  poverty,  i.  148-149  ; 
remembrance  of,  i.  149  ;  charm  and 
fame  of  his  "  Travels,"  i.  140-150 

Case,  Rev.  Wheeler,  verse  criticised', 
ii.  181  note. 

"  Caspipina's  Letters."  See  Duche, 
Rev.  Jacob. 

"Catechism    Relative  to  the  English 

r  Due^-"     See  Franklin-  Benjamin. 
Catholic  Church,   Roman,  attack  on. 


by  Mayhew,  i.  133-134  ;  Tory  pre- 
diction of  Papal  despotism  in  Amer- 
ica, ii.  74-77- 

"  Cato."     See  Smith,  William. 

"  Causes  of  American  Discontents." 
See  Franklin,  Benjamin. 

Chalmers,  George,  "Plain  Truth" 
erroneously  attributed  to,  i.  note 
479-480. 

Chandler,  Dr.  T.  B.,  Loyalist  clergy- 
man, note  on  "  The  Republican 
Dissected,"  i.  348  note;  "  West- 
chester  Farmer  "  pamphlets  errone- 
ously attributed  to,  i.  350;  flight  and 
concealment,  i.  353  ;  as  a  writer,  i. 
392  ;  satirized  by  Trumbull,  i.  436, 

'   439- 

Channing,  Henry,  ii.  333. 

Channing,  William  Ellery,  opinion  of 
-  Stiles,  ii.  337  ;  on  Woolman's 
"  Journal,"  ii.  340;  on  Woolman's 
style,  ii.  346. 

Charles  I.,  king  of  England,  i.  43,  92, 
98,  123,  126,  370,  514;  ii.  333,  398; 
Mayhew  ridicules  his  saintship  and 
martyrdom,  I.  136-137. 

Charles  II.,  king  of  England,  i.  31,  34, 
43,  64  note,  325. 

Charleston,  treatment  of  tea  at,  i.  287 
and  note. 

Chase,  Samuel,  satirized  by  Odell,  ii. 
118,  119. 

Chatham,  Earl  of  (William  Pitt),  i. 
117,  231,  256,  309,  313,  482,  513  ; 
influence  of  Dulany's  "Considera- 
tions" upon,  i.  no— in,  note  ni- 
113  ;  statues  voted  to,  i.  223-224  ; 
Shelburne  to,  on  Declaratory  Act, 
i.  226  ;  on  Stamp  Act,  i.  232  ;  trib- 
ute to  papers  of  first  Congress,  i. 
33O-33I  ;  Franklin  to,  on  Indepen- 
dence (1774),  i.  460 ;  on  American 
resistance,  i.  515  ;  as  Lord  Wisdom 
in  "  The  Fall  of  British  Tyranny," 
ii.  200-203. 

Chauncey,  Charles,  president  of  Har- 
vard College,  ii.  331. 

Chauncy,  Charles,  Boston  divine,  his 
services  to  the  Revolution,  ii.  279- 
281  ;  enjoyment  of  theological  con- 
troversy, ii.  281-282. 

Cheetham,  James,  "Life  of  Paine," 
criticised,  i.  455  note  ;  cited  in 
notes,  i.  458,  466  ;  ii.  36. 

Chessman,  in  "  The  Death  of  General 
Montgomery,"  ii.  220,  222. 

Chester,  Joseph  Lemuel,  contribu- 
tions on  Boucher,  i.  328  note. 


INDEX. 


493 


Chew,  Benjamin,  legal  preceptor  of 
Hopkinson,  i.  165. 

Choate.  Rufus,  on  the  Pilgrim  Fathers, 
i.  135  note  ;  opinion  of  the  Declar- 
ation of  Independence,  i.  498. 

Choiseul,  i.  232. 

Church,  Benjamin,  historian,  ii.  398. 

Church,  Dr.  Benjamin,  life  and 
character,  i.  185  ;  works,  i.  185- 
186. 

Church  of  England,  introduction  of 
bishops,  attacked,  i.  133-135  ;  ii. 
280  ;  defended,  i.  326-^7 ;  low 
churchman  as  defined  bj^Boucher, 
i.  326  ;  high  churchman  as  defined 
by  Lee,  i.  396. 

Churchill.  Charles,  English  poet,  i, 
120  note  ;  career  and  influence,  i. 
23-25  ;  "  Oppression  "  bears  note 
of,  115-116  ;  master  of  Freneau,  i. 
415  ;  of  Trumbull,  i.  445-446  ;  of 
Odell,  ii.  107. 

"  Churchman  (The),"  cited,  ii.  416 
note. 

Cicero.  Marcus  Tullius,  i.  191,  216, 
237  ;  a  source  of  Mayhew's  political 
ideas,  i.  132. 

Clap,  Thomas,  president  of  Yale  Col- 
lege, Stiles  to,  on  method  of  dealing 
with  deism,  ii.  336. 

Clark,  George  Rogers,  "  Campaign  in 
the  Illinois,"  ii.  418. 

Clark,  Jonas,  "  Brief  Narrative,"  ii. 
418. 

Clark,  William.  See  Lewis,  Meri- 
wether. 

Clarke,  John,  "  Discourse,"  cited,  ii. 
280  note  ;  opinion  of  Samuel  Coop- 
er, ii.  303. 

Cleaveland,  Rev.  John,  Mayhew's  let- 
ter to,  i.  127,  128  note. 

Clergy,  traditional  leadership,  ii.  278; 
power,  ii.  278  ;  opportunities  for 
political  discourses,  ii.  279. 

Clinton,  George,  ii.  20,  180  note. 

Clinton,  Sir  Henry,  i.  256  ;  ii.  61,  89, 
128,  154,  263,  264  ;  makes  Seabury 
a  chaplain,  i.  354  ;  satire  on,  ii.  91- 
92  ;  epigram  on  his  bargain  with 
Arnold,  ii.  164-165  ;  in  "  The  Fall 
of  British  Tyranny,"  ii.  205-206  ; 
in  "The  Battle  of  Bunker's  Hill," 
ii.  217-218. 

Cliveland,  General,  ii.  292. 

Clymer,  George,  i.  455. 

Coale,  Dr.,  Hopkinson  to,  i.  167. 

Cochin,  Charles  Nicolas,  ii.  361. 

Coit,  Thomas  \V.,  cited,  ii.  416  note. 


Coke,  Sir  Edward,  i.  427,  507 ;  ii.  12, 
29. 

Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  Creve- 
cceur  s  influence  on,  ii,  358. 

"  Collections  of  the  Rhode  Island 
Historical  Society,"  cited,  ii.  385 
note. 

i  "Collections  of  the  South  Carolina 
Historical  Society,"  cited,  ii.  242 
note,  245  note. 

Collins,  Isaac,  conducts  "  The  New 
Jersey  Gazette,"  ii.  18. 

"  Columbia."  See  Dwight,  Timothy. 

Committees,  election  and  duties  of,  i. 
334 :  government  by,  denounced, 
i.  324-325,  340-34L  347,  364,  378- 
379  I  suggested  by  Samuel  Adams, 
ii.  7. 

"Common  Sense."  See  Paine, 
Thomas. 

"  Concise    Historical    View."      See 

Adams,  Amos. 

i  "  Congo,"  Tory  nickname  for  Con- 
gress, ii.  87,  89  note. 

"  Congratulation,  (The)."  See  Odell, 
Jonathan. 

"Congress  (The),"  Tory  ballad,  ii. 
59-61. 

Congress,  first  Continental,  i.  44,  250; 
humorous  history  of  events  leading 
up  to,  i.  259-266,  281-290  ;  sum- 
mons for,  i.  270-271  ;  suggestions 
to,  respecting  its  policy,  i.  271- 
278  ;  assembles,  i.  279 ;  marks 
a  race-crisis,  i.  295  ;  causes  crys- 
tallization of  political  ideas,  i. 
295  ;  parties  in,  i.  314  ;  papers  of, 
i.  15-16,  329-330;  tributes  to,  i. 
330-331  ;  method  of  opposition 
adopted  by,  i.  331-334  ;  "The  As- 
sociation," i.  332-334  ;  measures  of, 
attacked  by  a  "  Westchester  Farm- 
er," i.  334—348  ;  by  "  Massachu- 
settensis,"  i.  356,  359-367  ;  by  Gal- 
loway, i.  374-379  ;  by  Cooper,  i. 
394-395  ;  defended  by  Hamilton, 
i.  384-390 ;  by  John  Adams,  i. 
391-392  ;  by  Charles  Lee,  i.  395- 
400  ;  professes  loyalty  to  king,  i. 
459-460 ;  suggested  by  Samuel 
Adams,  ii.  7-8. 

Congress,  second  Continental,  do  not 
desire  Independence  (1775),  '•  4°°- 
461  ;  appoints  committee  to  draft 
Declaration  of  Independence,  i. 
497-498  ;  Tory  opinion  of,  ii.  57, 
59-61  ;  its  fiscal  policy  derided  by 
Loyalists,  ii.  61-65  ;  song  supposed 


494 


IXDEX. 


to  be  sung  by,  ii.  68-69  ;  its  agility 
in  flight,  ii.  89  ;  satirized  by  Stans-  j 
bory,  ii.  87  ;  by  Odell,  ii.  112-117  ;   j 
appoints  a  Fast  Day.  ii.  284  ;  ob-  j 
serves  it,  ii.  286-287  ;  "  first  prayer  | 
re,"  ii.  288-289 ;  appoints  a  chap- 
lain, ii.  291  ;  designates  a  day   of 
thanksgiving,  ii.  310. 

"Congress  Canvassed  (The)."  See 
Seabnry,  Samuel. 

"  Connecticut  Gazette,"  on  Trum- 
bull's  entrance  examination  at  Yale, 
i.  191. 

"  Connecticut  Journal,"  cited,  i.  210 
note,  430  note ;  Tram  bull's  essays 
in.  i.  201,  207  note,  214. 

"  Considerations  on  Behalf  of  the 
Colonies."  See  Otis,  James. 

"  Considerations  on  the  Nature  and 
Extent  of  the  Legislative  Authority 
of  the  British  Parliament."  See 
Wilson,  James. 

"  Considerations  on  the  Propriety  of 
Imposing  Taxes."  See  Dulany, 
Daniel. 

''Considerations  upon  the  Rights  of 
the  Colonists,"  pamphlet  advocating 
Nullification,  i.  115. 

Conway,  Flenry,  friend  of  American 
colonies,  i.  224,  312-313,  482. 

Conway,  Moncure  Daniel,  on  Bouch- 
er's relations  with  Washington,  i. 
328  note;  ascribes  "The  Ameri- 
can Patriot's  Prayer "  to  Paine,  ii. 
note  178-179;  "Life  of  Paine." 
criticised,  i.  453  note,  469  note  ; 
cited  in  notes,  i.  454,  455,  ii.  36, 
38,  40,  41.  63. 

Conway,  Thomas,  major-general,  i. 
400  note. 

Cooke.  John  Esten,  ii.  172  note. 

Coombe,  Thomas,  sermon  of  first  na- 
tional Fast  Day,  ii.  285-286  ;  other 
works,  ii.  note  285-286. 

Cooper.  Myles,  president  of  King's 
College,  person  and  career,  i.  392- 
394  ;  as  a  Loyalist  becomes  odious, 
i.  392-393  :  >s  assailed  by  a  mob.  i. 
393  :  conceals  himself,  i.  353  ; 
escapes  to  England,  i.  393  ;  rewards 
there,  i.  393  ;  »  Westchester  Farm- 
er "  pamphlets  erroneously  attrib- 
uted to.  i.  350  ;  as  a  writer,  i.  394  ; 
"  American  Querist."  i.  394  ; 
Friendly  Address."  i.  394—395  ; 
replies  to,  i.  395-400 ;  satirized  by 
Trumbuil,  i.  436.  439. 

Cooper,    Samnel,   ii.    189;   thrust   at 


taxation,  i.  100  note  ;  anticipates 
title  of  Paine's  pamphlet,  "  The 
Crisis,"  ii.  38  note ;  satirized  by 
Odell,  ii.  109,  no  ;  history  and 
character,  ii.  302-303  ;  political  es- 
says, ii.  303—304  ;  published  dis- 
courses, ii.  304-306. 

Cornwallis.  Lord,  i.  299,  441,  ii.  40, 
78,  89,  153,  271,  308  ;  effect  of  his 
surrender  on  Loyalists,  ii.  93-94, 
129;  ridiculed,  ii.  154,  156,  182; 
exchanged  for  Laurens,  ii.  244  ; 
Freneau's  poems  on,  ii.  263  :  re- 
turns to  England,  ii.  292 ;  sermon 
on  the  capture  of,  ii.  306-307. 

Correspondence  of  the  Revolution. 
See  American  literature. 

"  Correspondent  (The)."  See  Trum- 
buil, John. 

Cotton,  Colonel,  ii.  2*4. 

Cotton,  John,  ii.  331. 

Courtney,  W.  P.,  his  account  of 
Boucher,  i.  328  note. 

Cowper,  William,  English  poet,  opin- 
ion of  Churchill,  i.  24-25  ;  quoted, 
i.  253  ;  fellow-student  of  Dickinson, 
ii.  22  ;  participates  in  the  reforma- 
tion of  English  verse,  ii.  274. 

Cox,  Colonel,  house  searched  for 
Tories,  ii.  104. 

Cranford,  David,  friend  of  Boucher, 
i.  319. 

Creasy,  Sir  Edward,  estimate  of  pam- 
phlets on  Stamp  Act,  i.  22  ;  of 
Jenyns's  "Objections,"  i.  85. 

Crevecoeur,  J.  Hector  St.  John  de, 
personal  history,  ii.  347-348  ;  "  Let- 
ters from  an  American  Farmer,"  ii. 
347  ;  traits,  ii.  348  ;  description  of 
the  colonies,  ii.  349 ;  range  of  top- 
ics, ii.  349  ;  definition  of  an  Ameri- 
can, ii.  349—350 ;  contributions  to 
natural  history,  ii.  35 1  ;  the  note  of 
peace  in  his  book,  ii.  351—352  ;  on 
American  rural  life,  ii.  352-354  ; 
the  note  of  pain  in  his  book,  ii.  354  ; 
on  slavery,  ii.  354  ;  picture  of  the 
caged  negro,  ii.  354-356  ;  the  In- 
dian wrong  and  terror,  ii.  356  ; 
appalled  by  Revolutionary  wrangles 
and  violence,  ii.  356-357  ;  des- 
criptions fascinate  and  mislead 
Europeans,  ii.  357-358  ;  influence, 

-Hi.  358. 

"  Crisis  (The)."    See  Paine,  Thomas. 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  i.  219,  325.  444,  ii. 
60,  124. 

Cudworth,  Ralph,  ii.  331. 


1XDEX. 


495 


"Cup  infused  with  bane,"  verses  on 
tea,  i.  255. 

Curtis,  George  Ticknor,  on  Hamilton's 
essays,  i.  385. 

Curwen,  Samuel,  "Journal  and  Let- 
ters," cited,  i.  367  note,  368  note. 

Gushing,  Thomas,  Trumbull  resides 
with,  i.  427 ;  moves  for  opening 
prayers  in  Congress,  ii.  288  ;  Hutch- 
inson's  description  of,  ii.  407-408. 

Gushing,  William,  "Anonyms,"  criti- 
cised, ii.  note  303-304. 

Daggett,  Napthali,  ii.  333. 

Dana,  Dr.  James,  Trumbull's  bur- 
lesque alluding  to,  i.  205  and  note. 

Dancing,  sermon  against,  ii.  295-296. 

Dapperwit,  Jack,  i.  194. 

Dartmouth,  Earl  of.  ii.  213  ;  Zubly's 
address  to,  i.  483-485  ;  Hutchinson 
to,  on  Samuel  Adams,  ii.  7 ;  in 
"  The  Fall  of  British  Tyranny,"  ii. 
200. 

"Date  Obolum  Belisario."  See 
Hopkinson,  Francis. 

Davenport,  John,  ii.  331. 

Davies,  Thomas,  ii.  347  note. 

Deane,  Charles,  i.  258  note ;  edits 
"  Letters  of  Phillis  Wheatly,"  i. 
187  note  ;  opinion  of  Hutchinson, 
ii.  395  ;  cited  on  Hutchinson's  pas- 
sion for  history,  ii.  398  ;  on  publica- 
tion of  Hutchinson's  third  volume, 
ii.  405  note. 

Deane,  Silas,  i.  244  note  ;  satirized, 
ii.  66,  112  ;  letters  distrusting  the 
wisdom  of  the  French  alliance,  ii. 

77-7«. 

"  Death  of  General  Montgomery." 
See  Brackenridge.  H.  H. 

Declaration  of  Independence,  its 
draughtsman,  i.  497-498  ;  two  views 
respecting  its  intellectual  worth,  i. 
498-499  ;  its  authority  acquired  in 
face  of  abundant  criticism,  i.  499  ; 
criticised  by  Hutchinson,  i.  499— 
500  ;  by  John  Lind,  i.  500  ;  by  Earl 
Russell,  i.  501  ;  by  Goldwin  Smith, 
i.  502-503  ;  by  Calhoun,  i.  503  ;  by 
Richard  Henry  Lee,  i.  504  ;  by 
Stephen  Cullen  Carpenter,  i.  504  ; 
by  Charles  Campbell,  i.  504  ;  by 
Littell,  i.  504  ;  by  Paul  Leicester 
Ford,  i.  504  ;  by  John  Adams,  i. 
501-502,  504-505  ;  its  alleged  lack 
of  originality,  i.  505  ;  in  what  sense 
true,  i.  505-508  ;  in  what  sense  not 
true,  i.  508-509  ;  how  to  be  judged. 


i.  509-510;  a  party  manifested  in  a 
bitter  race  quarrel,  i.  509-510  ;  con- 
tains two  principal  accusations,  i. 
510;  the  charge  of  an  intended 
tyranny,  i.  510-512  ;  the  charge 
against  George  III.  as  being  chiefly 
responsible  for  this  intended  tyr- 
anny, i.  512-515  ;  its  immediate 
success,  i.  5i5-5'6;  its  subsequent 
influence,  especially  on  the  over- 
throw of  slavery,  i.  516-517;  upon 
the  political  and  ethical  ideals  of 
mankind,  i.  517-519;  estimate  of 
its  literary  character,  i.  519-521. 

Declaratory  Act,  i.  226,  285  note ; 
disturbs  American  political  confi- 
dence, i.  226-227  ;  attacked,  i.  483- 
485- 

"  Defence  of  the  Letter  from  a  Gen- 
tleman at  Halifax."  See  Howard, 
Martin. 

De  Kalb,  Baron  Johann,  view  of 
Anglo  -  American  controversy,  i. 
232-233. 

De  Lancey,  Edward  F.,  his  sketch  of 
Freneau,  ii.  275  note. 

Delaplaine,  Joseph,  sketch  of  Hopkin- 
son, i.  164  note. 

Demogeot,  J.  on  literature,  i.  28. 

Demosthenes,  a  source  of  Mayhew's 
political  ideas,  i.  132. 

"  Description  of  East  Florida."  See 
Stork,  William. 

Despencer,  Lord  le,  Franklin's  visit 
at  house  of,  ii.  379-380. 

D'Estaing,  Count,  his  part  in  the  cam- 
paign of  1779,  "•  69-7°  ;  Tory  bal- 
lad on  his  attack  on  Savannah,  ii. 
70-72. 

"Detail  and  Conduct  of  the  Ameri- 
can War,"  cited,  i.  402  note. 

Dexter,  Franklin  Bowditch,  i.  igr 
note ;  on  Stiles's  Papers,  ii.  333 
note  ;  "Yale  Biographies,"  ii.  412 
note. 

Dexter,  Henry  M.,  ii.  333  note. 

"  Dialogue  between  Britain,  France, 
Spain,  Holland,  Saxony,  and  Ainer- 
»[/  ica.  See  Franklin,  Benjamin. 
^Dickinson,  John,  i.  371  note.  508  ; 
as  a  letter-writer,  i.  13  ,  "  Late 
Regulations  respecting  the  Briti>h 
Colonies,"  i.  H4-il5_i^^Lettcrs 
from  a  Farmer,"  i.'/^f-23^  their 
significance,  i.  234  ;  purpose  and 
method,  i.  234-236 ;  success  and 
celebrity,  i.  236-237  ;  a>-rrt-  Ameri- 
can rights  and  advocates  peaceable 


496 


INDEX. 


Dickinson,  John  (Continued). 
resistance,  i.  235-236  ;  his  renown, 
i.  237-238 ;  popularity,  i.  238-239  ; 
"Song  of  American  Freedom"  or 
"  Liberty  Song,"  i.  239~24-i  \  its 
occasion,  i.  239  ;  character  and  suc- 
cess, i.  239-240  ;  rank,  i.  273  note  ; 
papers  of  Congress  written  by,  i. 
330  note,  497  note  ;  ridicules  Gallo- 
way's "  Speech,"  i.  371  ;  position  on 
Independence,  i.  459,  483  ;  educa- 
tion, ii.  21-22  ;  public  career,  ii.  22- 
24  ;  odium  incurred  by  his  opposi- 
tion to  Independence,  ii.  22-23 ; 
military  services,  ii.  22-23  ;  driven 
into  retirement,  ii.  23  ;  returns 
to  the  public  service,  ii.  23-24 ; 
the  "  Penman  of  the  American 
Revolution,"  ii.  24;  as  a  writer  of 
state  paper£,-iir^4-25  ;  of  political 
essays,  ii<^25~27 ;  editions  of  his 
writings,  iT7~TT7  note  ;  his  conduct 
consistent  with  his  principles,  ii. 
27-28  ,  a  conservative,  ii.  28  ;  be- 
lieves in  a  peaceful  settlement  of 
difficulties,  ii.  28-31  ;  method  in 
controversy,  ii.  28-29  ;  uses  English 
principles  to  fight  English  aggres- 
sion, ii.  29;  claims  Americans  are 
the  champions  of  English  liberty, 
ii.  29  ;  denies  a  desire  for  Inde- 
pendence, ii.  29-30  ;  seeks  to  avert 
war,  ii.  30-31  ;  influence  as  writer 
and  politician  blended,  ii.  ,31-32 .; 
succeeds  Otis  and  is  succeeded  "by 
Paine,  ii.  32  ;  decline  of  his  influ- 
ence, ii.  32  ,  a  constitutional  and 
not  a  revolutionary  leader,  ii.  32- 
33  ;  regarded  with  contempt,  ii. 
33-34  I  injustice  done  to,  ii.  34  ;  his 
"  Liberty  Song"  criticised,  ii.  169. 

Dickinson,  Jonathan,  president  of 
College  of  New  Jersey,  ii.  99  note. 

Dickinson,  Wharton,  opinion  of  John 
Dickinson,  ii.  24. 

"  Dictionary  of  National  Biography," 
cited,  i.  149  note  ;  criticised,  ii.  427 
note. 

Dilly,  Charles,  ii.  427  note. 

Dinsmore,  Robert,  verses  criticised, 
ii.  181  note. 

41  Discourse  concerning  Unlimited 
Submission."  See  Mayhew,  Jona- 
than. 

"  Discourses  on  Various  Subjects  " 
See  Duche,  Rev.  Jacob. 

*'  Disenchantment."  See  Barton 
Andrew. 


Dixwell,  John,  regicide,  ii.  334. 

Doddridge,  Philip,  ii.  331. 

Dodge,  John.  "  Narrative  of  the  Cap- 
ture and  Treatment  of,  by  the  Eng- 
lish at  Detroit,"  ii.  238. 

Donop,  Count,  Hessian  colonel,  ii. 
103. 

Drake,  Sir  Francis,  i.  142,  ii.  88. 

Drake,  Francis  Samuel,  "  Dictionary 
of  American  Biography,"  cited,  i. 
149  note  ;  criticised,  245  note. 

Dramatic  literature  of  the  Revolution, 
beginnings,  ii.  188,  210  ;  frankness 
and  realism,  ii.  188,  210 ;  a  tragedy, 
ii.  188-192 ;  two  operas,  ii.  192, 
227  ;  a  colloquy,  ii.  193  ;  two  politi- 
cal satires  in  dramatic  form,  ii.  193- 
198  ;  a  Chronicle  Play,  ii.  198-207  ; 
farces,  ii.  207-209,  225-227  ;  Brack- 
enridge's  dramatic  poems,  ii.  210- 
224  ;  Sewall's  "  Epilogue,"  ii.  225. 

Drayton,  John,  "  Memoirs  of  the 
American  Revolution,"  cited,  i.  491 
note,  492  note  ;  uses  work  of  his 
father  as  a  basis  for  his  "  Memoirs," 
ii.  419. 

Drayton,  William  Henry,  career,  i. 
491-492  ;  influence,  i.  491 ;  charac- 
ter as  a  political  thinker  and  essay- 
ist, i.  491  ;  writings,  i.  491-492  ; 
issues  a  declaration  of  independence, 
i.  492-493  ;  alleged  appropriations 
from,  by  Jefferson,  i.  504  ;  a  Loyal- 
ist on,  ii.  66  ;  as  an  historian  of  the 
Revolution,  ii.  419 ;  manuscripts 
destroyed,  ii.  419  ;  two  volumes  on 
the  war  in  the  southern  colonies,  ii. 
419. 

"  Dream  of  the  Branding  of  Horses 
and  Asses,"  character  and  outline 
of,  i.  61-63. 

Dryden,  John,  i.  37,  196  ;  as  a  writer 
of  pamphlets,  i.  19-20 ;  founder  of 
modern  political  satire,  i.  22  ;  influ- 
ence on  American  writers,  i.  23, 
415,  447,  ".  107. 

Duane,  James,  supports  Galloway's 
"Plan,"  i.  373;  Hamilton  to,  on 
articles  of  confederation,  i.  391  ;  a 
Loyalist  on,  ii.  66. 

Dubourg,  Jean  Barbeu,  translates  the 
"  Farmer's  Letters,"  i.  237. 

Duche,  Rev.  Jacob,  history  and  char- 
acter, ii.  287-288  ;  Fast- Day  sermon 
before  Congress,  ii.  286-287  ;  first 
prayer  in  Congress,  ii.  288-289  ; 
eclat  of  his  Revolutionary  services, 
ii.  289-291  ;  chaplain  of  Congress, 


INDEX. 


497 


ii.  2<ji  ;  goes  over  to  British,  ii.  291- 

292  ;    advises  Washington   to   stop 
the  war,  ii.  292  ;  retreat  to  England, 
ii.  292  ;  subsequent  career,  ii.  292- 

293  ;  "  Discourses  on  Various  Sub- 
jects,", ii.   293  ;  "Caspipina's  Let- 
ters,'' ii.  293-294. 

Dudley,  Joseph,  governor  of  Massa- 
chusetts, Hutchinson's  portrait  of, 
ii.  409-411. 

Dulfield,  George,  career,  ii.  312  ; 
prominence,  ii.  312-313  ;  extolled 
by  John  Adams,  ii.  313  ;  as  chap- 
lain, ii.  313-314  ;  satirized  by  Odell, 
ii.  314-315  I  sermon  on  the  advent 
of  peace,  ii.  315-316. 

Du  Lljalde,  ii.  331. 

Dulany^Daniel,  personal  history,  i. 
1 02  ;  high  standing  as  a  lawyer,  i. 
102  ;  his  "Considerations,"  fTToi- 
iii  ;  publication  and  authorship,  i. 
loi— 102  ;  argument  against  doc- 
trjpe-tjfl  virtual  representation,  i. 
(io3-io6J/acknowledges  authority  of 
parliament,  i.  106-107  ;  recommends 
legal  opposition,  i.  108-110;  adheres 
to  this  policy,  i.  i  TO  ;  persecuted  as 
a  Tory,  i.  no  ;  influence,  especially 
upon  Pitt,  i.  ^'TO-fii,  note  111-113; 
abjures  independence,  i.  459. 

Dumas,  C.  G.  F.,  translates  "  Histori- 
cal Account  of  Bouquet's  Expedi- 
tion," i.  152  ;  John  Adams  to,  on 
George  III.,  i.  502  note. 

Dunlap,  John,  ii.  36  ;  prints  and  sells 
"  A  Pretty  Story,"  i.  279. 

Dunmore,  Lord,  Governor  of  Virginia, 
ii.  263  ,  satirized  by  Freneau,  i.  425  ; 
as  Lord  Kidnapper  in  "  The  Fall  of 
British  Tyranny,"  ii.  199-200,  204. 

Duyckinck,  E.  A.,  "Introductory 
Memoir,"  cited  in  notes,  ii.  250, 
257,  275. 

Duyckinck,  E.  A.  and  G.  L.,  "Cy- 
clopaedia of  American  Literature," 
cited  in  notes,  i.  179,  229,  ii.  275  ; 
edition  by  M.  L.  Simons,  cited,  i. 
177  note. 

Dwight,  Timothy,  as  student  at  Yale, 
i.  193  ;  as  tutor,  i.  210 ;  as  a  Revo- 
lutionary song-writer,  ii.  173  ;  "Co- 
lumbia," ii.  173-174. 

Dyce,  Alexander,  i.  179. 

Edgeworth,  Maria,  quotes  Freneau,  i. 

179  note. 
"  Edinburgh  Advertiser,"  on  papers  of 

first  Congress,  i.  331. 
32 


"  Edinburgh  Review,"  cited  in  notes, 
i.  24,  25,  ii.  368. 

Education,  collegiate,  satirized  by 
Trumbull,  i.  215-221. 

Edwards,  David,  supposed  author  of 
epigram  on  Burgoyne,  ii.  163  note. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  Dana's  answer  to, 
i.  205  note. 

Edwards,  Morgan,  i.  10  ;  "  Materials 
towards  a  History  of  the  American 
Baptists,"  ii.  387-391  ;  intelligence 
and  validity  of  his  method,  ii.  388  ; 
scope  of  his  work,  ii.  388  ;  examples 
of  its  quality,  ii.  389-391. 

Eliot,  Rev.  Andrew,  his  copy  of 
"Elegy  on  Mayhew,"  i.  186  note; 
recovers  manuscript  of  Hutchinson's 
"  History,"  ii.  401. 

Eliot,  John,  opinion  of  Mayhew,  i. 
123;  "Biographical  Dictionary" 
cited,  i.  52  note  ;  account  of  Cooper, 
ii.  303  note  ;  portrait  of  Amos 
Adams,  ii.  385  note. 

Elizabeth,  Queen  of  England,  ii.  84. 

Ellis,  George  E.,  on  Harvard  gradu- 
ates among  banished  Tories,  i.  303. 

Elmer,  Jonathan,  on  effect  of  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  i.  516. 

Emery,  S.  H.,  account  of  Thomas 
Andros,  ii.  242  note. 

Emmons,  Nathaniel,  with  John  Trum- 
bull during  examination,  i.  190. 

"  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,"  on  laws 
against  manufactures,  i.  284  note. 

England,  inaugurates  new  colonial 
policy  (1763-4),  i.  44-47  ',  this  policy 
arraigned  by  Otis,  i.  47-51  ;  by 
Thacher,  i.  53-56  ;  attitude  of 
American  merchants  toward,  i.  56- 
59  ;  notice  of  Stamp  Act  given,  i. 
46-47;  this  proposed  act  attacked  in 
the  "  Dream,"  i.  61-63  ;  by  Hop- 
kins, i.  65-69  ;  defended  by  How- 
ard, i.  71-74  ;  spirit  of  liberty  in,  i. 
98  ;  policy  of,  satirized,  i.  116-119  I 
colonies  owe  allegiance  to  crown 
only,  i.  229-231,  273,  386,  392  ; 
this  heresy  denounced,  i.  343  ;  out- 
line of  colonial  policy  (1763-75),  i. 
246-251  ;  grotesque  prominence 
given  to  tea,  i.  248-253  ;  humorous 
version  of  tea-troubles,  i.  259-266  ; 
change  in  process  of  colonial  dis- 
cipline (1774),  i.  269  ;  colonists  to 
be  brought  to,  for  trial,  i.  243,  269, 
288  ;  transfer  of  seat  of  empire  to 
America  predicted,  i.  275-276  ;  al- 
legorical history  of  relations  with 


498 


J.VDEX. 


England  (Continued). 
America,  i.  281-290  ;  triumph  of, 
predicted,  i.  366-367,  439  ;  nature 
of  dispute  with  colonies,  i.  375  ; 
outbreak  of  war  with  colonies,  i. 
402 ;  contempt  for  Americans,  i. 
408-409 ;  army  of,  derided ,  i.  396- 
399,409-413,420-421;  punishment 
for  rebellion  depicted,  i.  417  ;  treat- 
ment of  the  colonies,  i.  423,  425  ; 
ruin  of,  predicted,  i.  429  ;  in  its 
dotage  i.  433~434  \  Paine  on  gov- 
ernment of,  i.  463-464 ;  intended 
tyranny  over  colonists,  i.  510-515  ; 
humiliation  of,  on  Burgoyne's  fail- 
ure, ii.  145-146  ;  treatment  of  pris- 
oners, ii.  236-242,  244-245,  259- 
262  ;  national  debt,  ii.  267  note  ;  in 
"  The  Political  Balance,"  ii.  264- 
270  ;  emblematic  picture  of  Bri- 
tannia dismembered,  ii.  376. 

Englishman,  Hopkinson's  facetious 
description  of,  ii.  134-135  ;  limited 
political  intelligence  of,  ii.  137-139. 

"  Enquiry  into  the  Rights  of  the  Brit- 
ish Colonies. "  See  Bland,  Richard. 

"  Epilogue  (The),"  Tory  broadside  on 
campaign  of  1778,  ii.  68-69. 

"  Epilogue  to  Addison's  Tragedy  of 
Cato."  See  Sewall,  J.  M. 

Episcopal  Church.  See  Church  of 
England. 

Erskine,  John,  ii.  320. 

"  Essay  on  the  Trade  of  the  Northern 
Colonies,"  pamphlet  on  British  co- 
lonial policy,  publication  and  char- 
acter of,  i.  56-57. 

1 '  Essay  on  the  Use  and  Advantages  of 
the  Fine  Arts."  See  Trumbull, 
John. 

Eusebius,,  ii.  331. 

Evans,  Israel,  preaches  against  apathy 
and  immorality,  ii.  296-297. 

Evans,  Nathaniel,  "  Poems  on  Sev- 
eral Occasions,  "i.  157-160;  outline 
of  life  and  character,  i.  158;  "To 
Melancholy,"  i.  158  ;  "  An  Ode, 
Attempted  in  the  Manner  of  Hor- 
ace," i.  159-160;  Elizabeth  Fer- 
gusson's  "  Parody  "  addressed  to  i. 
161-162. 

"  Evening  Post"  of  Boston,  cited,  ii. 

399  note,  401  note. 
'  Examination  (The)."     See  Frank- 
lin, Benjamin. 

"  Fall  of  British  Tyranny ;  or  Ameri- 
can Liberty  Triumphant,"  ii.  198- 


207  ;  a  Chronicle  Play,  ii.  198-199  ; 
its  authorship,  ii.  199  note  ;  a  Whig 
satire,  ii.  199—200  ;  its  chief  person- 
ages, ii.  200  ;  scenes  in  the  play,  ii. 
201—207  ;  satire  on  British  generals, 
ii.  204-206  ;  the  epilogue,  ii.  207. 

"Familiar  Epistle  (A),  Tory  poem, 
ii.  55-56. 

Fanning,  Edmund,  ii.  173  note. 

"Farmer  Refuted  (The)."  See 
Hamilton,  Alexander, 

"  Farmer's  Letters."  See  Dickinson, 
John. 

Fast  Day,  first  national,  ii.  284  ;  ser- 
mons on,  ii.  284-287  ;  how  observed 
by  Congress,  ii.  286-287. 

"  Fate  of  John  Burgoyne  (The)," 
Revolutionary  ballad,  ii.  181. 

Fellows,  Captain,  ii.  236. 

Feltman,  Lieutenant  William,  his 
"  Journal,"  ii.  418. 

Fe'nelon,  i.  321. 

Fenwick,  George,  ii.  412. 

Ferguson,  Major  Patrick,  in  the  "  Bat- 
tle of  King's  Mountain,"  ii.  182. 

Fergusson,  Elizabeth,  writings,  i.  160- 
162  ;  "A  Postscript,"  i.  161  ;  "A 
Parody,"  i.  161-162. 

"Feu  de  Joie  (The)."  See  Odell. 
Jonathan. 

"  Few  Political  Reflections  (A),"  au- 
thorship of  this  pamphlet,  i.  274 
note  ;  demands  legal  opposition,  i. 
274-275  ;  believes  non-importation 
the  true  remedy,  i.  275  ;  anticipates 
arguments  of  Paine,  i.  275-276. 

Fields,  James  T.  and  Edwin  P.  Whip- 
pie,  their  "  Family  Library  of  Brit- 
ish Poetry,"  cited,  i.  227  note. 

Finch,  Francis  Miles,  his  lyric  inspired 
by  the  story  of  Hale,  ii.  184  note. 

"  First  Book  of  the  American  Chroni- 
cles of  the  Times,"  humorous  ver- 
sion of  troubles  resulting  in  Ameri- 
can union,  i.  257-266  ;  character,  i. 
257-259  I  outline,  i.  259-266. 

Fisher,  J.  Francis,  his  note  on  Gallo- 
way, i.  370  note. 

Fiske,  Helen.  See  Jackson,  Helen 
Hunt. 

Fiske,  John,  on  Samuel  Adams's  posi- 
tion in  American  Revolution,  ii.  8. 

Fiske,  Nathan,  i.  10  ;  history  and 
character,  ii.  307  note  ;  sermon  on 
the  capture  of  Cornwallis,  ii.  306- 
307  ;  "  Historical  Discourse."  ii. 
385-3S6. 

Fiske,  Nathan  Welby,  ii.  307  note. 


INDEX. 


499 


Fitch,  Thomas,  Governor  of  Connecti- 
cut, criticizes  policy  of  English  gov- 
ernment, i.  64  note. 

Flucker,  Thomas,  in  Mercy  Warren's 
"  Group,"  ii.  195-197. 

Foot,  J.  I.,  "  Historical  Discourse," 
cited,  ii.  307  note. 

Force,  Peter,  "  American  Archives," 
cited  in  notes,  i.  373,  461,  516,  ii. 
99,  103. 

Ford,  Paul  Leicester,  reprints  Carver's 
"  History  of  Fort  Niagara,"  i.  149 
note  ;  his  sketch  of  Edward  Ban- 
croft, i.  244  note  ;  on  source  of 
Declaration  of  Independence,  i. 
504  ;  on  its  renown,  i.  519  note  ;  on 
Dickinson,  ii.  24,  ii.  25,  note  25- 
26;  attributes  "The  Blockheads" 
to  Mercy  Warren,  ii.  207  note  ;  sug- 
gests Mercy  Warren  as  author  of 
"The  Motley  Assembly,"  ii.  227 
note;  "Beginnings  of  American 
Dramatic  Literature,"  cited,  ii.  192 
note  ;  "  Bibliotheca  Chaunciana," 
cited,  ii.  280  note;  "Bibliotheca 
Hamiltoniana,"  cited,  i.  348  note  ; 
"Check  List  of  American  Maga- 
zines," cited,  ii.  257  note;  "Writ- 
ings of  Dickinson,"  ii.  27  note ;  cited 
in  notes,  i.  114,  237,  ii.  29,  31  ; 
"Writings  of  Jefferson,"  cited  in 
notes,  i.  461,  495-497,  ii.  25  ; 
Wilkin's  "  Services  and  Losses," 
cited,  i.  351  note. 

Ford,  Worthington  Chauncey,  edits 
"A  Fragment"  by  Bland,  i.  231 
note  ;  his  reprint  of  Duche's  letter 
to  Washington,  ii.  292  note  ;  "  Writ- 
ings of  Washington,"  ii.  40  note 

Forrest,  Col.  Thomas.  See  Barton, 
Andrew. 

Forster,  John,  on  Churchill,  i.  24,  25 
note. 

Foster,  William  Eaton,  i.  61  note  ;  his 
monograph  on  "  Stephen  Hopkins," 
i.  65  note ;  cited  in  notes,  i.  69,  75, 
78,  ii.  338  ;  annotations  to  Hopkins's 
"  History,"  ii.  385  note. 

Fowler,  William  Chauncey,  "  Memo- 
rials," cited,  ii.  280  note. 

Fox,  Charles  James,  i.  102,  309,  501 
note,  ii.  257  ;  friend  of  American 
colonies,  i.  312-313. 

Fox,  John,  ii.  398. 

•(     Francis,  John  \V.,  his  sketch  of  Fre- 
Y       neau,  ii.  275  note. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  j  -37"  note,  4fK, 
>"'.  jpfl  ii.  4»i  65,  83  ;  as  a  letter- 


writer,  i.  13  ;  resemblance  to  Hop- 
kins, i.  64-65  ;  as  to  Huske,  i.  117 
note  ;  compared  with  May  hew,  i. 
123  ;  relations  with  Thomas  Hop- 
kinson,  i.  165  note  ;  with  Galloway, 
i-  3?o»  374  note ;  believes  crowri 
alone  unites  colonies  to  England, 
i.  229-230  ;  writes  preface  for  the 
"  Farmer's  Letters,'  i.  237  ;  literary 
renown,  i.  237  ;  on  North's  policy, 
i.  249;  as  Mordecai  in  "American 
Chronicles,"  i.  260-261  ;  comments 
on  the  situation  in  1775,  i.  403-406  ; 
•introduces  Paine,  i.  452.  454  ;  on 
Independence  prior  to  1776,  i.  460  ; 
compared  with  Paine,  i.  462  ;  sug- 
gests change  in  "  Common  Sense," 
i.  466  note  ;  its  reputed  author,  i. 
471  ;  favors  Independence,  i.  486  ; 
as  prophet  in  Hopkinson's  "  Proph- 
ecy," i.  488-489,  490  ;  on  committee 
to  draft  reply  to  Lord  North,  i. 
497  ;  preeminence  in  diplomacy,  ii. 
24  ;  Paine  to,  on  his  military  ex- 
periences, ii.  40  note  ;  satirized  by 
Odell,  ii.  112,  116;  "Autobiog- 
raphy" compared  with  Woolman's 
"  Journal,"  ii.  339-340  ;  absence 
from  America,  ii.  359-360 ;  influ- 
ence, ii.  360 ;  political  uses  of  his 
fame  as  an  electrician,  ii.  360-362  ; 
renown  prior  to  1764,  ii.  362-363; 
what  he  had  then  done  as  a  writer, 
ii.  363-365  ;  development  of  his 
literary  powers,  ii.  365  ;  quality  of 
his  humor,  ii.  365-367  ;  classifica- 
tion of  his  writings,  ii.  367  ;  those 
apart  from  the  Revolutionary  con- 
troversy, ii.  367-370  ;  "  Autobiog- 
raphy," ii.  367,  note  367-368  ;  pro- 
posal to  Madame  Helvetius,  ii.  369- 
370 ;  method  in  controversy,  ii.  370- 
372;  attitude  toward  the  Revolution, 
ii.  372-373  ;  chief  contributions  to 
the  Revolutionary  dispute,  ii.  373— 
380;  "  Examination,"  ii.  3/3-374  ; 
"  Causes  of  American  Discontents," 
ii.  374  ;  "  On  the  Rise  and  Progress 
of  the  Differences  between  Great 
Britain  and  her  American  Colonies," 
ii-  375  I  "  Dialogue  between  Britain, 
France,  Spain,  Holland,  Saxony, 
and  America,"  ii.  375-376  ;  "A 
"Catechism  relative  to  the  English 
Debt,"  376 ;  emblematic  picture 
of  Britannia  dismembered,  ii.  37(1  ; 
political  use  of  satire,  ii.  376-377  ; 
"  Rules  for  Reducing  a  Great  Em- 


500 


INDEX. 


Franklin,  Benjamin  (Continued). 
pire  to  a  Small  One,"  ii.  377~378  I 
"  An  Edict  by  the  King  of  Prussia," 
ii.  377-380 ;  Count  de  Schaum- 
bergh's  letter  of  instructions,  ii. 
377-378,  380  ;  history  of  the  Revo- 
lution as  composed  of  his  passing 
comments,  ii.  381  ;  continuous  read- 
ing necessary  to  appreciate  their 
worth  and  charm,  ii.  381  ;  letters  of 
Hutchmson  procured  by,  ii.  411 
note. 

Franklin,  William,  Governor  of  New 
Jersey,  ii.  100,  104. 

Frederick,  Prince  of  Wales,  i.  126. 

Frederick  II.,  King  of  Prussia,  i.  126, 
132  ;  Franklin's  pretended  edict  of, 
ii.  377-380. 

"  Free  Thoughts."  See  Seabury, 
Samuel. 

Freeman,  Thomas,  i.  194. 

French  alliance,  ii.  67  ;  Tory  mirth 
over  disappointments  of,  ii,  67—72  ; 
serious  discussion  of,  by  Loyalists, 
ii.  72-74 ;  results  of,  depicted,  ii. 
74-77 ;  wisdom  of,  distrusted  by 
Deane  ii.  77-78. 

Freneau,  Philip,  lineage  and  training, 
i.  173  ;  death,  i.  171  ;  interest  at- 
taching to  his  long  career,  L  171- 
172  ;  as  a  satirist,  i.  23,  26,  171, 
172-173,  ii.  99, 159  ;  compared  with 
Hopkinson,  i.  291-292  ;  represents 
new  literary  tendency,  i.  n,  187, 
21 1  ;  earliest  work  as  a  verse-writer, 
i.  173-174  ;  occupations  during 
Revolution,  i.  174  ;  fondness  for  the 
sea,  i.  174;  sea-poetry  of,  i.  174- 
175  ;  poem  on  crew  with  clerical 
names,  i.  174-175  ;  other  examples 
of  playful  verse,  i.  175-176;  his 
prevailing  note,  i.  176;  chooses 
satire  as  his  chief  poetic  vocation, 
i.  176-177;  gifts  for  higher  forms 
of  verse,  i.  177-180  ;  oblique  trib- 
utes to,  by  British  writers,  i.  177- 
180  ;  escapes  mannerisms  of  con- 
temporaneous English  verse,  i.  180; 
"Power  of  Fancy,"  i.  180-182; 
"Retirement,"  i.  182-183  \  events 
pf  1775  furnish  materials  for  satire, 
i-  413.  415  ;  abandons  higher  poetic 
work  for  satire,  i.  413-414  ;  fierce- 
ness as  a  satirist,  i.  414-415  ;  train- 
ing for  this  work,  i.  415  ;  begins  his 
career  as  a  satirist,  i.  415  ;  produces 
five  satirical  poems,  i.  4r5-4i6  ; 
Un  the  Conqueror  of  America 


Shut  up  in  Boston,"  i.  416-417; 
"  Midnight  Consultations,"!.  418- 
424 ;  represents  British  chiefs  in 
council,  i.  418-422  ;  declares  for 
Independence,  i.  423  ;  predicts  na- 
tional greatness,  i.  423-424  ;  relents 
in  favor  of  reconciliation,  i.  424  ; 
"  Libera  Nos,  Domine,"  i.  424— 
425  ;  demands  total  separation,  i. 
425  ;  two  periods  of  his  activity,  ii. 
246—247  ;  abandonment  of  his  coun- 
try and  stay  in  the  West  Indies,  ii. 
247-248  ;  poetic  work  there,  ii.  248- 
249 ;  denounces  slavery,  ii.  249- 

250  ;  his  return  home  and  literary 
activity,  ii.  250-251  ;  confidence  in 
the  success  of  the  Revolution,   ii. 

251  ;  "  Stanzas  on  the  New  Ameri- 
can  Frigate    'Alliance,'"  ii.  251- 
252;  "America   Independent,"  ii. 
252-255  ;  onslaughts  upon  George 
III.,   ii.   253,   257-258  ;   invectives 
against  Burgoyne  and  the  Tories,  ii. 
253-255;  "  Tothe  Dog  Sancho,"ii. 
255-257  I    contributions   to    "  The 
United  States  Magazine,"  ii.   257- 
258  ;  capture  and  imprisonment  by 
the  British,  ii.  258-259  ;  stimulated 
thereby   to    new    satires,    ii.    259 ; 
"  The  British  Prison-Ship,"  ii.  259- 
262  ;  principal   poems,  1781-1783, 
ii.    263-264;   "The  Political    Bal- 
ance," ii.  264-270;  "The  Proph- 
ecy," ii.  270-271  ;  his  final  word  to 
the  king,   ii.   272-273 ;    rank   as  a 
poet,  ii.  273-274  ;  a  pioneer  in  the 
reform  of   English  verse,   ii.   274  ; 
the  first  American  poet  of  Democ- 
racy and  his  fidelity  to  that  charac- 
ter, ii.  274-276  ;  prose,  ii.  275  note  ; 
editions  of  his  poems,  ii.  275  and 
note  ;  classmates  of,  ii.  299. 

"  Friendly   Address."     See   Cooper, 

Myles. 
Frothingham,  Richard,  "  Rise  of  the 

Republic,"    cited  in  notes,  i.   331, 

472,  473,  474. 
"  Full  Vindication  of  the  Measures  of 

the    Congress."       See    Hamilton, 

Alexander. 

Gage,  General  Thomas,  ii.  5,  154; 
summoned  to  Boston,  i.  239  ;  arrives 
in  Boston,  i.  220,  288  note  ;  as 
Thomas,  the  Gageite,  in  "  Ameri- 
can Chronicles,"  i.  261-265  ;  as 
Overseer  in  "  Pretty  Story,"  i~  288- 
290 ;  shut  up  in  Boston,  i.  402, 


INDEX. 


501 


Gage,  General  Thomas,  (Continued). 
416  ;  people  exasperated  at,  i.  404  ; 
satirized  in  "  King's  Own  Regulars," 
i.  410;  by  Freneau,  i.  414,  416,  418- 
422  ;  by  Trumbull,  i.  431,  434-435, 
437. 438-439;  disobeys  king's  orders 
in  Lexington  expedition,  i.  481  ;  as 
Sylla,  in  Mercy  Warren's  "  Group," 
ii.  196-197  ;  as  Lord  Boston  in 
"  The  Fall  of  British  Tyranny,"  ii. 
200,  203-206;  in  "The  Battle  of 
Bunker's  Hill,"  ii.  212,  213  ;  Mercy 
Warren's  portrait  of,  ii.  422. 

Gaine,  Hugh,  i.  414  ;  ii.  153,  264  ; 
burlesque  on,  ii.  18. 

Gale,  Samuel,  i.  439. 

Galloway,  Joseph,  career,  i.  370,  380- 
381  ;  materials  on,  i.  370  note ; 
services  before  1774,  i.  294-295  ; 
preeminence  as  a  Loyalist  writer 
and  statesman,  i.  369-370 ;  ii. 
397  ;  in  Congress,  1/314,  371-372; 
"  Plan  of  a  Proposed  Union  "  and, 
speeches  theron,  i.  372-373  ;  Con- 
gress rejects  it,  i.  373  ;  declines  re- 
election, i.  374  ;  minor  pamphlets, 
i.  374  note;  "Candid  Examina- 
tion," i.  374-380;  on  violations  of 
liberty  by  its  champions,  i.  374- 
375  ;  view  of  the  controversy,  i. 
375-376 ;  argument  on  American 
rights,  i.  376-378;  how  to  secure 
them,  i.  378-379  ;  influence  of  this 
pamphlet,  i.  379-380  ;  it  comes  too 
late,  i.  380 ;  enters  British  lines,  i. 
380-381  ;  seeks  refuge  in  England, 
i.  381  ;  subsequent  activity  as  a 
writer,  i.  381  :  pamphlets  on  politi- 
cal questions,  i.  381-382;  on  Revo- 
lution as  a  physical  conflict,  i.  382- 
383  ;  on  Loyalists,  i.  383  ;  "  Plain 
Truth  "  erroneously  attributed  to, 
i.  note  479— 480  ;  on  Samuel  Adams, 
ii.  6  ;  Hopkinson's  "  Letter"  accu- 
sing him  of  treachery,  ii.  150-151. 

Gardiner,  Thomas,  in  "  The  Battle  of 
Bunker's  Hill,"  ii.  211,  214-215, 
218. 

Garrick,  David,  his  "  Hearts  of  Oak" 
the  model  of  "Virginia  Hearts  of 
Oak,"  i.  227  ;  of  Dickinson's  "  Song 
for  American  Freedom,"  i.  239-240. 

Gates,  General  Horatio,  ii.  163; 
papers  of,  showing  depreciation  of 
paper  money,  ii.  62-63  ;  satirized 
by  Odell,  ii.  124  ;  Gordon's  rela- 
tions with,  ii.  424  note  ;  Gordon  to, 
on  going  to  England,  ii.  425. 


Gates,  Lady,  in  "  The  Battle  of 
Brooklyn,"  ii.  209. 

Gay,  Ebenezer,  on  Mayhew,  i.  123. 

Gay,  John,  English  poet,  influence  on 
Trumbull,  i.  211. 

Gay,  S.  H.  See  Bryant,  William 
Cullen. 

"  General  History  of  Connecticut." 
See  Peters,  Samuel. 

"  Gentlemen  at  Halifax,"  pseudonym. 
See  Howard,  Martin. 

"  Gentleman's  Magazine,"  cited,  i. 
393  ;  on  Franklin's  "  Examina- 
tion," ii.  374. 

George  I.,  King  of  England,  i.  43, 
276. 

George  II.,  King  of  England,  i.  32, 
43,  126,  127,  424  ;  ii.  304  note. 

George  III.,  King  of  England,  i.  41, 
43,  59,  93,  127,  137,  354,  444,  454  ; 
ii.  10,  19,  25,  67,  68,  142,  261,  333 
note ;  speech  to  first  parliament, 
note  33-34  ;  Otis  on,  i.  42  ;  Ameri- 
can loyalty  to,  i.  223-224,  229  ; 
Junius  on  reign  of,  i.  250  ;  humor- 
ous version  of  his  American  troubles, 
i.  259-266  ;  troops  of,  satirized,  i. 
410-411;  orders  disobeyed  by  Gage, 
i.  481  ;  in  Hopkinson's  "  Proph- 
ecy," i.  488-490  ;  abdication  as  de- 
clared by  Drayton,  i.  492-493  ;  Jef- 
ferson's advice  to,  i.  495-496 ; 
arraignment  in  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence, criticised,  i.  500,  501- 
502  ;  charge  against,  respecting  an 
American  tyranny,  512-515  :  Stans- 
bury  on,  ii.  90  ;  Loyalist  devotion 
to,  ii.  95  ;  Odell 's  ode  for  birthday 
of,  ii.  101-102,  126;  Odell  on,  ii. 
128  ;  American  reverence  for,  ii. 
132  ;  humorous  account  of  his  con- 
duct toward  America,  ii.  135-137  ; 
satirized  by  Hopkinson,  ii.  146, 
151  ;  change  of  American  feeling 
toward,  ii.  160-161  ;  as  an  object 
of  satire,  ii.  161  ;  Whig  writer  on, 
ii,  171  ;  Bute's  designs  upon,  ii. 
199 ;  rewards  for  the  victorious 
British  soldiers,  ii.  214  ;  Freneau's 
onslaughts  upon,  ii.  253,  257-258, 
265,  271,  272-273;  Freneau's  speech 
of,  ii.  263  ;  Brackenridge's  arraign- 
ment of,  ii.  300,  302  ;  Stiles's  ser- 
mon on  accession  of,  ii.  338. 

Gerry,  Elbridge,  John  Adams  to,  on 
Gordon's  History,  ii.  425-426. 

Gifford,  William,  as  a  satirist,  i.  22- 
23. 


502 


INDEX. 


Gilfillan,  George,  "  Works  of  Thom- 
son," cited,  i.  65  note. 

Glover,  Colonel  John,pre-Revolution- 
ary  occupation,  ii.  58. 

Glynn,  John,  i.  256. 

"God  Save  the  King."  See  Stans- 
bury,  Joseph. 

Godfrey,  Thomas,  Evans's  companion 
in  poetry  and  poverty,  i.  159  ; 
"Ode"  by  Evans  addressed  to,  i. 
159-160. 

Goethe,  Johann  Wolfgang  von,  on 
Schiller's  "  Nadowessiers  Toten- 
lied,"  i.  150. 

Goffe,  William,  regicide,  ii.  334. 

Goldsmith,  Oliver,  i.  455  note,  ii. 
285  note  ;  on  Churchill,  i.  24  ;  influ- 
ence on  Trumbull,  i.  211. 

Goodell,  Abner  C.,  Jr.,  disproves 
charge  against  Adams  for  pecula- 
tion, ii.  4  note  ;  criticism  on  Hos- 
mer's  biography  of  Hutchinson,  ii. 
411  note. 

Gordon,  Lord  George,  Laurens's  rebus 
letter  to,  ii.  245  note. 

Gordon,  Thomas,  i.  205  note. 

Gordon,  William,  i.  27  ;  on  influence 
of  "Common  Sense, "i.  474  ;  "His- 
tory," cited  in  notes,  i.  100,  270,  ii. 
338  ;  career  and  character,  ii.  423  ; 
efforts  to  obtain  material,  ii.  423- 
424 ;  purpose  to  be  truthful  and 
fair,  ii.  424  ;  fearing  American  pre- 

iudices,  he  goes  to  England  to  pub- 
ish  his  work,  ii.  424-425  ;  encoun- 
ters there  similar  prejudices,  ii. 
425-426  ;  manuscript  mutilated,  ii. 
426-427;  value  of  his  "  History," 
ii.  427-428. 

Gosse,  Edmund,  on  Churchill,  i.  25. 

G6tze,  Johann  August  Ephraim,  ii. 
357  note. 

Government,  Boucher  on  divine  origin 
and  authority  of,  i.  322-323  ;  the 
opposite  theory  denounced,  i.  323- 
325  ;  Paine  on  origin,  object  and 
true  form  of,  i.  463-464. 

Grafton,  Duke  of,  i.  514.  - 

Grant,  Mrs.  Anne,  on  American  loss 
by  expatriation  of  Loyalists,  i.  303. 

Grant,  Ulysses  S.,  i.  517. 

Graves,  Admiral,  satirized  by  Freneau, 
i.  419,  425  ;  as  Admiral  Tombstone 
in  yThe  Fall  of  British  Tyran- 
ny," ii.  200,  203,  205,  206. 

Gray,  Harrison,  in  Mercy  Warren's 
'' Group,"  ii.  I95. 

Gray,  Horace,    opinion   on  Writs  of 


Assistance,  cited,  i.  32  note,  35 
note ;  as  to  Hutchinson's  decision 
on  Writs  of  Assistance,  i.  310. 

Gray,  Thomas,  English  poet,  influ- 
ence on  Trumbull,  i.  211,  447. 

"  Graydon's  Men  and  Times  of  the 
American  Revolution,"  cited,  i. 
504  note. 

Great  Britain.     See  England. 

Green,  Ashbel,  on  his  father's  pam- 
phlet, ii.  294  and  note  ;  on  Wither- 
spoon's  popularity,  ii.  322. 

Green,  Rev.  Jacob,  history  and  work, 
ii.  294-295. 

Green,  John  Richard,  on  political 
power  of  the  press,  i.  21  ;  on  George 
III. ,i.  514- 

Green,  T.  &  S.,  i.  208  note. 

Greene,  George  Washington,  "  Life 
of  Nathaniel  Greene,"  cited,  ii.  37. 

Greene,  General  Nathaniel,  i.  178,  ii. 
263  ;  on  Paine,  ii.  36-37  ;  Paine 
aid-de-camp  to,  ii.  36,  40  ;  pre- 
Revolutionary  occupation,  ii.  58  ; 
satirized  by  Odell,  ii.  112  ;  Gordon 
derives  information  from,  ii.  424 
note. 

Greenleaf,  Joseph,  Tory  political  sa- 
tirist, ii.  80. 

Grenville,  George,  21,  59,  colonial 
policy  of,  i.  44-47  ;  satirized,  116- 
119  ;  applauds  maxims  "  No  taxa- 
tion without  representation,"  i.  306. 

Gridley,  Jeremy,  argues  for  writs  of 
assistance,  i.  32. 

Grotius,  studied  by  Samuel  Adams,  ii. 
12. 

"  Group,  The."    See  Warren,  Mercy. 

Hale,  Edward  Everett,  "  Franklin  in 
France,"  cited,  ii.  361  note. 

Hale,  Captain  Nathan,  personal  his- 
tory, ii.  183  ;  compared  with  Andre, 
ii.  183;  his  hard  fate,  ii.  183-184; 
ballad  on,  ii.  184-186. 

"  Hale  in  the  Bush,"  a  Revolutionary 
ballad,  ii.  184-186. 

Halifax  Gentleman.  See  Howard, 
Martin. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  .early  history,  i. 
385  ;  rank,  i.  273  note  ;  replies  to 
the  "  Westchester  Farmer"  in  "  A 
Full  Vindication  "  and  "  The  Farm- 
er Refuted,"  i.  345,  384-38=; ;  abjl 
displayed  in  these  pamphlets,  i(^~ 
his  argument,  i.  386-388  ;  believes 
allegiance  due  to  king  only,  i.  386  ; 
on  alleged  lack  of  legality  in  Con- 


INDEX. 


503 


Hamilton,  Alexander  (Continued}. 
gress,  i.  386-387 ;  rights  not  de- 
rived from  parchments,  i.  387  ; 
despotism  not  to  be  frustrated  by 
entreaty,  i.  387-388  ;  identifies  civil 
and  natural  liberty,  i,  388  ;  fore- 
sight, i.  388-389,  391  ;  political 
faith,  i.  389-390  ;  a  monarchist  and 
believer  in  civil  liberty,  i.  389  ; 
range  of  thought,  i.  390-391;  abjures 
Independence  prior  to  1776,  i.  459  ; 
"  Plain  Truth  "  absurdly  attributed 
to,  i.  479  note  ;  master  in  finance, 
ii.  396. 

Hamilton,  Gerard,  on  Jenyns,  i.  81 
note. 

Hampden,  John,  i.  65,  ii.  216. 

Hancock,  John,  ii.  204  ;  rank  among 
Revolutionary  leaders,  i.  122  ;  sloop 
seized  by  royal  commissioners,  i. 
239  ;  escorts  Gage  to  State  house, 
i.  288  note  ;  satirized  by  Odell,  ii. 
109,  no,  112,  114  ;  in  Mercy  War- 
ren's "  Adulateur,"  ii.  193  ;  retires 
from  presidency  of  Congress,  ii. 
244  ;  letter  to  Duche  on  his  ap- 
pointment as  Chaplain,  ii.  291  note  ; 
Hutchinson's  description  of,  ii.  407- 
408. 

Hansard,  T.  C.,  "  Parliamentary 
History  of  England,"  cited  in  notes, 
i-  33,  46,  47,  iii-"3,  231,  249, 
306,  330. 

Harcourt,  Sir  Vernon,  on  supremacy 
of  parliament,  i.  310-311. 

Harris,  C.  Fiske,  i.  258  note. 

Harrison,  curate  to  Boucher,  i.  319. 

Hart,  Oliver,  preacher  against  danc- 
ing, ii.  295-296. 

Harvard  College,  graduates  of,  among 
banished  Tories,  i.  302-303. 

Hawke,  Edward,  English  admiral,  ii. 
88. 

Hawks,  Francis  L.,  his  sketches  of 
Boucher,  i.  328  note. 

Hawley,  Joseph,  believes  colonies 
united  to  England  through  crown 
only,  i.  229-230. 

Hawlings,  Mr.,  ii.  103. 

Hayden,  H.  E.,  on  Ethan  Allen's  al- 
leged treason,  ii.  229  note. 

Hazhtt,  William,  ii.  358. 

Helvetius,  Madame,  Franklin's  pro- 
posal to,  ii.  369-370. 

Henry  VIII.,  ii.  196. 

Henry,  Matthew,  i.  218. 

Henry,  William  Wirt,  "  Life  of  Pat- 
rick Henry,"  cited,  i.  36  note. 


Herrick,  Robert,  English  poet,  i.  168. 

Hervey,  James,  Trumbull's  parody 
on  style  of,  i.  198. 

Hewlings,  J.  W.,  "American  Hearts 
of  Oak,"  criticised,  ii.  169.  See 
.  "Virginia  Hearts  of  Oak." 

Hicks,  John,  i.  356  note. 

Hildeburn,  Charles  R.,  on  "  Consid- 
erations,"!. 115  note  ;  on  '  Oppres- 
sion," i.  120  note  ;  his  sketch  of 
Hopkinson,  i.  164  note  ;  cited,  ii. 
131  note;  his  "  Issues  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania Press,"  cited  in  notes,  i. 
56,  237,  238,  258,  ii.  294  ;  on  au- 
thorship of  "The  Fall,"  ii.  199 
note. 

Hildreth,  Richard,  "  History  of  the 
United  States,"  cited,  ii.  40  note. 

Hill,  Birkbeck,  his  "  Boswell's  Life 
of  Johnson,"  cited,  i.  81  note. 

Hills,  George  Morgan,  "  History  of 
the  Church  in  Burlington,"  cited  in 
notes,  ii.  101,  103-105. 

Hillsborough,  Lord,  on  the  "  Farmer's 
Letters,"  i.  237  ;  Wright  to,  on  the 
"  Farmer,"  i.  238. 

"  Historical  Account  of  Bouquet's 
Expedition  against  the  Ohio  In- 
dians," history  and  character  of,  i. 
151-152. 

"  Historical  Magazine,"  cited,  i.  431 
note  :  ii.  427  note. 

History,  two  expressions  of  the  his- 
toric spirit,  ii.  383-384 ;  represen- 
tatives of  this  spirit  as  applied  to 
local  themes,  ii.  384-415  ;  as  ap- 
plied to  Revolutionary  themes,  ii. 
394-411,  416-428. 

"  History  of  Massachusetts  Bay." 
See  Hutchinson,  Thomas. 

"  History  of  New  England,  with  Par- 
ticular Reference  to  the  Baptists." 
See  Backus,  Isaac. 

"  History  of  Pennsylvania."  See 
Proud,  Robert. 

"  History  of  the  American  Indians." 
See  Adair,  James. 

"  History  of  the  Rise,  Progress,  and 
Establishment  of  the  Independence 
of  the  United  States."  See  Gor- 
don, William. 

"  History  of  the  Rise,  Progress,  and 
Termination  of  the  American  Rev- 
olution." See  Warren,  Mercy. 

Hoadly,  Benjamin,  i.  132. 

Hobbes,  Thomas,  i.  205,  480,  ii.  295. 

Hohendorf,  Baron,  Franklin's  letter 
of  instructions  to,  ii.  378,  380. 


504 


INDEX. 


Hollis,  Thomas,  instigates  publication 
of  Adams's  essays  in  London,  i.  99. 

Holmes,  Abiel,  description  of  attack 
on  Savannah,  ii.  69-70  ;  "  Annals," 
cited,  ii.  284  note  ;  "  Life  of  Stiles," 
cited  in  notes,  ii.  332,  333,  336-338. 

Home,  Sir  Everard,  i.  179. 

Homer,  i.  37,  191,  213,  ii.  265. 

Honorius.     See  Adams,  John. 

Hooker,  Thomas,  ii.  331. 

Hopkins,  Samuel,  i.  10  ;  Trumbull's 
burlesque  alluding  to,  i.  205. 

Hopkins,  Stephen,  governor  of  Rhode 
Island,  character  and  career,  i.  64— 
65  ;  author  of  local  history,  i.  10 ; 
"  Dream  of  the  Branding,"  etc., 
attributed  to,  i.  61  note  ;  publishes 
"  The  Rights  of  Colonies  Exam- 
ined," i.  63-64  ;  its  outline,  i.  65-69; 
its  tone  and  influence,  i.  69  ;  an- 
swer to  this  pamphlet,  i.  70-74  ; 
replies  to  answer,  i.  75  ;  the  rejoin- 
der, i.  76-77;  "Brief  Remarks" 
erroneously  attributed  to,  i.  78 
note  ;  as  a  representative  of  the  his- 
toric spirit,  ii.  384  ;  "  The  Plant- 
ing and  Growth  of  Providence,"  ii. 
384. 

Hopkinson,  Francis,  early  life,  i. 
164-165  ;  as  described  by  John 
Adams,  i.  162-163  \  versatility,  i. 
163-164,  165  note  ;  biographies  of, 
i.  164  note  ;  political  attitude  in 
1766,  i.  166  ;  in  1776,  i.  167  ;  visits 
England,  i.  165-166 :  occupations 
after  returning  to  America,  i.  166- 
167  ;  character,  i.  167-168  ;  early 
work  as  a  lyric  poet,  i.  168-171  ; 
"  My  Generous  Heart  Disdains," 
i.  168-169;  "On  the  Hills  Far 
Away,"  i.  169-170  ;  "  My  Love  is 
Gone  to  Sea,"  i.  170-171  ;  essay  on 
advantages  of  Anglo-American 
union,  i.  225-226  ;  his  humor  in 
"American  Chronicles,"  i.  258 
note  ;  "  A  Pretty  Story,'  i.  279-20/2  ; 
its  publication,  i.  279;  editionsT  i. 
280 note;  preface,  i.  280-281  ;  out- 
line, an  allegorical  history  of  the 
business  bringing  Congress  together, 
i.  281-290;  literary  charm,  i.  290- 
291  ;  compared  with  Arbuthnot's 
History  of  John  Bull,"  i.  291  ;  as 
a  satirist,  i.  26,  291-292,  ii.  159  ; 
replies  to  "  Letters  of  Cato  "  in  "  A 
Prophecy,"  i.  487-490;  declares 
Provost  Smith  was  "  Cato,"  i.  487 
note  ;  chosen  to  represent  New  Jer- 


sey in  Congress,  ii.  131  ;  official  po- 
sitions, ii.,  131  :  contemporaneous 
literary  jgntHhiiHnns  iLj^jr- '  3  2  ; 
' '  LetterWritten  by  a  Foreigner  on 
the  Character  of  the  English  Na- 
tion," ii.  134-139;  contributes  to 
political  free-mindedness,  ii. _i34j__ 
-139-5 — facetious  description  of  the 
typical  Englishman,  ii.  134-135  ; 
playful  account  of  the  origin  of  the 
Anglo-American  quarrel,  ii.  135- 
137  ;  on  intellectual  capacity  of 
British  voters,  ii.  137-139  ;  his  re- 
vision of  his  writings,  ii.  139-140; 
tone  toward  the  enemies  of  Inde- 
pendence, ii.  140-141  ;  "  Letter  to 
Lord  Howe,"  ii.  141  ;  "  Political 
Catechism,"  ii.  142;  "  Camp  Bal- 
lad," ii.  142-143  ;  ridicules  the 
British  invasions  of  1777,  ii.  143- 
149  ;  burlesque  of  Burgoyne's  proc- 
lamation, ii.  144-145  ;  "  Date 
Obolum  Belisario,"  ballad  depicting 
Britannia's  humiliation  through 
Burgoyne's  failure,  ii.  145-146 ; 
"  The  Battle  of  the  Kegs,"  0^146- 
149  ;  its  effectiveness,  ii.  149  ;  its 
merary  quality,  ii.  149 ;  ridicules 
the  Loyalists,  ii.  149-150  ;  portrays 
the  political  trimmer,  ii.  150; 
"  Letter  to  Galloway,"  ii.  150-151  ; 
"  Two  Letters  "  ironically  avowing 
Loyalist  opinions,  ii,  151-153  ;  on 
the  use  of  lies  as  a  weapon  of  war, 
ii.  152-153  ;  "  Advertisement  " 
ridiculing  Rivington,  ii.  153-157  ; 
"  Liberty's  Call  "  attributed  to,  ii. 
1 80  note. 

Hopkinson,  Thomas,  personal  history, 
i.  164-165  and  note 

Horace,  i.  159,  191,  194,  198,11.  263. 

Hosmer,  James  Kendall,  on  reputa- 
tion of  Samuel  Adams,  ii.  2  ;  on  his 
master's  thesis,  ii.  13;  "Samuel 
Adams  "  criticised,  ii.  2  note  ;  cited, 
ii.  5  note,  8  note  ;  "  Life  of  Hutch- 
inson,"  ii.  411  note. 

Hough,  Franklin  B.,  edits  Rogers's 
"Journal,"  i.  151  note. 

Hovey.Alvah,  "  Memoir  of  Backus," 
ii.  391  note  ;  cited,  ii.  394  note. 

Howard,  Martin,  i.  81  ;  career  and 
character,  i.  79-80  note  ;  answers 
Hopkins's  "  Rights  of  Colonies  "  in 
"A  Letter,  "i.  70-71  ;  its  argument, 
i.  71-74  ;  its  character,  i.  74  ;  con- 
troversy provoked  by,  i.  75  ;  Otis's 
attack  upon,  i.  75-76  ;  replies  in 


INDEX. 


505 


Howard,  Martin  (Continued). 

"A  Defence,"  i.  76-77  ;  Otis's  re- 
joinder, i.  77-79  ;  identified  as  the 
"Gentleman  at  Halifax,"  i.  79; 
treatment  and  flight  of,  i.  79-80. 

Howe,  Joseph,  as  student  at  Yale,  i. 
193  :  as  tutor,  i.  210. 

Howe,  Richard,  Earl,  i.  402  note,  ii. 
86,  92  ;  Drayton's  address  to,  i. 
492  ;  Paine's  scornful  address  to, 
ii.  43-44  ;  baffled  by  French,  ii. 
128  ;  conduct  of  army  under,  ii. 
136  ;  Hopkinson's  "  Letter"  to,  ii. 
141  ,  appointment  of  Liar  General, 
ii.  153. 

Howe,  Sir  William,  i.  256.  382,  402 
note,  ii.  19,  92,  230  note,  314  ; 
satirized  by  Freneau,  i.  419,  420, 
421  ;  Drayton's  address  to,  i.  492  ; 
Paine's  scornful  address  to,  ii.  45- 
46  ;  Loyalist  on,  ii.  61  ;  conduct 
of  army  under,  ii.  136 ;  advance 
across  New  Jersey,  ii.  141  ;  doubt 
in  regard  to  his  intention,  ii.  143  ; 
invasion  of  1777,  ii.  146-147  ;  in 
Philadelphia,  ii.  147-148  ;  ridi- 
culed by  Hopkinson,  ii.  148-149, 
154;  appointment  of  "A  Liar 
General,"  ii.  153  ;  reputation 
among  Americans,  ii.  162  ;  satirized, 
ii.  163 ;  Hale  carried  before,  ii. 
183  ;  as  Elbow  Room  in  "  The 
Fall  of  British  Tyranny,"  200,205- 
206  ;  in  "  The  Battle  of  Bunker's 
Hill,"  ii.  212-214,  2I8  ,  treatment 
of  prisoners,  ii.  236-237. 

Howell,  Rednap,  song-writer,  ii.  172- 
173- 

Hume,  David,  ii.  12  ;  salutation  of 
Franklin,  ii.  362. 

Humphreys,  David,  as  student  at 
Yale,  i.  193  ;  "  Miscellaneous 
Works  "  cited,  i.  461  note  ;  as 
a  Revolutionary  song-writer,  ii. 
173- 

Hunt,  Isaac,  Tory  political  satirist, 
ii.  80. 

Hunt,  Leigh,  son  of  preceding,  ii.  80. 

Hunter,  Anne,  appropriates  Freneau's 
"  Death-Song,"  i.  179. 

Huske,  John,  i.  117-118  ;  discussion 
of  suspicions  against,  i.  117  note. 

Hutchins,  Thomas,  compilation  erro- 
neously ascribed  to,  i.  152  note. 

Hutchinson,  Anne,  Hutchinson's  ac- 
count of,  ii.  407. 

Hutchinson,  Foster,  as  Judge  Meagre 
in  Mercy  Warren's  "Group,"  ii. 


195-198  ;  quoted  by  his  brother,  ii. 
403  note. 

Hutchinson,  Peter  Orlando,  "  Diary 
and  Letters  of  Thomas  Hutchin- 
son," cited,  ii.  398  note. 

Hutchinson,  Thomas,  i.  260,  263,  358, 
445,  ii.  13,  195,  197;  "  History  of 
Massachusetts."  i.  n,  27  ;  cited,  i, 
H7note;  I3gnote;  sack  of  his  house, 
i.  138-139  ;  on  opposition  to  Town- 
shend's  measures,  i.  232  ;  Gray  on 
his  decision  on  writs  of  assistance, 
i.  310 ;  position  as  Loyalist  writer 
and  statesman,  i.  370,  381  ;  satir- 
ized by  Freneau,  i.  439  ;  criticises 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  i. 
499-500  ;  on  Samuel  Adams,  ii.  3, 
7  ;  as  Rapatio  in  Mercy  Warren's 
"  Adulateur,"  ii.  193-194  ;  as 
Judas  in  "  The  Fall  of  British 
Tyranny,"  ii.  200,  202  ;  as  an  his- 
torian, ii.  394  ;  value  of  his  con- 
tributions to  American  history,  ii. 
394-395  ;  writing  of  history  but  by- 
play, ii.  395  ;  ancestry,  ii.  395~396  ; 
career,  ii.  396  ;  attitude  toward  the 
Revolutionary  controversy,  ii.  396- 
397  ;  his  early  passion  for  history, 
ii.  397—398  ;  preparation  for  the 
writing  of  it,  ii.  398-399  ;  publishes 
the  first  volume  of  his  "  History  of 
Massachusetts  Bay,"  ii.  399  ;  work 
on  the  second  volume  interrupted 
by  a  Boston  mob,  ii.  399  ;  house 
looted  and  many  papers  destroyed, 
ii.  400-401  ;  recovery  of  the  manu- 
script of  the  second  volume,  ii.  401  ; 
its  publication  (1767),  ii.  401  :  its 
characteristics,  ii.  402;  summoned  to 
England,  ii.  402  ;  purpose  in  going 
there,  ii.  402-403  ;  fails  in  his  mis- 
sion, ii.  403  ;  sorrows  of  his  exile, 
11.403-404;  resumes  his"  History" 
and  finishes  the  third  volume  (1778), 
ii.  404  ;  its  publication  (1828),  ii. 
404-405  ;  traits  as  an  historian,  ii. 
405-406  ;  tone  of  each  of  his  three 
volumes,  ii.  406  :  truthfulness,  ii. 
406-407  ;  judicial  tone.  ii.  407  ; 
test  of  his  fairness  applied  to  the 
third  volume,  ii.  407-408  :  exam- 
ination of  Palfrey's  estimate  of,  ii. 
408  ;  politics  with  reference  to  the 
Revolutionary  dispute,  ii.  408-409  : 
portrait  of  Governor  Dudley,  ii. 
409-411;  other  writings,  ii.  411 
note.  ;  Mercy  Warren's  portrait  of, 
ii.  422. 


5o6 


INDEX. 


Hutton,  Laurence,  and  William 
Carey,  "  Occasional  Addresses," 
cited,  ii.  225  note. 


"Independence,"  Revolutionary  song, 
ii.  170. 

Independence,  American,  source  of 
arguments  leading  to,  i.  51-52; 
prophecy  of,  i.  119  ;  desire  for,  dis- 
claimed, i.  69,  233,  236,  ii.  29,  30 ; 
first  championed  by  song-writers 
and  newspaper  humorists,  i.  257 
note  ;  attacked  by  Galloway,  i.  376  ; 
arguments  leading  toward,  i.  386  ; 
inevitable  result  of  England's  course, 
i.  405-406;  Freneau  declares  for 
(1775),  i.  423,424-425;  Paine'searly 
opinion  against,  i.  456-457  ;  ' '  Com- 
mon Sense"  first  open  and  unquali- 
fied argument  in  favor  of,  i.  458  ; 
history  of  American  opinion  as  to, 
prior  to  1776,  i.  458-462;  Paine 
on,  i.  462-468,  ii.  35-36  ;  influence 
of  "Common  Sense"  on,  i.  468- 
470,  471-474 ;  a  political  heresy 
and  a  crime,  i.  476-477  ;  was  se- 
cession, i.  477  ;  Whigs  unable  to 
forget  their  own  denials  of,  i.  477- 
478  ;  classes  opposed,  i.  478  ;  Loy- 
alist arguments  against,  i.  478-481  ; 
Whig  arguments  against,  i.  481- 
483,  485-487  ;  favored  by  Frank- 
lin, i.  486  ;  by  Hopkinson,  i.  167, 
487-400;  by  Drayton,  i.  491  ;  dec- 
laration of,  in  South  Carolina,  i. 
492-493 ;  Samuel  Adams's  early 
predictions  of,  ii.  16-17  J  obstacles 
to,  in  certain  habits,  ii.  132-133; 
Witherspoon's  argument  for,  ii. 
327-328.  See  also  Declaration  of 
Independence. 

Indians,  American,  descriptions  of, 
'•  I44-I46,  150-152,  154-155  ; 
Boucher  on  treatment  of,  i.  322  ; 
in  the  tragedy  of  "  Ponteach,"  ii. 
188-192  ;  Crevecoeur  on.  ii.  356. 

Inglis.  Charles,  i.  392  ;  the  "  West- 
chester  Farmer  "  pamphlets  errone- 
ously attributed  to,  i.  350  ;  not  the 
author  of  "  Plain  Truth,"  i.  479- 
480  note;  replies  to  "Common 
Sense"  in  "The  True  Interest  of 
America,"  i.  480-481  ;  supposed 
Wither  of  the  "Letters  of  Papin- 
ian."  ii.  73  ;  their  nature,  ii.  73. 

Irvine,  William,  pre- Revolutionary 
occupation,  ii.  58. 


Jel 

•; 


Isham,  Charles,  editor  of  Deane's 
papers,  ii.  78  note. 

Jackson,  Andrew,  i.  172. 

Jackson,  Helen  Hunt  (nee  Fiske),  ii. 
307  note. 

James  I.,  King  of  England,  i.  43,  92. 

James  II.,  King  of  England,  i,  31, 
43,  98- 

Jarchi,  Rabbi  Selomo,  ii.  331, 

Jauncys,  of  New  York,  i.  439 

Jay,  John,  ii.  83  ;  rank.  i.  273  note  ; 
author  of  an  "  Address,"  i.  330 
note  ;  supports  Galloway's  "  Plan," 
i.  373  ;  pamphlets  attributed  to,  i. 
385  ;  cited,  ii.  33  note ;  ridiculed, 
ii.  66  ;  the  "  Letters  of  Papinian  " 
addressed  to,  ii.  73  ;  satirized  by 
Odell,  ii.  118,  119;  objects  to 
prayers  in  Congress,  ii.  288. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  ii.  83,  172  ;  as  a 
writer,  i.  .13,  94  ;  statesmanship  of, 
anticipated  by  Carver,  i.  143  ;  opin- 
ion of  Bland's  "  Enquiry,"  i.  230; 
errs  as  to  date  of  Lee's  "  Monitor," 
i.  245  note  ;  on  Independence  prior 
to  1776,  i.  461  ;  first  entrance  into 
Congress,  i.  494-5  ;  public  papers 
then  written  by,  i.  495-7  ;  "Resolu- 
tions of  the  Virginia  House  of  Bur- 
gesses," i.  495;  "  A  Summary  View 
of  the  Rights  of  British  America," 
i.  495-6;  "Address  of  the  House 
of  Burgesses,"  i.  496-7 ;  special 
gifts  for  service  in  Congress,  i.  497  ; 
ability  promptly  recognized,  i.  497  ; 
becomes  head  of  the  committee  and 
draughtsman  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  i.  497-498  (see  also 
Declaration  of  Independence)  ;  his 
democratic  simplicity  anticipated  by 
Samuel  Adams,  ii.  6 ;  opinion  of 
S.  Adams,  ii.  12;  "The  Declara- 
tion on  taking  up  arms  "  erroneously 
ascribed  to,  ii.  25  note ;  on  the 
"  Farmer's  Letters,"  ii.  33  ;  ex- 
penses showing  depreciation  of  pa- 
per money,  ii.  63  ;  relations  with 
Mercy  Warren,  ii.  420. 

Jeffrey,  Lord,  on  writings  of  Frank- 
lin, ii.  368. 

Jenkinson,  Charles,  in  "  The  Fall  of 
British  Tyranny,"  ii.  200. 

Jenyns,  Soame,  literary  character,  i. 
81-82  ;  "  Objections  to  the  Taxation 
of  Our  American  Colonies,  Briefly 
Considered,"  i.  82-85  ;  its  success 
as  a  political  irritant,  i.  85  ;  dis- 


INDEX. 


SO/ 


cusses  maxim,  "No  taxation  with- 
out representation,"  i.  83-85  ;  Otis's 
reply  to,  i.  86-90. 

John,  king  of  England,  i.  98,  510. 

Johnson,  Samuel,  i.  256  ;  as  a  writer 
of  pamphlets,  i.  20  ;  opinion  of 
Churchill,  i.  24,  25  ;  on  Jenyns,  i. 
81 ;  his  lines  in  Goldsmith's  "  Trav- 
eller," i.  93;  "  Dictionary,"  cited, 
i.  20,  89  note;  his  opinion  of  Frank- 
lin, ii.  361. 

Johnson,  Stephen,  history  and  charac- 
ter, i.  100  ;  political  essays,  i.  99- 
101  ;  warns  Great  Britain  of  its  dan- 
gerous policy,  i.  roo-ioi  ;  other 
writings,  i.  101  note. 

Johnson,  Sir  William,  Rogers's  Jour- 
nal in  manuscripts  of,  i.  151  note. 

Johnston,  H.  P.,  "  Correspondence  of 
Jay,"  cited,  ii.  33  note. 

Jones,  Inigo,  ii.  400. 

Jones,  Captain  Paul,  Freneau's  poem 
on  his  victory,  ii.  263. 

Jonson,  Ben,  quoted,  i.  292. 

"Journal  of  Occurrences."  See 
Meigs,  Major  Return  Jonathan. 

"Journals  of  the  American  Congress," 
cited  in  notes,  i.  279,  330,  332.  334, 
459,  460,  461,  498,  ii.  131,  244,  284, 
286,  288,  291. 

"  Journal  of  the  House  of  Burgesses," 

cited,  i.  495  note. 

'  Junius,"  i.  18  ;  Arthur  Lee  imitates 
his  invective,  i.  120  note  ;  derides 
ministerial  policy,  i.  250. 

Juvenal,  motto  taken  from,  by  Trum- 
bull,  i.  199 ;  by  Odell,  ii.  107  ; 
quoted  by  Brackenridge,  ii.  298. 

Kalb.     See  De  Kalb. 

Kames,  Lord,  Franklin's  reply  to  re- 
quest of,  ii.  363. 

Kennet.  Bishop  White,  on  historical 
value  of  political  essays,  i.  21. 

Kenyon,  Lloyd,  fellow  -  student  of 
Dickinson,  ii.  22. 

Keppel,  Captain,  captures  Laurens, 
ii.  244. 

Kettell,  Samuel,  "Specimens  of 
American  Poetry,"  cited,  i.  185. 

"  King's  Own  Regulars,  and  their 
Triumph  over  the  Irregulars,"  an 
ironical  ballad  on  British  military 
achievements,  i.  409-411. 

Kingsley,  James  Luce,  "  Life  of 
Stiles,"  cited,  ii.  333  note. 

Knox,  Henry,  pre-Revolutionary  oc- 
cupation, ii.  58. 


Knox,  John,  ii.  3f3  ;  ancestor  of  With- 
erspoon,  ii.  320. 

"  Lady's  Adieu  to  Her  Tea-Table,  A," 
i.  255-256. 

Lafayette,  Marquis  de,  ii.  89,  92  ;  to 
diffuse  the  renown  of  Washington, 
"•  335- 

Lamb,  Charles,  ii.  358  ;  love  for  Wool- 
man,  ii.  346. 

Lamb,  John,  in  attack  on  Quebec,  ii. 

222. 

Lampson-Locker,  Mr.,  on  letters  of 
Boucher,  i.  328  note. 

Langdon,  Samuel,  president  of  Har- 
vard College,  sermon  before  the 
Revolutionary  assembly  of  Massa- 
chusetts, ii.  282-284. 

Latrobe,  John  H.  B.,  his  "  Sketch  of 
Dulany,"  i.  102  note. 

"  Late  Regulations  respecting  the 
British  Colonies."  See  Dickinson, 
John. 

"  Laura,"  pseudonym.  See  Fergus- 
son,  Elizabeth. 

Laurens,    Henry,    Livingston    to,    on 
Loyalist  hatred  of  himself,  ii.  19 
satirized   by   Odell,    ii.    112,    114 
Odell   relents  toward,  ii.  123-124 
career  and  character,   ii.  243—244 
abhorrence  of  slavery,  ii.  243  note 
commissioner  to  Holland,  ii.  244 
captured,  ii.  244  ;  imprisonment  in 
the   Tower,  ii.   244-245  ;    "  Narra- 
tive," ii.  242-243  ;  its  charm,  ii.  245. 

Laurens,  John,  son  of  preceding,  mis- 
sion to  France,  ii.  40 ;  Paine's  letter 
to,  concerning  boots,  ii.  41  ;  father 
to,  on  slavery,  ii.  243  note. 

Law,  profession  of,  i.  note  187-188. 

"  Law  of  Liberty  (The)."   See  Zubly, 

J- J- 

Lawrence,  Mr.,  ii.  103. 

Laycock,  Mr.,  said  to  have  written 
"  The  Fall  of  British  Tyranny,"  ii. 
199  note. 

Leacock,  John,  Sabin  attributes  "  The 
Fall  of  British  Tyranny  "  to,  ii.  199 
note. 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  on  Townshend's 
measures,  i.  231,  232-233,  234  ;  on 
causes  of  disruption,  i.  284  note  ; 
thinks  Revolution  work  of  an  ener- 
getic minority,  i.  299-300  ;  his  opin- 
ion of  George  III.,  513-514. 

Lee,  Arthur,  career  and  character,  i. 
120  note,  244-245  ;  "  Oppression" 
attributed  to,  i.  120  note  ;  works,  i. 


5o8 


INDEX. 


245  ;  materials  on,  i,  245  note  ;  sat- 
irized by  Odell,  ii.  1 12. 

Lee,  General  Charles,  i.  419  ;  charac- 
ter, i.  395,  400  note  ;  "  Strictures," 
a  reply  to  Cooper's  "  Friendly  Ad- 
dress." i.  395-400;  its  authorship, 
i.  395  and  note  ;  his  insults  to  Coop- 
er, i.  395-396,  397  ;  discusses  the 
political  aspect  of  the  dispute,  i. 
396  ;  the  military  aspect,  i.  396-400 ; 
other  works,  i,  400  note ;  on  influ- 
ence of  "Common  Sense,"  i.  47'~ 
472  ;  ridiculed,  ii.  65,  66  ;  satirized 
by  Odell,  ii.  118  ;  in  "  The  Fall  of 
British  Tyranny,"  ii.  200  ;  Mercy 
Warren's  portrait  of,  ii.  422-423. 

Lee,  Richard  Henry,  i.  508  ;  state 
papers  written  by,  i.  330  note  ;  in- 
troduces resolutions  for  Indepen- 
dence, i.  474,  ii.  102  ;  on  committee 
to  draft  reply  to  Lord  North,  i. 
497  ;  criticizes  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, i.  504. 

Lee,  Richard  Henry,  grandson  of  pre- 
ceding, ' '  Life  of  Arthur  Lee,"  cited, 
i.  1 20  note,  245  note. 

Leonard,  Daniel,  i.  295,  445  ;  early 
career,  i.  357-358 ;  character  and 
motives,  i.  359-360;  fondness  for 
dress  and  social  display,  i.  358  ; 
identified  as  "  Massachusettensis," 
»•  357-358, note  357-358  ;  letters,  i. 
356-357,  359-367;  their  publication, 
i-  356-357  ;  John  Adams's  estimate 
of  their  literary  power,  i.  357  ;  in- 
tellectual and  moral  notes,  i.  359  ; 
tone  and  method,  i.  360-361  ;  de- 
nounces demagogism,  i.  360;  topics 
discussed,  i.  361-362 ;  arguments, 
i.  362-367  ;  thinks  parliament  has 
kept  within  constitutional  limits,  i. 
361-362  ;  believes  prevailing  com- 
plaints groundless,  i.  363-365  ; 
charges  Revolutionists  with  tyr- 
anny, i.  365-366 ;  thinks  war  and 
British  triumph  inevitable,  i.  366- 
367  ;  suffers  personal  violence,  i. 
367  ;  banished  and  property  confis- 
cated, i.  367  ;  later  career,  i.  368  ; 
compared  with  Galloway,  i.  369- 
370  ;  John  Adams's  reply  to,  i.  391- 
392  ;  satirized  by  Trumbull,  i.  436; 
as  Beau  Trumps  in  Mercy  Warren's 
"  Group,"  ii.  195  ;  on  power  of  the 
pulpit,  ii.  278. 

Lescure.  M.  de,  French  version  of 
Franklin's  letter  "  From  the  Count 
de  Schaumbergh"  in  his  "corres- 


pondence," ii.  378  note,  note  -580- 
381. 

"Let  Us  be  Happy."  See  Stans- 
bury,  Joseph. 

"  Letter  from  a  Gentleman  at  Hali- 
fax." See  Howard,  Martin. 

"  Letter  from  a  Virginian  to  the  Mem- 
bers of  Congress,"  pamphlet  chal- 
lenging the  theory  of  American  op- 
position, i.  276-278  ;  its  authorship, 
i.  278  note  ;  impression  made  by,  i. 

276  note  ;    believes    taxation   and 
government     inseparable,     i.    276- 

277  ;  blames  colonists  for  inconsist- 
ency, i.  277  ;  denounces  non-impor- 
tation and  non-consumption,  i.  277- 
278. 

"  Letter  to  Lord  Howe."     See  Hop- 

kinson,  Francis. 
"Letter  to  the  People  of  America" 

Loyalist  pamphlet  on    the   French 

alliance,  ii.  74. 
"  Letter  Written  by  a  Foreigner  on 

the  Character  of  the  English  Na- 
tion."    See  Hopkinson,  Francis. 
"  Letters    from    a    Farmer."       See 

Dickinson,  John. 
"  Letters  from  an  American  Farmer." 

See  Crevecoeur,  J.  Hector  St.  John 

de. 
"  Letters    of    Cato."       See    Smith, 

William. 
"Letters  of  Papinian."     See  Inglis, 

Charles. 
Lewis,      Meriwether,     and     William 

Clark,    expedition   of,    anticipated, 

i-  143- 
"  Libera   Nos,   Domine."     See  Fre- 

neau,  Philip. 

"Liberty."     See  Stansbury,  Joseph. 
"  Liberty,  a  Poem,"  on  the  American 

inheritance  of  the  English  spirit,  i. 

243-244. 
"  Liberty    Song."      See    Dickinson, 

tohn. 
iberty's  Call,"  Revolutionary  bal- 
lad,  ii.    180 ;    authorship,   ii.    180 
note. 

Lieber,  Francis,  estimate  of  the  Angli- 
can race  as  national  song  writers, 
ii.  169. 
Lies,  use  of,  as  a  weapon  of  war,  ii. 

152-153- 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  i.  517. 

Lincoln,  General  Benjamin,  attack  on 
Savannah,  ii.  69-70  ;  Tory  ballad  on 
this  attack,  ii.  70-72  ;  Gordon  de- 
rives information  from,  ii.  424  note. 


IXDEX. 


509 


Lind,  John,  criticism  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  i.  500. 

Linsley,  Elizabeth  Lyon,  her  file  of 
"  The  Connecticut  Journal,"  i.  note 
207-208,  214  note. 

Littell,  John  Stockton,  criticism  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  i. 
.504- 

Livingston,  Henry  Beekman.  in  "  The 
Death  of  Montgomery,"  ii.  222. 

Livingston,  William,  i.  508,  ii.  65  ; 
pamphlets  attributed  to,  i.  385  ; 
career  and  character,  ii.  17-18  ; 
activity  as  a  political  writer,  ii.  18- 
19  ;  effectiveness  of  his  assaults,  ii. 
19-20  ;  his  reciprocation  of  Loyalist 
hatred,  ii.  20  ;  satirized  by  Odell, 
ii.  118,  119;  travesties  Burgoyne's 
Proclamation,  ii.  145  note. 

Livy,  ii.  331. 

Llandaff,  Bishop  of,  ii.  99. 

Locke,  John,  source  of  Mayhew's  po- 
litical ideas,  i.  132  ;  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  i.  504,  507  ; 
studied  by  Samuel  Adams,  ii.  12. 

Locker,  Frederick,  pseudonym.  See 
Lampson-Locker. 

Lodge,  Henry  Cabot,  opinion  of 
Hamilton's  essays,  i.  385  ;  "Works 
of  Hamilton,"  cited,  i.  390  note, 
391  note. 

"  London  Public  Ledger,"  on  papers 
of  first  Congress,  i.  331. 

"Lords  of  the  Main."  See  Stans- 
bury,  Joseph. 

Loring,  James  Spear,  his  account  of 
Gordon,  ii.  427  note. 

Lossing,  Benson  J.,  his  edition  of  "  A 
Pretty  Story,"  i.  280  note  ;  of 
"M'Fingal,"  i.  442  note;  on  title 
of  Paine's  pamphlet,  "  The  Crisis," 
ii.  38  note. 

Louis  XV.,  king  of  France,  Otis  on, 
i.  41,  42-43- 

Louis  XVI.,  king  of  France,  alliance 
with  the  United  States,  ii.  67. 

Lovelace,  Richard,  English  poet,  i. 
168. 

Low  Churchman,  as  defined  by  Bouch- 
er, i.  326. 

Loyalists,  intellectual  attitude,  i.  3  ; 
entrance  into  American  literature, 
i.  70-74  ;  their  literature  prior  to 
1774,  i.  293-295  ;  from  1774  to 
1783,  i.  295-296  ;  time  of  formation 
as  a  party,  i.  295-296  ;  nicknamed 
Tories,  i.  296  ;  prejudices  against, 
i.  296-297 ;  the  historic  attitude 


toward,  i.  297  ;  number,  i.  297-300, 
303-304  ;  distribution,  i.  298-299 ; 
claim  Revolutionists  were  a  minor- 
ity, i  299  ;  personal  quality,  i.  301- 
304 ;  in  general  the  conservative 
people,  i.  301-303  ;  college-bred 
men  among,  i.  302-303  ;  loss  suf- 
fered by  expatriation  of,  i.  303 ; 
their  logical  position,  i.  304-313: 
constitutional  argument,  i.  304-311; 
admit  maxim  "  No  taxation  without 
representation,"  i.  305-306 ;  deny 
its  violation  by  parliament,  i.  306- 
309 ;  claim  the  colonists  are  repre- 
sented in  parliament,  i.  306-309  ; 
admit  representation  is  imperfect, 
i.  309  ;  believe  reform,  not  nullifi- 
cation, the  true  remedy,  i.  309  ;  ex- 
pediency argument,  i.  311-313  ;  ex- 
pediency of  separation,  i.  311-313  ; 
on  rejecting  the  taxing  power  of 
parliament,  i.  311-313  ;  prevalent 
errors  as  to  character  and  attitude, 
i-  3I3-31 5  I  principles  and  motives, 
as  presented  by  Boucher,  i.  320-328; 
argument  against  measures  of  the 
first  Congress,  i.  334-348,  356,  361- 
367,  374-379-  394-395}  Galloway 
on  their  services  and  claims  for  con- 
siderate treatment,  i.  383  ;  argu- 
ment against  proposal  of  Independ- 
ence, i.  477,  478-481  ;  persecutions 
of,  i.  no,  296-297,  303,  316. 
318-320,  328,  351-354,  367,  393; 
satirized  by  Trumbull,  i.  435-436, 
437,  439.  443  '<  amount  and  charac- 
ter of  their  writings  from  1776  to 
1783,  ii.  51-53  ;  peculiarities  in  the 
attitude  of,  ii.  52  ;  sarcasm  on  de- 
nial of  liberty  by  Whigs,  ii.  53-56  ; 
accusing  Whigs  of  forcing  many  to 
support  the  Revolution,  ii.  53-55  ; 
on  Whig  tyranny,  ii.  55-56  ;  the 
taunt  concerning  plebean  origin  and 
occupation  of  the  Revolutionary 
leaders,  ii.  56-58  ;  think  the  Revo- 
lutionary leaders  scoundrels,  ii.  59  ; 
attacks  on  Congress,  ii.  59-61  ;  de- 
ride fiscal  policy  of  Congress,  ii.  61- 
62  ;  ridicule  depreciated  currency, 
ii.  63-64;  satirize  the  tattered  army, 
ii.  64—65  ;  jests  upon  individual 
Revolutionists,  ii.  65-67  ;  mirth 
over  the  failures  of  the  French  alli- 
ance, ii.  67-72  ;  on  the  campaign 
of  1778,  ii.  67-69  ;  of  1779,  ii.  70- 
72  ;  serious  discussion  of  the  French 
alliance  by,  ii.  72-74  ;  on  the  possi- 


INDEX. 


Loyalists  ( Continued). 
ble  calamities  of  the  French  alli- 
ance, ii.  74-77  ;  difficulty  of  identi- 
fying their  writers,  ii.  79-80  ;  on 
inconsistency  of  Whigs,  ii.  88  ;  con- 
fidence in  British  victory,  ii.  90, 
125-128  ;  not  really  at  ease,  ii.  90- 
91  ;  criticisms  on  inactivity  of  Brit- 
ish generals,  ii.  91-92 ;  optimism, 
ii.  93-94  ;  devotion  to  principle,  ii. 
95  ;  two  groups  of,  at  close  of  war, 
ii  95,  129;  the  basis  of  their  politi- 
cal system,  ii.  107-108;  Whig  hatred 
of,  ii.  140-141,  159-160  ;  social  pre- 
possessions ridiculed,  ii.  149—150  ; 
alleged  snobbishness,  ii.  150;  opin- 
ions and  purposes  as  avowed  in 
Hopkinson's  "  Two  Letters,"  ii. 
I5I-I53;  as  objects  of  satire,  ii. 
159-160,  161,  162-163  ;  Freneau's 
invectives  against,  ii.  253-255  ; 
sermons  imprecating,  ii.  308-310. 

Luther,  Martin,  i.  127,  ii.  179. 

Macaulay,  Catharine,  Stiles  to,  on  a 
Runnymede  in  America,  ii.  338. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  i.  429. 

McCarty,  "  National  Songs,"  cited, 
ii.  183  note. 

M'Cloud,  Captain,  advice  to  Prescott, 
ii.  231. 

McClurg,  James,  song-writer  of  the 
Revolution,  ii.  172. 

McCormick,  Samuel  Jarvis,  edits  re- 
print of  Peters's  "  General  History," 
ii.  412  note  ;  articles  on  Peters,  ii. 
416  note. 

Macdonald,  Sir  John,  statesmanship 
of,  anticipated  by  Carter,  i.  143. 

McDougall,  Alexander,  pre-Revolu- 
tionary  occupation,  ii.  57. 

"  M'Fingall."     See  Trumbull,  John. 

McKean,  Thomas,  on  number  of 
Loyalists;  i.  300,  303. 

McMahon,  John  Van  Lear,  "  Histori- 
cal View/'  cited,  i.  102  note. 

McMaster,  John  Bach,  on  writings  of 
Franklin,  ii.  362,  367. 

Macpherson,  in  "  The  Death  of  Gen- 
eral Montgomery,"  ii.  220-222. 

Macpherson,  James,  Scottish  poet,  i. 
415,  447- 

Madison,  James,  rank,  i.  273  note  : 
Jefferson  to,  on  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence, i.  508  ;  classmates  of, 
i.  173,  ii.  299. 

"  Magazine  of  American  History," 
cited,  i.  351,  ii.  24,  25,  148,  229,  245. 


Maitland,  Lieutenant-Colonel,  rein- 
forces Prevost  at  Savannah,  ii.  69, 
71- 

Malone,  Edmund,  Hamilton  to,  on 
Jenyns,  i,  81  note. 

Manly,  John,  i.  194. 

Mansfield,  Lord,  i.  310,  ii.  169,  263, 
327  ;  satirized,  i.  116,  263  ;  as  Lord 
Mocklaw  in  "  The  Fall  of  British 
Tyranny."  ii.  200—203  ;  his  opinion 
of  Franklin's  "  Edict,"  ii.  380. 

Manufacturers,  American,  laws 
against,  i.  283—284  and  note. 

Markoe,  on  capture  of  Fort  Lee,  ii.  37. 

Mason,  John,  probable  author  of 
"Liberty's  Call,"  ii.  1 80  note. 

Mason,  William,  English  poet,  i.  415. 

"  Massachusettensis,"  pseudonym. 
See  Leonard,  Daniel. 

Massachusetts,  struggle  of  house  with 
governor,  i.  40-41  ;  appeals  toother 
colonies,  i.  270 ;  their  response,  i. 
270-271,  289;  act  of  banishment, 
i.  302-303,  367  ;  house  on  Indepen- 
dence (1768),  i.  459;  provisional 
government,  ii.  282  ;  inauguration 
of  new  government,  ii.  304. 

"  Massachusetts  Historical  Society 
Collections,"  reprint  of  Hopkins's 
history  in,  ii.  note  383-384. 

"  Massachusetts  Historical  Society 
Proceedings,"  cited  in  notes,  i.  52, 
473,  ii-  4,  395,  3y8,  405,  408. 

"  Materials  towards  a  History  of  the 
American  Baptists."  See  Edwards, 
Morgan. 

Mather,  Cotton,  ii.  331,  398,  405. 

Mather,  Increase,  ii.dps. 

Mauduit,  IsraeLt>Sorne  Thoughts" 
erroneously  attributed  to,  i.  57  note. 

Maxwell,  William,  pre-Revolutionary 
occupation,  ii.  58. 

May,  Sir  Erskine,  on  power  of  polit- 
ical press,  i.  21  ;  on  George  III.,  i. 

513. 

Mayhew,  Jonathan,  career,  i.  121, 
125  ;  gifts  for  leadership,  i.  121- 
124  ;  influence  on  young  radicals  of 
the  Revolution,  i.  122  ;  heterodoxy, 
ii.  125  ;  activity  as  a  writer,  i.  125- 
127;  published  writings,  i.  126-127; 
a  champion  of  individualism,  i.  127; 
traits  as  a  sermon-writer,  i.  128  ; 
rationalism,  i.  128-130  ;  defiance  of 
authority,  i.  130-131  ;  demands 
practical  religious  thinking,  i.  131  ; 
denounces  theological  rancor,  i. 
131-132  ;  uses  pulpit  for  discussion 


INDEX. 


Mayhew,  Johnathan  (Continued). 
of  current  topics,  i.  132 ;  sources  of 
his  political  ideas,  i.  132  ;  states- 
man-like view  and  political  fore- 
sight, i.  133  ;  antagonism  to  Roman 
and  Anglican  Churches,  i.  133-135; 
his  grandson  an  Anglican  bishop,  i. 
135  note;  "Discourse  concerning 
Unlimited  Submission,"  i.  135-138; 
reflects  the  influence  of  Milton,  i. 
135-136;  ridicules  the  saintshipand 
martyrdom  of  Charles  I.,  i.  136-137; 
on  the  people's  right  to  disown  and 
resist  bad  rulers,  i.  137-138  ;  effects 
of  his  preaching,  i.  138-139;  dis- 
course on  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act, 
i.  139  ;  pleads  for  colonial  union,  i. 
139-140  ;  Church's  elegy  on,  i.  185, 
186 ;  representative  Revolutionary 
preacher,  ii.  279  note. 

"  Meddler,  The."  See  Trumbull, 
John. 

Meigs,  Josiah,  on  Stiles's  Latin,  ii.  333 
note. 

Meigs,  Major  Return  Jonathan, 
"  Journal  of  Occurrences,"  ii.  417. 

"  Memoirs  of  the  Historical  Society 
of  Pennsylvania,"  cited  in  notes,  i. 
161,  ii.  386,  387. 

Middlesex  resolutions,  epigram  on,  ii. 
159-160. 

"  Midnight  Consultations."  See  Fre- 
neau,  Philip. 

"  Military  Journal  of  the  American 
Revolutionary  War. "  See  Thacher, 
James. 

Miller,  Heinrich,  i.  371  note. 

Mills,  Jedediah,  Hopkins  answer  to, 
i.  205  note. 

Mills,  Nathaniel,  i.  356  note. 

Milton,  John,  i.  37,  180,  210,  507  ;  as 
a  writer  of  pamphlets,  i.  19  ;  influ- 
ence on  Mayhew,  i.  132,  135-136; 
on  Trumbull,  i.  447  ;  Odell  in- 
debted to,  ii.  118  ;  quoted  by  An- 
dros,  ii.  240. 

Miner,  Charles,  "  History  of  Wyom- 
ing," cited,  ii.  183  note. 

"  Modern  Cathechisms,"  Loyalist  arti- 
cle in  "  New  York  Gazette,"  ii.  57. 

Moland,  John,  Dickinson's  legal  pre- 
ceptor, ii.  22. 

Molineux,  William,  Tory  political 
satirist,  ii.  80. 

Moncrieffe,  James,  ii.  71. 

Montague,  George,  satirized  by  Fre- 
neau,  i.  425. 

Montcalm,    Marquis    de,    in    "The 


Death  of  General  Montgomery,"  ii. 

221,   222. 

Montesquieu,  studied  by  Samuel 
Adams,  ii.  12. 

Montgomery,  General  Richard,  ii.  229; 
captures  Montreal,  i.  402-3  ;  ghost 
of,  in  "  A  Dialogue,"  ii.  36  ;  pris- 
oners captured  by,  ii.  101  ;  in  "  The 
Fall  of  British  Tyranny,"  ii.  207  ; 
Brackenridge's  poem  on  death  of, 
ii.  210,  218-224,  299  note. 

"  Monthly  Review,"  estimate  of 
Peters's  "General  History  of  Con- 
necticut," ii.  413. 

Moore,  Frank,  "Ballad  History  of 
the  American  Revolution,"  cited  in 
notes,  i.  241,  254,  255,  256,  257,  ii. 
162,  180  ;  "Songs  and  Ballads," 
cited  in  notes,  i.  412,  ii.  55,  56,  69 
72,  160, 163, 169-173,  180-182,  186; 
"  Diary  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion," cited  in  notes,  i.  252,  253, 
408,  409,  411,  473,  515,  516,  ii.  37, 
55,56,77,148,165,362;  edits  "Ma- 
terials for  History,"  ii.  243  note. 

Moore,  George  Henry,  characterizes 
Galloway,  i.  370 ;  monograph  on 
"  The  Treason  of  Charles  Lee,"  i. 
400  note;  settles  Dickinson's  author- 
ship of  "  The  Declaration  on  Tak- 
ing up  Arms,"  ii.  25  note. 

Moore,  John  Hamilton,  chooses  Car- 
ver as  a  representative  American 
traveller,  i.  148  note. 

Mordecai.     See  Franklin,  Benjamin. 

Morgan,  Daniel,  in  "  The  Death  of 
General  Montgomery,"  ii.  222,  224. 

Morley,  John,  on  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence, i.  517-518. 

Morris,  Gouverneur,  Livingston  to, 
on  disposal  of  Rivington,  ii.  20  ; 
satirized  by  Odell,  ii.  nS,  120. 

Morris,  Margaret,  aids  Odell  in  hid- 
ing, ii.  103-104  ;  her  account  of  it, 
ii.  104-105. 

Morris,  Robert,  position  on  Independ- 
ence, i.  483  ;  as  a  financier,  ii.  24, 
396  ;  Tory  jests  upon,  ii.  65-66  ; 
satirized  by  Odell,  ii.  nS,  119-120. 

Morse,  John  T.,  Jr.,  "  Life  of  Hamil- 
ton," i.  385  note  ;  "  Thomas  Jeffer- 
son," cited,  i.  520  note;  "Benja- 
min," cited,  ii.  360  note. 

Morton,  Nathaniel,  ii.  398. 

"  Motley  Assembly,  The,"  a  farce 
satirizing  a  fashionable  clique  in 
Boston,  ii.  225-227  ;  Mercy  Warren 
suggested  as  author  of,  ii.  227  note. 


5I2 


INDEX. 


Murray,  John,  induced  to  publish  the 
third  volume  of  Hutchinson's  "  His- 
tory," ii.  405  note. 

"  My  Generous  Heart  Disdains."  See 
Hopkinson,  Francis. 

"My  Love  is  Gone  to  Sea."  See 
Hopkinson,  Francis. 

Nagle,  pre-Revolutionary  occupation, 
ii.  58. 

Napoleon  I.,  i.  172. 

"  Narrative  of  Colonel  Ethan  Allen's 
Captivity."  See  Allen,  Col.  Ethan. 

' '  Narrative  of  the  Capture  and  Treat- 
ment of  John  Dodge. "  See  Dodge, 
John. 

Navigation  Acts,  i.  283. 

"  National  Portrait  Gallery,"  cited,  i. 
164  note. 

Neill,  Edward  Duffield,  cited,  ii.  286 
note,  291  note. 

New  England,  intellectual  activity  of, 
i.  184-185  ;  lack  of  poetic  life,  i. 
185-187;  beginnings  of  new  literary 
life,  i.  187,  193-221. 

"  New  England  Chronicle,"  cited,  ii. 
229  note. 

"  New  England  Historical  and  Gene- 
ological  Register,"  cited,  ii.  395 
note,  401  note. 

New  Hampshire,  Revolutionary  Con- 
gress of,  disavows  Independence, 
Dec.  25  (1775),  i.  461-462. 

"New  Hampshire  Gazette,"  cited,  i. 
254  note. 

New  Haven,  as  a  literary  centre,  i.  n. 

New  Jersey,  College  of  (Princeton 
College),  seat  of  new  literary  life,  i. 
ii,  173-174,  180-183,  187. 

"  New  Jersey  Gazette,"  satire  on  Ar- 
nold in,  ii.  165  ;  on  Franklin,  ii. 

"  New  London  Gazette,"  cited  in 
notes,  i.  99-101. 

"New  Song."  See  Stansbury,  Jo- 
seph. 

"  New  Song  to  an  Old  Tune,"  a  jo- 
cose anathema  of  tea,  i.  256-257. 

"New  Song  to  the  Tune  of  'The 
British  Grenadiers,' "  satire  deriding 
British  troops,  i.  412-413. 

New  York,  address  to  legislature  of,  i 
34(>-348  ;  its  lack  of  a  charter,  i. 
387. 

New  York  city,  as  a  literary  centre, 
i.  ii  ;  tea  ships  sent  back  from  i 
287  and  note. 

"New    York    Gazette,"   printed    by 


James  Rivington  ;  on  "  Common 
Sense,"  i.  473;  prints  "A  Modern 
Catechism,"  ii.  57  ;  ridicules  Con- 
gressional currency,  ii.  63-64  ;  jests 
on  individual  Revolutionists,  ii.  66- 
67  ;  reservoir  of  Loyalist  humor  and 
sarcasm,  ii.  67  note  ;  on  French 
and  Papal  despotism  in  America,  ii. 
75-77;  publishes  "The  Congratu- 
lation," ii.  107  note. 

"  New  York  Journal,"  cited,  i.  255 
note,  390  note. 

"New  York  Packet,"  cited,  i.  253 
note,  391  note. 

Newspapers,  position  in  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries,  i.  17-18  ; 
merit  of  contributions  to,  i.  18-19  \ 
power  and  worth  of  these  contri- 
butions, i.  20-22  ,  number  of 
American  (1768),  i.  237  ;  Indepen- 
dence first  advocated  in,  i.  257 
note  ;  Samuel  Adams  recognizes  the 
power  of,  ii.  8-9. 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  i.  318,  ii.  331. 

Niles,  Hezekiah,  "  Principles  and 
Acts,"  cited  in  notes,  i.  113,  185, 
492,  493,  ii.  144,  426,  427. 

Niles,  Nathaniel,  personal  history,  ii. 
T74-X75  I  "The  American  Hero," 
ii.  175-177. 

Niles,  Nathaniel,  grandson  of  the  pre- 
ceding, ii.  177  note. 

"Nineteenth  Century,"  cited,  i.  502 
note,  503  note. 

Non-consumption  agreement,  adopted 
by  Congress,  i.  332-334;  denounced, 
i.  277-278,  334-342. 

Non-exportation  agreement,  adopted 
by  Congress,  i.  332-334  ;  attacked, 
i-  275,  334-342. 

Non-importation  agreement,  Town- 
shend's  measures,  i.  233  ;  the  true 


remedy,  i.   275  ;   adopted  by  Con- 

-334     de 
277-278,  334-342. 


gress,   i.    332-334  ;    denounced,   i. 


North,  Lord,  i.  255,  354,  404,  482, 
497,  ii.  19,  156,  169,  327  ;  kindness 
to  Hopkinson,  i.  166-167  ;  policy, 
i.  249  ;  bills,  i.  286  and  notes  ;  speech 
against  repealing  revenue  act,  i. 
287  and  note  ;  failure  of  his  plan,  i. 
294  ;  satirized  by  Freneau,  i.  425  ; 
by  Trumbull,  i.  434  ;  puns  on  his 
name,  i.  263,  480,  489,  490  ;  address 
to,  on  his  plan  for  conciliation,  i. 
496-497  ;  mouthpiece  of  the  king,  i. 
514  ;  in  "  The  Fall  of  British  Tyr- 
anny," ii.  200. 


INDEX. 


5'3 


"  North  Carolina  Magazine,"  cited, 
ii.  173  note. 

"  Notes  and  Queries,"  material  in,  on 
Boucher,  i.  328  note  ;  cited  in  notes 
i.  317,  318,  320,  460. 

"Novanglus,"  pseudonym.  See 
Adams,  John. 

Nullification,  doctrine  of,  taints 
American  arguments,  i.  70  ;  as- 
saulted, i.  70-74,  76,  81-85  ;  openly 
avowed,  i.  115  ;  development,  i. 
477- 

"  Objections  to  the  Taxation  of  Our 
American  Colonies,  Briefly  Consid- 
ered." See  Jenyns,  Soame. 

*'  Observations  on  the  Boston  Port- 
Bill."  See  Quincy,  Josiah,  Jr. 

O'Callaghan,  E.  B.,  i.  78  note. 

"  Ode,  Attempted  in  the  Manner  of 
Horace."  See  Evans,  Nathaniel. 

**Ode  to  Sleep."  See  Trumbull, 
John. 

Odel,  General,  death,  ii.  236. 

Odell,  J.,  as  a  satirist,  i.  26,  172-173, 
ii.  80,  1 59  ;  part  taken  by,  prior  to 
1774,  i.  295  ;  ancestry,  ii.  99  ;  per- 
sonal history,  ii.  99-100  ;  position 
among  Loyalist  writers,  ii.  98-99  ; 
relentless  spirit  in  satire,  ii.  98-99  ; 
disapproves  ministerial  policy,  but 
believes  in  constitutional  opposition, 
ii.  loo ;  abstains  from  participation 
in  the  controversy  until  June,  1775, 
ii.  loo-ioi  ;  outrage  upon  his  pri- 
vate correspondence,  ii.  101  ;  ode 
for  the  king's  birthday,  ii.  101-102, 
126  ;  parole  to  remain  within  his 
parish,  ii.  .102-103  ;  gives  fresh 
offense,  ii.  103  ;  is  hunted  from  his 
hiding-places,  ii.  103-105  ;  takes 
refuge  within  the  British  lines,  ii. 
103—105  ;  received  into  British  con- 
fidence, ii.  105-106  ;  his  conception 
of  the  proper  use  of  satire,  ii.  106  ; 
chief  satires  "The  Word  of  Con- 
gress," "  The  Congratulation," 
"The  Feu  de  Joie  "  and  "The 
American  Times, "  ii.  106-107;  their 
character,  ii.  107  ;  follows  the  clas- 
sical English  models,  ii.  107  ;  ex- 
ponent of  Loyalist  conscience  and 
emotion,  ii.  107-108  ;  the  basis  of 
their  political  system,  ii.  107-108  ; 
denounces  ministerial  policy  and 
American  violence,  ii.  108  ;  believes 
Revolution  unjustifiable,  ii.  108— 
109  ;  a  phrensy  produced  by  politi- 


cal sorcery,  ii.  109-110;  the  sorcerers 
compounding  the  broth  of  rebellion, 
ii.  109  ;  its  ingredients,  ii.  109-110  ; 
the  futile  efforts  of  sane  men  to  stop 
this  madness,  ii.  1 1  r  ;  the  perpetual 
renewal  of  error,  ii.  in  ;  the  inex- 
haustible supply  of  rebel  chiefs,  ii. 
1 1 1— 1 1 2 ;  Ameri  can  society  ru  1  ed  by 
the  worst,  ii.  112;  describes  Con- 
gress as  the  centre  of  all  mischief, 
ii.  113-114;  arraigns  Congress  for 
duplicity,  ii.  114-115  ;  satirizes  its 
servants,  ii.  115-117  ;  arraigns 
Revolutionary  chiefs,  ii.  117-120; 
attacks  others,  ii.  120-122  ;  compre- 
hensiveness of  his  attacks,  ii.  122- 
123 ;  relents  toward  Laurens,  ii. 
123-124  ;  indictment  of  Washing- 
ton, ii.  124-125  ;  confidence  in  Brit- 
ish victory,  ii.  125-128  ;  predicts 
defeat  of  the  rebels,  ii.  126-127  \ 
'•Old  Year  and  the  New,"  ii.  127- 
128  ;  never  relents,  ii.  129  ;  career 
in  Nova  Scotia,  ii.  129 ;  satirizes 
Duffield,  ii.  314-315. 

Odell,  William,  ancestor  of  Jonathan 
Odell,  ii.  99. 

"O'er  the  Hills  Far  Away."  See 
Hopkinson,  Francis. 

"  Old  Jersey  Captive."  See  Andros, 
Thomas. 

"Old  Man's  Song  (The),  "ii.  170-171. 

"Old  Year  and  the  New."  See 
Odell,  Jonathan. 

Oliver,  Peter,  i.  439,  445  ;  as  Hazle- 
rod  in  Mercy  Warren's  "Group," 
ii.  195-197. 

' '  On  the  Conqueror  of  America  Shut 
up  in  Boston."  See  Freneau, 
Philip. 

"  On  the  Present  Situation  of  Ameri- 
can Affairs."  See  Smith,  William. 

"  On  the  Present  Troubles."  See 
Stansbury,  Joseph. 

"  On  the  Rise  and  Progress  of  the 
Differences  between  Great  Britain 
and  her  American  Colonies."  See 
Franklin,  Benjamin. 

"  Oppression,"  satire  by  an  American 
verse-writer  in  London,  i.  115-120  ; 
outline,  i.  116-120  ;  authorship,  i. 
120  note. 

Osborne,  Sir  George,  departs  for  Eng- 
land, ii.  292. 

Osgood,  David,  sermon  on  day  of  na- 
tional thanksgiving,  ii.  311. 

Oswald,  Eleazer,  in  attack  on  Quebec, 
ii.  222. 


5 '4 


INDEX. 


Otis,  James,  father  of  the  following, 
ii.  419. 

Otis,  James,  i.  56,  66,  69,  ii.  420,  421  ; 
early  career,  i.  36  ;  interest  in  clas- 
sical studies,  i.  36-37  ;  sound  taste^ 
in  modern  literature,  i.  37  ;  traits  as~ 
a  writer,  i.  37-39  ;  part  in  the  Revo- 
lution, i.  30-31  ;  speech  against 
writs  of  assistance,  i.  32-36  ;  a  leader 
of  public  opinion,  i.  39 ;  calls  to 
account  the  royal  governor,  i.  40- 
41  ;  publishes  "  The  Vindication  of 
the  House  of  Representatives,"  i. 
41  ;  its  importance  and  leading  prop- 
ositions, i.  41-44 ;  its  relation  to 
subsequent  Revolutionary  literature, 
i.  43-44 ;  recognizes  new  British 
colonial  policy,  i.  44-47  ;  arraigns 
this  policy  in  "The  Rights  of  the 
British  Colonies," i.  47-51  ;  its  char- 
acter, i.  47-48  ;  outline,  i.  48-51  ; 
object,  i.  51  ;  effect,  i.  51-52  ;  as  to 
his  authorship  of  the  preface  in 
Wood's  "New  England  Prospect," 
i.  52  note  ;  Howard's  opinion  of,  i. 
70-71  ;  attacks  the  Halifax  Gentle- 
man in  "  A  Vindication,"  i.  75-76  ; 
the  Halifaxian's  reply  to,  i.  76-77  ; 
rejoins  in  "  Brief  Remarks,"  i.  77- 
79  ;  its  character,  i.  78  ;  authorship, 
i.  78  note ;  replies  to  Jenyns  in 
"Considerations  on  Behalf  of  the 
Colonies,"  i.  86-90  ;  its  method,  i. 
86  ;  argument,  i.  86-90  ;  ridicules 
doctrine  of  virtual  representation,  i. 
86-88  ;  scoffs  at  the  alleged  need  of 
British  protection,  i.  88  ;  discusses 
constitutional  questions,  i.  88-89  '< 
advises  British  government  to  be 
careful,  i.  89-90;  rank,  i.  122,  123  ; 
Mayhew  to,  on  colonial  union,  i. 
139-140;  course  toward  Town- 
shend's  measures,  i.  232  ;  receives 
and  publishes  Dickinson's"  Liberty 
Song."  ii.  240;  on  Independence 
(1768),  i.  459;  alleged  source  of 
Declaration  of  Independence,  i. 
505,  507-508  ;  on  Samuel  Adams  as 
a  writer,  ii.  3  ;  speeches  compared 
with  those  of  Samuel  Adams,  ii. 
5-6  ;  succeeded  by  Dickinson,  ii. 
32;  m  Mercy  Warren's  "  Adula- 
teur,"  ii.  193  ;  in  her  "Group,"  ii. 
197  ;  brutal  beating  received  by,  ii. 
197  note  ;  on  power  of  pulpit,  ii. 
278;  Hutchinson's  description  of  ii 
407-408. 


Paca,  William,  ii.  66. 

Paine,  Robert  Treat,  eulogizes  May- 
hew,  i.  122. 

Paine,  Thomas,  Adams  on  source  of 

If  his  ideas,  i.  44  ;  arguments  of,  an- 
ft  ticipated,  i.  275  ;  power  as  a  writer, 

i  i.  236,  348-349  ;  arrival  in  America, 
i.  452  ;  previous  history,  i.  452—454  ; 
first  employment  in  Philadelphia,  i. 
454-455  I  eagerness  for  political  in- 
formation, 455-456  ;  gifts  and  limi- 
tations, i.  456 ;  favors  reconciliation, 
i.  456-457  ;  changes  his  opinion,  i. 
458  ;  publishes  "Common  Sense," 
i.  431,  458  ;  origin  of  the  title,  i. 
458  note  ;  its  title  indicates  its  char- 
acter, i.  462  ;  an  appeal  from  tech- 
nical law  to  common  sense,  i.  462- 
463  ;  its  argument,  i.  463-468  ;  on 
government,  i.  463-464  ;  on  state  of 
affairs  in  America,  i.  464  ;  on  filial 
sentiment,  i.  464-465  ;  on  Ameri- 
can prosperity,  i.  465  ;  on  disadvan- 
tages of  American  connection  with 
England,  i.  465-468  ;  on  Indepen- 
dence, i.  466-468  ;  the  pamphlet 
fitted  for  its  purpose,  i.  468  ;  effect- 
iveness of  its  method,  i.  468-469  ; 
uttered  at  the  right  moment,  i.  469  ; 
editions  of,  i.  469-470  ;  its  reputed 
authorship,  i.  470-471  ;  its  power, 
i.  471-474,  475-476  ;  first  serious 
public  avowal  of  doctrine  of  Inde- 
pendence, i.  478;  replies  to  "  Com- 
mon Sense,"  i.  479-481,  487  ;  in 
Hopkmson's  "  Prophecy,"  i.  490 
and  note  ;  succeeds  Dickinson,  ii. 
32  ;  literary  work  between  January 
and  July,  1776,  ii.  35-36;  military 
services,  ii.  36-37,  40  ;  the  writing 
of  "  The  Crisis,"  ii.  37-38  ;  publi- 
cation of  the  first  number  ii.  38  ; 
its  title,  ii.  38  note  ;  its  appeal  to  the 
emotions  and  needs  of  the  hour,  ii. 
38-39  ;  other  numbers  of,  ii.  41  ; 
his  labors  and  sacrifices,  ii.  39-41  ; 
various  employments,  ii.  40  ;  trip  to 
France,  ii.  40  ,  chief  service  after 
1776,  ii.  40-41  ;  poverty,  ii.  41  ; 
the  secret  of  his  power,  ii.  41-42  ;  a 
great  journalist,  ii.  41  ;  interpreted 
the  thought  of  the  people,  ii.  42  ; 
range  of  his  discussions,  ii.  42  ;  rep- 
resents the  faith  of  the  people  in 
themselves  and  God.  ii.  42-43  ;  his 
scornful  addresses  to  Lord  Howe, 
ii.  43-44;  to  the  British  commis- 
sioners, ii  44-45  ;  to  Sir  William 


INDEX. 


515 


Paine,  Thomas,  (Conlintted). 

Howe,  ii.  45-46  ;  his  inspiring  ap- 
peals, ii.  46—47  ;  points  out  new 
dangers  and  new  duties,  ii.  47-48  ; 
on  financial  dishonor  and  disunion, 
ii.  48-49  ;  pays  $300  for  stockings, 
ii.  63  ;  Tory  jests  upon,  ii.  65—67  ; 
satirized  by  Odell,  ii.  114,  115-116  ; 
"The  American  Patriot's  Prayer" 
ascribed  to,  ii.  note  178-179;  title 
of  his  pamphlet  "  The  Crisis  "  an- 
ticipated, ii.  303  note. 

Palfrey.  J.  G.,  estimate  of  Hutchin- 
son,  ii.  408. 

Pamphlets,  place  occupied  by,  i.  17, 
19-20 ;  ancestor  of  newspaper,  i. 
19  ;  classic  period  of,  i.  19-20 ; 
chief  literary  weapon  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, i.  20  ;  power  and  worth  of,  i. 
20-22. 

Paper  money,  amount  issued  by  Con- 
gress,  ii.   62 ;    its  depreciation,   ii. 
-  62-63. 

Paris,  Treaty  of,  i.  57,  92. 

Park,  E.  A.,  "Works  of  Emmons," 
cited,  i.  191  note. 

Parkman,  Francis,  estimate  of  Ro- 
gers's  "  Ponteach,"  ii.  191;  on 
copies  of  this  work,  ii.  192  note. 

Parliament,  passes  new  revenue  act 
(1764),  i.  46  ;  objections  to  this  act, 
i-  54-55,  66-68  ;  Declaratory  Act, 
ii.  226  ;  colonies  owe  no  allegiance 
to,  i.  229-231,  273,  386,  392  ;  Town- 
shend's  measures,  i.  231-232  ;  reso- 
lutions in  support  of  ministerial 
policy,  i.  243  ;  measures  of,  in  1774, 
i.  269  ;  as  Nobleman's  Wife  in  "  A 
Pretty  Story,"  i.  283-290  ;  suprem- 
acy of,  affirmed  by  Otis,  i.  50,  88- 
89  ;  by  Howard,  i.  72-74  ;  by  Jen- 
yns,  i.  82-84  ;  by  Dulany,  i.  107, 
note  112-113;  by  Massachusetts 
assembly,  i.  233  ;  by  Loyalists,  i. 
310  ;  by  Harcourt,  i.  310-311  ;  by 
Todd,  i.  311  ;  by  Leonard,  i.  362  ; 
by  Galloway,  i.  375,  378,  379  ;  satir- 
ized by  Trumbull,  i.  434. 

Partisanship,  its  intolerance,  ii.  159. 

Parton,  James,  "  Life  of  Franklin," 
cited,  ii.  367  note. 

Pater,  Walter  H.,  quoted,  i.  29. 

4 '  Patriot  Preachers  of  the  American 
Revolution,"  cited  in  notes,  i.  139, 
296,  312,  316. 

Paulding,  John,  ballad   on,  ii.   181- 

132. 

"  Pausing  American  Loyalist  (The)," 


Tory  poem  on  signing  the  ' '  asso- 
ciation," ii,  54-55. 

Paxton,  Charles,  i.  397. 

Peale,  Charles  Wilson,  John  Adams's 
•visit  at  studio  of,  i.  162-163. 

Pearson,  Captain,  commander  of  the 
"  Seraphis,"  ii.  263. 

Pemberton,  Thomas,  i.  163. 

"  Penman  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion." See  Dickinson,  John. 

Penn,  John,  proprietor  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, Hopkinson  dines  with,  i.  166. 

Penn,  William,  i.  321,  ii.  293  note, 
387. 

"  Pennsylvania  Evening  Post,"  on 
power  of  "  Common  Sense,"  i.  472  ; 
cited  in  notes,  i.  411,  469,  471. 

"  Pennsylvania  Gazette,"  "  Letters  of 
Cato  "  appear  in,  i.  487  ;  cited,  ii. 
36  note. 

"  Pennsylvania  Journal,"  cited,  i.  469 
note,  ii.  36  note,  38  note. 

"  Pennsylvania  Ledger,"  cited,  ii.  56 
note,  148  note. 

"  Pennsylvania  Magazine,"  cited,  i. 
412  note,  454  note. 

"  Pennsylvania  Magazine  of  History 
and  Biography,"  cited  in  notes,  i. 
102,  164, 165,  166,  167,  ii.  131,  286, 
291.  292. 

"  Pennsylvania  Packet,"  cited  in  notes, 
i.  409,  ii.  18,  36,  164,  180. 

"  Pennsylvania  Song  (The),"  ii.  170. 

Pepperell,  Sir  William,  in  Mercy  War- 
ren's "  Group,"  ii.  195. 

Percy,  Lord,  reinforces  British  at  Lex- 
ington, i.  402  ;  satirized  by  Freneau, 
i.  419,  420,  421  ;  in  "  The  Fall  of 
British  Tyranny,"  ii.  200,  205. 

Perry,  Thomas  Sergeant,  "  Life  of 
Lieber,"  cited,  ii.  169  note. 

Perry,  William  Stevens,  Bishop  of 
Iowa,  his  "  History  of  the  Ameri- 
can Episcopal  Church,"  cited,  i. 
480  note. 

Peters,  John  S.,  on  Samuel  Peters,  ii. 
412-413  ;  his  account  of  Samuel 
Peters,  ii.  416  note. 

Peters,  Phillis.  See  Wheatly,  Phil- 
lis. 

Peters,  Richard,  as  a  letter-writer,  i. 
13- 

Peters,  Rev.  Samuel,  i.  436  ;  career, 
ii.  412-413  ;  publishes  "A  General 
History  of  Connecticut,"  ii.  412  ; 
its  notoriety,  ii.  413  ;  its  gr  -  esque 
fabrications,  ii.  413-414;  not  in- 
tended for  an  historical  romance  or 


5i6 


INDEX. 


Peters,  Rev.  Samuel  (Continued). 
satire,  ii.  414 ;  his  mania  for  facts 
having  no  existence,  ii.  414-415  ; 
"  History  of  the  Rev.  Hugh  Peters," 
ii.  415  note  ;  materials  on,  ii.  note 
415-416. 

Philadelphia,  seat  of  new  literary  life, 
i.  ii,  157-171  ;  tea  ships  sent  hack 
from,  i.  287  and  note  ;  the  focus  of 
the  debate  over  Independence,  i. 
486 ;  agitation  in  over  Independ- 
ence, i  487. 

Philadelphia,  College  of,  commence- 
ment at,  in  1766,  i.  224-225. 

Philip  II.,  King  of  Spain,  i.  501,  510. 

Phillips,  Frederick,  i.  439. 

Pickering,  Timothy,  on  number  of 
Tories  in  Pennsylvania,  i.  298. 

Pierce,  Joseph,  on  diligence  of  Sam- 
uel Adams,  ii.  ii. 

Piercy,  William,  Stansbury's  epigram 
on  his  sermon,  ii.  85. 

Pigot,  Sir  Robert,  in  "  The  Battle  of 
Bunker's  Hill,"  ii.  218. 

Pindar,  i.  213. 

Pinkney,  William,  opinion  of  Dulany, 
i.  102. 

Pitcairn,  Major  John,  his  contempt 
for  Americans,  i.  408-409 ;  in  "The 
Fall  of  British  Tyranny,"  ii.  204. 

Pitt,  William.  See  Chatham,  Earl 
of. 

Pitt,  William,  son  of  preceding,  i.  102. 

"  Plain  Truth,"  Loyalist  pamphlet 
opposing  Independence,  i.  479  ;  re- 
ply to,  by  Witherspoon,  i.  479  note  ; 
its  authorship,  i.  note  479-480. 

"Plan  of  a  Proposed  Union."  See 
Galloway,  Joseph. 

"  Planting  and  Growth  of  Provi- 
dence." See  Hopkins,  Stephen. 

Plato,  i.  213,  ii.  331  ;  a  source  of 
Mayhew's  political  ideas,  i.  132. 

Plautus,  i.  198. 

"  Poems  on  Several  Occasions."  See 
Evans,  Nathaniel. 

"  Poetical  Epistle  to  George  Washing- 
ton." See  Wharton,  C.  H. 

"  Poetical  Epistle  to  His  Wife."  See 
Stansbury,  Joseph. 

"Political  Balance  (The)."  See 
Freneau,  Philip. 

' '  Political  Catechism. "  See  Hopkin- 
son,  Francis. 

"Ponteach."  See  Rogers,  Major 
Robert. 

Pontiac,  Indian  chief,  i.i5i  and  note. 

Poole,  Matthew,  i.  218. 


Poole,  William  Frederick,  estimate  of 

Hutchinson's    "History,"    ii,  394; 

opinion  of  Hutchinson,  ii.  395  ;  on 

differences  between  original  draught 

and  printed  text  of  his  "  History," 

ii.  401  note- 
Poore,    Benjamin    Perley,    "  Federal 

and  State  Constitutions,"  cited,   i. 

462  note,  324  note. 
Pope,  Alexander,  i,  37,  210 ;  relation 

to  social  and  literary  satire,  i.  22  ; 

influence  on    American    writers,    i. 

23.  -M5,  447.  «•  JO7  ;  parody  on  his 
"  Eloiza  to  Abelard,"  i.  162  and  note  ; 

object  in  "The  Dunciad,"  i.  448— 

449- 

Porter,  Eliphalet,  sermon  on  day  of 
national  thanksgiving,  ii.  310-311. 

"  Postscript  (A)."  See  Ferguson, 
Elizabeth. 

"  Power  and  Grandeur  of  Great 
Britain  Founded  on  the  Liberty  of 
the  Colonies,"  pamphlet  showing 
gravity  of  the  situation  (1768),  i 
242-243. 

"  Power  of  Fancy."  See  Freneau, 
Philip. 

Pownall,  Thomas,  on  Townshend's 
measures,  i.  231  ;  friend  of  Ameri- 
can colonies,  i.  309,  312-313. 

Pratt,  lawyer,  obtains  wife  of  Rogers 
ii.  391- 

Prescott,  General  Richard,  treatment 
of  Ethan  Allen,  ii.  231-232. 

Preston,  Captain,  in  Mercy  Warren's 

"  Adulateur,"  ii.  193. 

"  Pretty  Story  (A)."  See  Hopkin- 
son,  Francis. 

Prevost,  General  George,  repulses  at- 
tack on  Savannah,  ii.  69-70. 

Price,  Richard,  i.  44,  405  ;  on  Pro- 
vost Smith's  sermon,  ii.  318. 

Priestly,  Joseph,  i.  44  ;  Franklin  to, 
on  the  situation  (1775),  i.  403-405  ; 
on  Provost  Smith's  sermon,  ii.  318. 

Prime,  Benjamin  Young,  song-writer 
of  the  Revolution,  ii.  172. 

Princeton  College.  See  College  of 
New  Jersey. 

Prior,  Sir  James.  "  Life  of  Malone," 
cited,  i.  8 1  note. 

Prior,  Matthew,  English  poet,  i.  447. 

Prison  literature,  interest  attaching 
to,  ii.  228-229  ;  Ethan  Allen's 
"  Narrative,"  ii.  229-237  ;  Dodge's 
"  Narrative "  of  his  treatment  at 
Detroit,  ii.  238  ;  Andros's  "  Cap- 
tivity on  the  Old  Jersey  Prison- 


INDEX. 


517 


Ship,"ii.  238-242;  Laurens's  "  Con- 
finement in  the  Tower,"  ii.  242- 
243,  244-245;  Freneau's  "British 
Prison-Ship,"  259-262. 

"  Progress  of  Dullness  (The)."  See 
Trumbull,  John. 

"  Prophecy,"  written  on  an  egg-shell, 
ii.  162. 

"Prophecy  (A)."  See  Hopkinson, 
Francis. 

"  Prophecy  (The)."  See  Freneau, 
Philip. 

"  Prophecy  (The),"  Tory  pamphlet  on 
French  and  Papal  despotism  in 
America,  ii.  75-77. 

Proud,  Robert,  career  and  character, 
ii.  356-387  ;  "  History  of  Pennsyl- 
vania," i.  10,  ii.  387. 

"  Providence  Gazette,"  publishes 
Hopkins's  "  Planting  and  Growth 
of  Providence,"  ii.  384  note. 

Provost,  Major,  in  "  The  Fall  of 
British  Tyranny,"  ii.  204. 

Pulaski,  Casimir,  Count,  Tory  writer 
on  death  of,  ii.  71-72  ;  satirized  by 
Odell,  ii.  120-121. 

Pulpit  of  the  Revolution,  use  of  for 
discussion  of  current  topics,  i.  132  ; 
tradition  of  leadership  inherited  by, 
ii.  278  ;  its  power,  ii.  278  ;  literary 
history,  ii.  278-279  ;  occasions  for 
political  discourse  from,  ii.  279, 
284. 

Pulsifer,  David,  ii.  169  note. 

Putnam,  General  Israel,  i.  461,  ii.  64, 
65  ;  pre- Revolutionary  occupation, 
ii.  58  ;  in  "  The  Fall  of  British 
Tyranny,"  ii.  200  ;  satirized  in 
"  The  Battle  of  Brooklyn,"  ii.  208- 
209  ;  in  "  Tbe  Battle  of  Bunker's 
Hill,"  ii.  211,  218. 

Quincy,  Josiah,  Jr.,  personal  history, 
i.  272  ;  "  Observations  on  the  Bos- 
ton Port-Bill,"  i.  271-273. 

Quincy,  Josiah,  son  of  preceding, 
"  Memoir  of  Josiah  Quincy,  Jr.," 
cited  in  notes,  i.  271-273  ;  on  repu- 
tation of  Samuel  Adams,  ii.  7. 

Quincy,  Norton,  identification  of  char- 
acters in  Mercy  Warren's  "  Group," 
ii.  195  note. 

Quincy,  Samuel  Miller,  "  Reports  of 
Cases,"  cited,  i.  32  note,  35  note. 

Ramsay,  David,  as  a  collector  of  his- 
torical materials,  ii.  419 ;  Gordon 
compares  notes  with,  ii.  424  note. 


Randall,  Henry  Stephens,  "  Life  of 
Jefferson,"  cited,  i.  509  note. 

Randolph,  Peyton,  invites  Duche  to 
open  Congress  with  prayer,  ii.  288. 

Randolph,  Edward,  Dudley's  cringing 
to,  ii.  411. 

Rawle,  William,  on  Dickinson's  law 
knowledge,  ii.  22  note. 

"  Rebels  (The)."  See  Smyth,  John 
Ferdinand. 

"  Records  of  the  Colony  of  Rhode 
Island,"  cited,  i.  80  note. 

Reed,  Joseph,  i.  370  note  ;  Washing- 
ton to,  on  power  of  "  Common 
Sense,"  i.  472. 

Reed,  William  B.,  "Life  of  Joseph 
Reed,"  cited,  ii.  99  note,  105  note. 

Representation,  historical  meaning  of, 
i.  306-307  ;  new  definition  of,  de- 
manded by  Americans,  i.  308  ;  a 
thing  of  degrees,  i.  308  ;  of  colonies 
in  Parliament,  affirmed,  i.  72-73,  83, 
305-310;  denied,  i.  50,  54,  86-88, 
103-106,  112  note  ;  imperfect  and 
its  reform  needed,  i  307-309. 

"  Resolutions  of  the  Virginia  House 
of  Burgesses."  See  Jefferson, 
Thomas. 

"  Retirement."    See  Freneau,  Philip. 

Revolution,  American,  three  stages  of, 
i.  2-3  ;  attitude  of  Loyalists  toward, 
i.  3  ;  character  and  literary  promise 
i,  4-6  ;  the  quickening  of  man's 
energies  during,  i.  7-8  ;  caused  by 
and  pivoted  on  ideas,  i.  8-9  ;  on  its 
literary  side  chiefly  a  pamphlet  war, 
i.  20.;  source  of  arguments  for,  i. 
41-44,  48-52  ;  predicted  by  Stephen 
Johnson,  i.  100 ;  fear  of  Anglican 
bishops  as  a  cause  of,  i.  133-134  ; 
grotesque  prominence  given  to  tea 
in,  i.  246-247  ;  ministerial  meas- 
ures producing,  i.  247-250 ;  the 
critical  year  in,  i.  267-269  ;  the 
work  of  an  energetic  minority,  i. 
299-300  ;  first  a  war  of  argument, 
i.  304 ;  questions  involved  in,  i. 
304—305  ;  argument  against,  i.  305— 
313  ;  transition  from  argument  to 
arms,  i.  402-403  ;  darkest  days  of, 
ii.  38  ;  Loyalist  confidence  in  defeat 
of,  ii.  125-128  ;  Odell  on  its  causes, 
ii.  108  ;  on  its  character,  ii.  109-110; 
playful  account  of  its  origin,  ii.  135- 
137  ;  as  summed  up  by  Freneau,  ii. 
271. 

Rich,  Obadiah,  erroneously  ascribes 
compilation  to  Hutchins,  1.152  note. 


5i8 


INDEX. 


Richardson,  British  officer,  ii.  217, 

Rights  of  American  colonies,  as  viewed 
by  Otis,  i.  41-43,  48-51,  86-90  ;  by 
Thacher,  i.  53-55  ;  by  Hopkins,  i. 
65-69  ;  by  Howard,  i.  71-74  ',  by 
Jenyns,  i.  83-84  ;  by  John  Adams,  i. 
97-98  ;  by  Stephen  Johnson,  i.  99- 
101  ;  by  Galloway,  i.  3?6-379  >  by 
Hamilton,  i.  386-387,  389-390. 

14  Rights  of  Colonies  Examined 
(The)."  See  Hopkins,  Stephen. 

"  Rights  of  the  British  Colonies 
Asserted  and  Proved  (The)."  See 
Otis,  James. 

Rittenhouse,  David,  i.  455. 

Rivington,  James,  i.  324  note,  400 
note,  ii.  67  note,  107  note,  326  ; 
Livingston  on  disposal  of,  ii.  20 ; 
ridiculed  by  Hopkinson,  ii.  153- 
157;  Freneau's  poems  on,  ii.  263, 
264.  See  also  "New  York  Ga- 
zette." 

Roberdeau,  General,  ii.  36. 

Robertson,  James,  royal  governor  of 
New  York,  Freneau  on  his  "  Proc- 
lamation," ii.  264. 

Robespierre,  Jefferson's  resemblance 
to,  i.  502. 

Robinson,  Edward,  on  Sampson,  ii. 
285. 

Robinson,  Henry  Crabb,  praise  of 
Woolman,  ii.  346. 

Robinson,  Matthew,  on  Franklin,  ii. 
360-361. 

Rockingham,  Marquis  of,  i.  513. 

Rodgers,  John,  sermon  on  day  of  na- 
tional thanksgiving,  ii.  311-312  ; 
on  Witherspoon,  ii.  321  note. 

Rogers,  John,  founder  of  the  Rogerine 
Baptists,  Edwards's  account  of,  ii. 
389-391- 

Rogers,  Nathaniel,  probable  author  of 
preface  in  Wood's  "  New  England 
Prospect,"  i.  52  note. 

Rogers,  Major  Robert,  i.  10,  153 ; 
governor  of  Mackinaw,  i.  144,  146  ; 
career  and  works,  i.  150-151  ; 
"  Pon  teach  ;  or,  The  Savages  of 
America,"  ii.  188-192  ;  his  ac- 
quaintance with  the  Indians,  ii. 
188-189;  method  of  this  tragedy, 
ii.  189  ;  outline  of  its  plot,  ii.  189- 

191  ;  estimate  of  the  work,  ii.  191- 

192  ;  copies  of  it,  ii.  192  note. 
Rolle,  Dennis,  i.  153. 

Roman  Catholic.     See  Catholic. 
"  Royal   Literary  Fund,"   foundation 
of,  i.  149. 


Ruggles,  Timothy,  i.  397 ;  in  Mercy 
Warren's  "Group,"  ii.  195-196. 

"  Rules  for  Reducing  a  Great  Empire 
to  a  Small  One."  See  Franklin, 
Benjamin. 

Rush,  Benjamin,  on  Paine,  i.  455,  ii. 
36  ;  suggests  title  of  Paine's  "  Com- 
mon Sense,"  i.  458  note  ;  cited,  i. 
466  note. 

Russell,  Earl,  criticism  of  the  Declar- 
ation of  Independence,  i.  501. 

Russell,  Edward,  ii.  88. 

Rutledge,  ,  objects  to  prayers 

in  Congress,  ii.  288. 

Rutledge,  Edward,  his  opinion  of 
Galloway's  "Plan,"  i.  373;  of 
Dickinson's  productions,  ii.  33. 

Sabin,  Joseph,  on  reprint  of  "Con- 
siderations," i.  115  note  ;  on  "  Op- 
pression," i.  120  note  ;  attributes 
"  The  Fall  of  British  Tyranny  "  to 
Leacock,  ii.  199  note  ;  "  Diction- 
ary of  Books,"  cited  in  notes,  ii. 
280,  293,  358. 

Sabine,  Lorenzo,  sketch  of  Galloway, 
cited,  i.  368  note  ;  criticised,  i.  370 
note;  "Loyalists  of  the  American 
Revolution,"  criticised,  i.  80  note  ; 
cited  in  notes,  ii.  99,  105,  291. 

St.  Asaph,  Bishop  of,  as  Lord  Relig- 
ion in  "  The  Fall  of  British  Tyran- 
ny," ii.  200,  202,  203. 

St.  John,  Buckingham,  as  student  at 
Yale,  i.  193. 

Salisbury,  E.  E.,  i.  101  note. 

Sampson,  Ezra,  sermon  at  the  camp  in 
Roxbury,  ii.  284-285  ;  subsequent 
works,  ii.  285  note. 

Sandeman,  Robert,  ii.  332. 

Sanderson,  John,  "Biography  of  the 
Signers,"  cited  in  notes,  i.  65,  164, 
ii.  321,  323,  325. 

Sandwich,  Lord,  contempt  for  Ameri- 
cans, i.  256,408,  411,  ii.  170;  as 
Lord  Poltroon  in  "The  Fall  of 
British  Tyranny,"  ii.  200,  203. 

Sandford,  Enoch,  account  of  Thomas 
Andros,  ii.  242  note. 

Sargent,  John,  offers  medal  for  best 
essay  on  Anglo-American  union,  i. 
224.- 

Sargent,  Winthrop,  on  treatment  of 
the  Loyalists,  i.  297  ;  ' '  Loyal 
Verses  of  Stansbury  and  Odell." 
ii.  80  note  ;  cited  in  notes,  ii.  82, 
83,  85-88,  90,  92-96,  102,  107, 
126,  127;  his  "Loyalist  Poetry 


519 


of  the  Revolution,  '  cited  in  notes, 
ii.  56,  58,  61,  98,  99,  106-108,  lio- 
118,  120-122,  124,  125,  128,  315. 

Satire,  political,  i.  22  ;  prominence,  i. 
22,  25-26  ;  impulse  given  to,  by 
English  satirists,  i.  22-25  ',  social 
and  literary,  i.  22-23,  r94-2O7,  213- 
221;  "Oppression,"  i.  115-120: 
development  of,  as  a  prominent 
form  of  Revolutionary  literature,  i. 
407  ;  on  earliest  collisions  with  the 
British  troops,  i.  408-413  ;  on  the 
military  situation  in  1775,  i.  415- 
425,  431-450  ;  on  Whig  tyranny,  ii. 
54-56  ;  on  character  of  Revolution- 
ary leaders,  ii.  56-59  ;  on  Congress, 
ii.  59-64,  113-115  ;  on  American 
army,  ii.  64-65  ;  on  individual 
rebels,  ii.  65-67,  115-125  ;  on  the 
French  alliance,  ii.  67—72  ;  on  Sir 
Henry  Clinton,  ii.  92  ;  on  the 
Revolution,  ii.  108-112,  126-127  ; 
on  the  military  invaders,  ii.  140- 
149,  ii.  253-255  ;  on  the  Loyalists, 
ii  149-157,  253-255  ;  in  its  minor 
and  incidental  forms,  ii.  158-165  ; 
on  English  political  corruption,  ii. 
165^169  ;  on  George  III.,  ii.  253, 
257-258,  272-273  ;  on  Great  Brit- 
ain, ii.  252,  264-270  ;  on  British 
Prison-Ship,  ii.  259—262;  on  current 
events,  ii.  263-264  ;  Franklin's  use 
of,  ii.  376-380. 

Savage,  James,  his  opinion  of  Hutch- 
inson,  ii.  395  ;  efforts  to  have 
Hutchinson's  third  volume  pub- 
lished, ii.  405  note. 

Savannah,  attack  on,  ii.  69-70  ;  Tory 
ballad  on  this  attack,  ii.  70-72. 

Scharf.  John  Thomas,  "History  of 
Maryland,"  cited,  i.  102  note. 

Schaumbergh,  Count  de,  Franklin's 
letter  of  instructions  from,  ii.  328, 
380. 

Schemer.  A.     See  Trumbull,  John. 

Schiller,  Johann  Christoph  Friedrich 
von,  interest  in  Carver's  "  Travels," 
i  150. 

Schlozer,  August  I,.,  his  list  of  Revo- 
lutionary leaders  with  their  previous 
occupations,  ii.  57-58. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  i.  180  ;  cited,  i.  21 
note  ;  borrows  from  Freneau,  i.  178; 
on  poem  of  Freneau,  i.  178-179  ; 
title  invented  by,  ii.  99. 

Seabury.  Samuel,  i.  392,  436  ;  early 
history,  i.  350  ;  personal  traits,  i. 
35O-35I  5  part  taken  by,  prior  to 


1774,  i-  295  !  attack  on  measures  of 
Congress,  i.  33-K348  ;  "  Free 
Thoughts,"  an  alarmist  appeal  to 
the  agricultural  class,  \.  334-342  ; 
tone  and  style,  i.  335  ;  the  odious 
and  dangerous  features  of  "  The 
Association,"  i.  335-342 ;  excite- 
ment caused  by  this  pamphlet,  i. 
342,  345,  349;  "The  Congress 
Canvassed,"  an  alarmist  appeals  to 
New  York  merchants,  i.  342-344  ; 
its  range  and  character,  i.  343  ;  the 
constitutional  and  economic  aspects 
of  the  question,  i.  343-344;  Ham- 
ilton's answer  to,  i.  384—390  ;  re- 
plies in  "A  View  of  the  Controver- 
sy," i.  345-346 ;  its  method  and 
range,  i,  345  ;  proposes  home-rule, 
i-  345-346;  "An  Alarm  to  the 
Legislature  of  New  York, "  i.  346- 

348  ;  another  pamphlet,  advertised 
but  never  published,   i.  348  ;  gifts 
for  controversial  authorship,  i.  348- 

349  ;  literary  power,  i.  349;  identi- 
fied as  the  "  Westchester  Farmer," 
i-   349-35°,   note   350-351  ;  abduc- 
tion and  imprisonment,  i.  351—353  ; 
subsequent  persecutions,  i.  353-354; 
flight  within  the  British  lines,  i.  354; 
work  as  clergyman  and  physician, 
i.  354  ;  first  bishop  of  the  American 
Episcopal      Church,    i.    354-355  ; 
compared   with   Galloway,  i.  369- 
370. 

Seabury,  W.  J.,  i.  351  note. 

Secession,  Independence  was,  i.  477. 

Seeker,  Archbishop,  i.  127. 

"  Secret  Journals  of  Congress,"  cited, 
ii.  40  note,  244  note. 

Sedgwick,  Theodore,  praises  Living- 
ston's essays,  ii,  19  ;  "  Life  of  Liv- 
ingston," cited  in  notes,  ii.  18-20. 

"  Sentiments  of  a  British  American." 
See  Thacher,  Oxenbridge. 

Sergeant,  Rev.  John,  Journal  of,  ii. 
332  note. 

Sermons,  power  of,  ii.  278  ;  occasions 
for,  ii.  279  ;  on  the  Causes  and 
Consequences  of  the  American 
Revolution,  ii.  320-328  ;  before  the 
Revolutionary  assembly  of  Massa- 
chusetts, ii.  282-284  ;  on  the  first 
National  Fast  Day,  ii.  284-287, 
325-326;  before  Philadelphia 
troops,  ii.  290,  318  ;  against  moral 
and  spiritual  dangers,  ii,  295-297, 
336  ;  before  the  army,  ii.  299-302  ; 
at  inauguration  of  new  government 


520 


INDEX. 


in  Massachusetts,  ii.  304-306;  on 
capture  of  Cornwallis,  ii.  306-307  ; 
election  sermon,  ii.  308  ;  imprecat- 
ing Tories,  ii.  308-310  ;  on  day  of 
national  thanksgiving,  ii.  310-312, 
315-316. 

Sewall,  Jonathan,  i.  358,  397  ;  letters 
of ' '  Massachusettensis  "  erroneously 
attributed  to,  i.  note,  357-35®  ',  sat- 
irized by  Trumbull,  i.  437  ;  "  The 
Americans  Roused,"  a  Loyalist  col- 
loquy, ii.  193. 

Sewall,  Jonathan  Mitchell,  "On  In- 
dependence,"  criticised,  ii.  169 ; 
his  "  Epilogue  to  Addison's  Tragedy 
of  Cato,"  ii.  225. 

Sewall,  Stephen,  i.  126. 

Shakespeare,  William,  i.  37,  210,  ii. 
68  ;  quoted,  i.  20,  98 ;  motto 
adapted  from,  by  Dickinson,  ii.  26; 
parody  on  Hamlet's  soliloquy,  ii. 
54-55- 

Shelburne,  Lord,  to  Pitt  on  Declara- 
tory Act,  i.  226. 

Shenstone,  William,  English  poet,  i. 
37,  415. 

Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley  Butler,  i. 
102. 

Sherman,  Roger,  i.  501. 

Shirley,  William,  governor  of  Massa- 
chusetts, Samuel  Adams's  master's 
thesis  read  before,  ii.  13  ;  on  the 
"  brace  of  Adamses,"  ii.  58. 

Sidney,  Algernon,  ii.  216  ;  source  of 
Mayhew's  political  ideas,  i.  132  ;  of 
Declaration  of  Independence,  i. 
507  ;  studied  by  Samuel  Adams,  ii. 

12. 

Simons,  M.  L.     See  Duyckinck. 

"  Six  Political  Discourses."  See 
Brackenridge,  H.  H. 

Slafter,  E.  F.,  attributes  verses  on 
Mayhew  to  Alpin,  i.  124  note. 

Slavery,  Trumbull's  essay  on,  i.  207  ; 
Boucher  on  abolition  of,  i.  322  ; 
influence  of  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence on  overthrow  of,  i.  516- 
517  ;  Samuel  Adams  on,  ii.  15-16; 
Laurens's  abhorrence  of,  ii.  243 
note  ;  denounced  by  Freneau,  ii. 
249-250;  Woolman  on,  ii.  343-345; 
Crevecoeur  on  barbarism  of,  ii.  354- 
356. 

Sloane,  W.  M.,  "French  War  and 
the  Revolution,"  cited,  i.  230  note. 

Smith,  Colonel,  in  "The  Fall  of 
British  Tyranny,"  ii.  204. 

Smith,    Goldwin,    criticism    of     the 


Declaration  of  Independence,  i. 
502-503.  • 

Smith,  Horace  Wemyss,  ' '  Life  of 
Rev.  William  Smith,"  cited,  i.  152 
note,  487  note. 

Smith,  John  Russell,  his  reprint  of 
"  The  Rising  Glory  of  America,"  i. 
173  note. 

Smith,  Lloyd,  attributes  "  A  Few 
Political  Reflections  "  to  Wells,  i. 
274  note. 

Smith,  Samuel  Stanhope,  on  Wither- 
spoon,  ii.  321  note. 

Smith,  Sydney,  on  all-pervasiveness 
of  British  taxation,  i.  100  note  ; 
to  his  daughter,  on  Franklin,  ii. 
381. 

Smith,  William,  Provost  of  the  Col- 
lege  of  Philadelphia,  compiler  of 
"  Historical  Account  of  Bouquet's 
Expedition,"  i.  152 ;  on  Thomas 
Hopkinson,  i.  165  note  ;  on  repeal 
of  Stamp  Act,  i.  224-225  ;  ' '  Plain 
Truth "  erroneously  attributed  to, 
i.  note  479-480  ;  position  on  Inde- 
pendence, i.  483,  486-487  ;  "  Let- 
ters of  Cato,"  i.  486-487  ;  his  iden- 
tity as  "Cato"  established,  i.  487 
note  ;  Hopkinson's  reply  to,  i.  487- 
490  ;  discourses  on  state  occasions, 
ii.  317-319  ;  "  On  the  Present  Situ- 
ation of  American  Affairs,"  ii.  318  ; 
retirement  at  the  approach  of  Inde- 
pendence, ii.  319 ;  quality  as  a 
writer,  ii.  319. 

Smyth,  Albert  H.,  "  Philadelphia 
Magazines,"  cited,  ii.  257  note,  326 
note. 

Smyth,  John  Ferdinand,  Loyalist 
officer,  his  ballad  "  The  Rebels," 
ii.  55,  56. 

Smythe,  Captain,  ridicules  impover- 
ished condition  of  American  army, 
ii.  65. 

Socrates,  i.  321,  369;  ii.  369;  com- 
pared with  Franklin,  ii.  371-372. 

"  Some  Thoughts,"  pamphlet  on 
British  colonial  policy,  i.  57—59! 
publication,  i.  57  ;  character  and 
argument,  i.  57-59. 

' '  Song  for  the  Red  Coats  (A) "  Revo- 
lutionary ballad,  ii.  iSr. 

"  Song  of  American  Freedom."  See 
Dickinson,  John. 

Songs  of  the  Revolution,  "  Virginia 
Hearts  of  Oak,"  i.  227-229  ; 
"  Liberty  Song,"  i.  240-241  ;  "  The 
Epilogue,"  ii.  63  ;  On  the  Present 


INDEX. 


521 


Troubles,"  ii.  81-82  ;  at  the  "  Sons 
of  St.  George  "  banquets,  ii.  82-85 ; 
"  The  Lords  of  the  Main,"  ii.  87- 
88;  "New  Song,"  ii.  88;  "A 
Venison  Dinner,"  ii.  88-90;  "Let 
us  be  Happy  as  Long  as  We  Can," 
ii.  94 ;  for  the  king's  birthday,  ii. 
126;  "  The  Old  Year  and  the  New," 
ii.  127-128  ;  Anglican  race  as  writ- 
ers of,  ii.  169  ;  criticism  of,  ii.  169- 
170;  political,  ii.  170;  military,  ii. 
170-172  ;  writers  of,  ii.  172-175  ; 
"The  American  Hero," ii.  175-177; 
"The  American  Patriot's  Prayer," 
ii.  177-178  ;  "  The  American  Sol- 
dier's Hymn,"  ii.  179-180. 

"  Sons  of  Liberty,"  dedicate  a  Tree 
of  Liberty,  i.  241-242  ;  burn  Inglis's 
"  True  Interest,"  i.  480  note. 

"  Sons  of  St.  George,"  Stansbury's 
songs  at  the  banquets  of,  ii,  82-85. 

Southey,  Robert,  "  Life  of  Cowper," 
cited,  i.  25  note  ;  Crevecceur's  in- 
fluence on,  ii.  358. 

Southmayd,  William,  i.  190. 

Sparks,  Jared,  i.  431  note  ;  assign- 
ment of  characters  in  "  The  Group," 
ii.  195  note ;  his  reprint  of  Duche's 
letter  to  Washington,  ii.  292  note  ; 
"Correspondence  of  the  American 
Revolution,"  cited,  i.  472  note  ; 
"  Writings  of  Washington,  cited  in 
notes,  i.  395,  461,  472,  473,  ii.  38, 
99,  106  ;  "  Works  of  Franklin," 
cited  in  notes,  i.  165,  370,  374,  452, 
454.  »•  3°6  ;  criticised,  ii.  362  note. 

Spenser,  author  of  "  Scholiast,"  cited 
i.  89  note. 

Spinoza,  Baruch,  i.  205. 

Sprague,  William  Buel,  "  Annals," 
cited  in  notes,  i.  127,  328,  480,  ii. 
280,  285,  287,  294,  303,  307,  312, 
314,  315,  320-322,  326,  338,  387, 
391,  413,  416,  419. 

Sprigg,  Osborne,  attempt  to  silence 
Boucher,  i.  319-320. 

Spring,  Samuel,  i.  173. 

Stamp  Act,  official  notification  of,  i. 
46-47  ;  how  this  notice  was  received 
in  America,  i.  60-61,  66  ;  Hopkins's 
argument  against,  i.  63-69 ;  its 
passage  finds  Americans  alarmed, 
i.  92  ;  essays  on,  by  John  Adams, 
i-  93-Q9  I  by  Stephen  Johnson,  i. 
99-101  ;  by  Dulany,  i.  loi-ni  ; 
Pitt's  speech  on,  i.  in,  note  m- 
113  ;  papers  of  the  Stamp  Act  Con- 
gress, i.  15-16,  112-114  ;  pamphlets 


against,  i.  114-115  ;  American  feel, 
ing  on,  expressed  in  "Oppression," 
i.  115-120;  riots  over,  i.  138-139; 
happiness  on  repeal  of,  i.  139,  165, 
223-225  ;  Chatham  on,  i.  232  ;  in 
"A  Pretty  Story,"  i.  285. 

Stansbury,  Arthur  Joseph,  his  biogra- 
phy of  his  father,  ii.  80  note  ;  cited, 
ii.  96  note. 

Stansbury,  Joseph,  personal  history,  ii. 
80-8 r  ;  preeminence,  ii.  80;  mater- 
ials relating  to,  ii.  80  note  ;  disap- 
proves British  colonial  policy,  ii.  81  ; 
"On  the  Present  Troubles,"  ii.  81- 
82  ;  believes  in  constitutional  oppo- 
sition, ii.  82  ;  fans  feeling  of  Anglo- 
American  kinship,  ii.  82-85  ',  songs 
at  the  "Sons  of  St.  George"  ban- 
quets, ii.  82-85  ;  draws  back  from 
plan  for  race-separation,  ii.  85  ;  epi- 
gram on  a  Whig  preacher,  ii.  85  ; 
takes  refuge  with  British  army,  ii. 
86  ;  activity  as  a  writer  of  convivial 
political  verse,  ii,  86-87.;  "  Lords  of 
the  Main,"  ii.  87-88  ;  "  New  Song," 
ii.  88  ;  "A  Venison  Dinner,"  ii.  88- 
90  ;  strives  to  keep  up  Loyalist  con- 
fidence, ii.  90  ;  satire  on  Sir  Henry 
Clinton,  ii.  91-92 ;  optimism,  ii. 
93794  I  "A  Poetical  Epistle  to  His 
Wife,"  ii.  93  ;  "Liberty,"  ii.  93  ; 
"  Let  Us  be  Happy,"  ii.  94  ;  devo- 
tion to  principle,  ii,  95  ;  "  God 
Save  the  King,"  ii.  95  ;  inability  to 
keep  up  resentments,  ii.  95-96  ; 
homesick  in  Nova  Scotia,  ii.  96 ; 
returns  as  a  reconstructed  Ameri- 
can Loyalist,  ii.  96,  129  ;  compared 
with  Odell,  ii.  98  ;  as  a  satirist,  ii. 

159- 

' '  Stanzas  on  the  New  American  Frig- 
ate 'Alliance.'"  See  Freneau, 
Philip. 

State  Papers.  See  American  Lit- 
erature. 

"Statutes  at  Large,"  cited  in  notes, 
i.  46,  231,  232. 

Stedman,  Edmund  Clarence,  on  orig- 
inality of  "  M'Fingal,"  i.  447  note. 

Steele,  Sir  Richard,  i.  210  ;  influence 
on  Trumbnll,  i.  193-194,  213-214. 

Steuben,  Baron,  to  spread  the  fame 
of  Washington,  ii.  335. 

Stiles,  Ezra,  president  of  Yale  Col- 
lege, cited  on  Trumbull's  precocity, 
i.  189,  191,  192  ;  on  Declaration  of 
Independence,  i.  516;  his  ambition 
for  universal  scholarship,  ii.  330- 


522 


INDEX. 


332 ;  unpublished  writings,  ii.  332 
and  note ;  published  writings,  ii. 
333  ;  lack  of  ability  in  sustained 
literary  expression,  ii.  333~334  ',  de- 
fects in  literary  taste,  ii.  334-335.; 
services  to  American  civilization,  ii. 
335  ;  attitude  toward  skepticism,  ii. 
335-336  ;  free-mindedness,  ii.  336  ; 
confidence  in  the  victory  of  truth, 
ii.  336;  charity,  ii.  33^-337  I. judg- 
ments concerning  secular  affairs,  ii. 
337-338  ;  foresight,  ii.  338. 

Stille,  Charles  Janeway,  "Life  of 
Dickinson,"  cited  in  notes  i.  237, 
ii.  22,  23,  25. 

Stirling,  Lord,  satirized  by  Odell,  ii. 
120;  "The  Battle  of  Brooklyn," 
ii.  208-209. 

Stockdale,  John,  republishes  essays  of 
"  Novanglus,"  i.  391. 

Stone,  W.  L.,  "  Burgoyne  Ballads," 
cited  ii.  144  note,  145  note ;  on 
authorship  of  epigram  on  Burgoyne, 
ii.  163  note. 

Stork,  William,  "  Description  of  East 
Florida,"  i.  10,  152-154;  its  liter- 
ary quality,  i.  152  ;  optimistic  ac- 
count of  reptiles  and  insects,  i. 
152-154. 

Strahan,  William,  Franklin's  letters  to 
on  the  situation  (1775),  i.  403,  404. 

"  Strictures."    See  Lee,  Charles. 

Suffolk,  Duke  of,  ii.  115. 

Sullivan,  General  John,  pre-Revolu- 
tionary  occupation,  ii.  58  ;  satirized 
by  Odell,  ii.  116-117;  in  "The 
Battle  of  Brooklyn, "<ii.  208-209. 

"Summary  View  of  the  Rights  of 
British  America."  See  Jefferson, 
Thomas. 

Sumner,  Charles,  "  Works,"  cited,  ii. 
361  note. 

Swift,  >  Jonathan,  Dean  of  St.  Pat- 
rick's, i.  123,  447  ;  as  a  writer  of 
pamphlets,  i.  20 ;  quoted,  i.  67  ; 
compared  with  Franklin,  ii.  368, 
376,  377,  38o. 

Talbot,  Lord,  on  law  and  precedent 
i-35- 

Tauchnitz,  Christian  Bernhard  von 
i.  150  note. 

Taxation  of  the  American  Colonies, 
source  of  arguments  against,  i.  41- 
44  I  new  British  policy  respecting, 
l-  45-47  ;  impolicy  of,  as  viewed  by 
colonial  merchants,  i.  57,  58  ;  thrust 
at  all-pervasiveness  of,  i.  99-100  ; 


to  be  made  unprofitable,  i.  108- 
110;  Townshend's  measures  to 
raise  revenue  by,  i.  231-232  ;  outline 
of,  (1763-1774),  i.  247-250;  oppo- 
sition to,  approved,  i.  274  ;  insep- 
arable from  government,  i.  277 ; 
inconsistency  of  arguments  against, 
i.  277  ;  humorous  history  of,  i.  283- 
288;  expediency  of,  i.  311-313; 
Burke  on,  i.  510-511;  constitu- 
tional, i.  72-73,  82-84,  305-310, 
362-365, 375-376 ;  unconstitutional, 
i.  99-100,  233  ;  without  representa- 
tion, Otis  on,  i.  50,  86^-88  ;  Thacher 
on,  i.  54;  Hopkins  on,  i.  66-68; 
Dulany  on,  i.  103-107  ;  Dickinson 
on,  i.  236  ;  Whigs  on,  i.  305  ;  the 
maxim,  "  No  taxation  without  rep- 
resentation," applauded  by  Gren- 
ville,  i.  306  ;  by  Loyalists,  i.  306 ; 
its  violation  by  parliament  denied, 
i.  306-309  ;  Odell  on,  ii.  108. 

Tea,  its  grotesque  prominence  in  the 
Anglo-American  controversy,  i. 
246-247 ;  ministerial  measures 
producing  this  result,  i.  247-251  ; 
oppositionist  jests  on  forcing  Ameri- 
cans to  drink,  i.  251-253  ;  impre- 
cations on,  by  American  verse- 
writers,  i.  253-257  ;  humorous 
version  of  traveller  over,  i.  257- 
265,  286-288;  how  controversy  over, 
brought  on  American  political 
union,  i.  265-266  ;  tax  on,  i.  337, 
363,  396  ;  Stansbury  on,  ii.  83-85. 

Temple,  information  to  Ethan  Allen, 
ii.  233. 

Tennent,  Gilbert,  influence  on  Green, 
ii.  294. 

Terence,  i.  198. 

Terry,  Uriah,  "  The  Wyoming  Mas- 
sacre," ii.  182-183. 

Thacher,  James,  career,  ii.  416 ; 
"  Military  Journal  of  the  American 
Revolutionary  War,"  ii.  416-417. 

Thacher,  Oxenbridge,  i.  61,  70  ;  ar- 
gues against  writs  of  assistance,  i. 
32 ;  personal  history,  i.  52-53 ; 
"  The  Sentiments  of  a  British  Amer- 
ican," i.  52-56  ;  its  spirit,  i.  53  ; 
its  argument,  i.  53-56 ;  rank,  i. 

122. 

Thackepy,  William  Makepeace,  com- 
ment on  saying  of  George  III.,  i. 
34  note  ;  reads  Boucher's  letters,  i. 
328  note  ;  on  Burgoyne,  ii.  163  ; 
his  definition  of  humor,  ii.  365— 
366. 


INDEX. 


523 


Thanksgiving,  day  of,  appointed  by 
Congress,  ii.  310  ;  sermons  on,  ii. 
310-312,  315-316. 

Thomas,  Nathaniel  Ray,  in  Mercy 
Warren's  "  Group,"  ii.  195-196. 

Thomson,  Charles,  secretary  of  Con- 
gress, Dickinson's  letter  to,  ii.  22- 
23- 

Thomson,  Charles  West,  account  of 
Proud,  ii.  387  note. 

Thomson,  James,  British  poet,  i.  192, 
210;  motto  taken  from,  by  Hop- 
kins, i.  65.  - 

Thornbury,  Walter,  his  contributions 
on  Boucher,  i.  328  note. 

Thornton,  John  Wingate,  "  Pulpit  of 
the  Revolution,"  cited,  i.  135  note; 
ii.  280  note;  "Index"  to  Hutch- 
inson's  History,  ii.  411  note. 

"Thrax,"  his  contributions  on  Bou- 
cher, i.  328  note. 

Thucydides,  i.  330. 

Thurlowe,  Edward,  fellow-student 
of,  ii.  22. 

Ticknor,  George,  i.  173  note,  275 
note. 

Tilghman,  Tench,  his  "Journal,"  ii. 
418. 

"To  Melancholy."  See  Evans,  Na- 
thaniel. 

"To  the  Dog  Sancho."  See  Fre- 
neau,  Philip. 

"To  the  Troops  in  Boston,"  Hiber- 
nian-Yankee ballad  on  British  re- 
treat from  Concord,  i.  411-412. 

Todd,  A.,  on  supremacy  of  parlia- 
ment, i.  310-311. 

Todd,  Charles  Burr,  "Life  of  Bar- 
low," cited,  ii.  173  note. 

Tories.     See  Loyalists. 

Towne,  Benjamin,  ii.  326. 

Townsend,  Lord,  to  John  Adams,  on 
Hutchinson,  ii.  403. 

Townshend,  Charles,  ii.  100,  401  ; 
purpose  and  measures  concerning 
the  colonies,  i.  231-232,  286. 

"Travels  through  the  Interior  Parts 
of  North  America."  See  Carver, 
Jonathan. 

Tree  of  Liberty,  dedicated  at  Provi- 
dence, i.  241-242. 

"True  Interest  of  America."  See 
Inglis,  Charles. 

Trumbull,  Benjamin,  character  and 
career,  ii.  414-415  ;  opinion  of 
Peters,  ii.  415. 

Trumbull,  James  Hammond,  "  Origin 
of  M'Fingal,"  cited  in  notes,  i. 


191,  431,  449  ;  "  The  Rev.  Samuel 
Peters,"  cited,  ii.  415  note,  416 
note  ;  "  The  True  Blue  Laws," 
cited  in  notes,  ii.  413,  414,  416. 
Trumbull,  John,  ancestry,  i.  188- 
189  ;  career,  i.  note,  187-188  ;  pri- 
vate papers,  i.  188  note  ;  precocity, 
i.  189-192  ;  as  an  undergraduate  at 
Yale,  i.  192-193  ;  as  a  graduate- 
student,  i.  193  ;  representation  of  a 
new  literary  tendency,  i.  ii,  187  ; 
as  a  satirist,  i.  23,  26,  ii.  159;  es- 
says called  "  The  Meddler,"  i.  193- 
201  ;  publication,  i.  194  and  note  ; 
their  form  and  tone,  i.  193-195  ; 
exposition  of  wit,  i.  195  ;  contribu- 
tions of  a  schemer,  i.  195-199  ;  ad- 
vertisement for  a  young  lady,  i. 
196-197  ;  the  controversy  between 
the  moderns  and  the  ancients,  i. 
197-199 ;  a  medley  of  topics,  i. 
199—200  ;  attitude  toward  contem- 
poraneous literature,  i.  200-201  ;  the 
first  eight  essays  of  "The  Corres- 
pondent," i.  201-207  ;  publication, 
i.  201,  207  note  ;  their  character, 
i.  201  ;  the  introduction  explain- 
ing the  title,  i.  201-203  ;  satirizes 
the  controversial  writers,  i.  203- 
207 ;  parodies  the  titles  of  books, 
i.  203-205  ;  offers  "A  New  System 
of  Logic,"  i.  205-206;  explains 
feud  between  metaphysics  and  com- 
mon sense,  i.  206  ;  shows  the  ser- 
vice rendered  by  his  literary  breth- 
ren, i.  206-207  ;  on  the  slave  trade, 
i.  207  ;  "  Essay  on  the  Use  and 
Advantages  of  the  Fine  Arts,"  i. 
208-210  ;  recognition  of  his  poetic 
promise,  i.  210  ;  as  a  tutor  at  Yale, 
i.  210-211  ;  his  English  models,  i. 
211  ;  "Ode  to  Sleep,"  i.  211-213, 
publishes  new  essays  of  "  The  Cor- 
respondent," i.  213-214  ;  finds  his 
place  as  a  satirist,  i.  214-215  ;  qual- 
ity of  his  satire,  i.  215,  220-221  ; 
his  satirical  trilogy,  "  The  Progress 
of  Dullness,"  i.  215-221  ;  satirizes 
collegiate  education,  i.  215-219  ; 
the  career  of  a  fop,  i.  220  ;  the  ex- 
clusion of  women  from  higher  edu- 
cation, i.  220  ;  as  a  satirist,  com- 
pared with  Hopkinson,  i.  291-292; 
furnished  materials  for  satire  by 
the  military  experiences  of  1775,  '• 
413  ;  abandons  letters  for  the  law, 
i.  427  ;  enters  office  of  John  Ad- 
ams, i.  427  ;  bids  farewell  to  verse- 


524 


INDEX. 


Trumbull,  John  (Continued}. 
making,  i.  427-428  ;  finds  himself 
in  the  vortex  of  Revolutionary  poli- 
tics, i.  428  ;  relapses  into  verse- 
making,  i.  428-429  ;  his  first  harsh 
words  toward  the  mother  country, 
i.  429 ;  reluctantly  surrenders  to  the 
domination  of  politics,  i.  429-430 ; 
returns  to  New  Haven,  i.  430-431  ; 
publishes  a  burlesque  on  Gage's 
Proclamation,  i.  431  ;  the  first 
canto  of  "M'Fingal,"  i.  431-441  ', 
its  time  and  place,  {.431  ;  its  hero, 
Squire  M'Fingal,  i.  431-432  ;  John 
Adams  portrayed  as  Honorius,  i. 
432 ;  the  town  meeting,  i.  431- 
441  ;  speech  of  Honorius  against 
British  aggressions,  i.  433-434 ; 
against  General  Gage,  i.  434-435, 
438  ;  against  the  Tories,  i.  435- 
436  ;  M'Fingal's  reply,  i.  436-440  ; 
denounces  the  Whigs,  i.  436-438  ; 
vindicates  General  Gage,  i.  438- 
439 ;  predicts  Whig  defeat  and 
Tory  triumph,  i.  439-440  ;  reply  of 
Honorious,  i.  440 ;  the  meeting 
breaks  up,  i.  441  ;  completes  the 
poem,  i.  441-442  ;  its  character,  i. 
442,  447  ;  outline  of  the  story  as 
finished,  i.  442-443 ;  the  resem- 
blances and  dissimilarities  between 
"M'Fingal"  and  "  Hudibras,"  i. 
443-445  ;  his  real  master,  Churchill, 
i.  445-446  ;  breadth  and  variety,  i. 
446 ;  his  use  of  parody,  i.  446- 
447;  the  originality  of  "M'Fin- 
gal," i.  447  ;  it  embodies  the  spirit 
and  life  of  the  American  people,  i. 
448  ;  employs  satire  for  lofty  and 
humane  objects,  i.  448-449;  its 
popularity  and  influence,  i.  449- 
450 ;  editions  of  it,  i.  449,  450 
note. 

Tryon,  William,  Governor  of  New 
York,  satirized  by  Freneau,  i.  425 

Tucker,  George,  "  Life  of  Jefferson," 
cited,  i.  245  note. 

Tucker,  St.  George,  ii.  172  note. 

Tudor,  William,  estimate  of  Otis's 
"  Vindication."  i.  41  ;  erroneously 
attributes  ' '  Brief  Remarks "  to 
Hopkins,  i.  78  note  ;  Life  of  Otis, 
cUed  in  notes,  i.  32,  37,  38,  ii.  278, 

Tufts,  Dr.  Simon,  i.  163. 
Turgot,  line  on  Franklin,  ii.  361. 
"Two   Letters."     See    Hopkinson, 
Francis. 


United  States  of  America,  dangers 
and  duties  confronting,  ii.  47-49, 
329-330;  situation  in  1776,  ii.  37, 
177  ;  condition  of  its  finances,  ii. 
62-63  !  °f  tne  army,  ii.  64-65  ;  the 
French  alliance,  ii.  67  ;  its  effects, 
ii.  67  ;  the  campaign  of  1778,  ii. 
67  ;  of  1779,  ii.  69-70,  72  ;  possible 
calamities  of  the  French  alliance, 
ii.  74-77  ;  obstacles  to  Independ- 
ence presented  by  colonial  habits, 
.  ii.  132-133;  for  political  free-mind- 
edness,  a  critical  disposition  needed, 
ii.  133-134  ;  Hopkinson's  contribu- 
tion to  this,  ii.  134-139  ;  situation  in 
1777,  ii.  143-147,  161-162  ;  change 
of  feeling  toward  George  III.,  ii. 
160  ;  poet's  ideal  of  an  American 
commonwealth,  ii.  168-169. 

"  United  States  Magazine,"  ii.  257  ; 
cited,  ii.  250  note. 

Upham,  Charles  Wentworth,  "  Life 
of  Pickering,"  cited,  i.  495  note. 

Van  Shermain,  Theodorus,  pseu- 
donym. See  Jacob  Green. 

Vardell,  Rev.  John,  Tory  political 
satirist,  ii.  80 ;  satirized  by  Trum- 
bull, i.  439. 

Vassals,  of  Boston,  satirized  by  Trum- 
bull, i.  439. 

Vattel,  studied  by  Samuel  Adams,  ii. 
12. 

Veasy,  William,  opinion  of  Mayhew, 
i.  124. 

"Venison  Dinner  (A)."  See  Stans- 
bury,  Joseph. 

Vergil,  i.  191,  194,  216. 

' '  View  of  the  Causes  and  Conse- 
quences of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion." See  Boucher,  Jonathan. 

"  View  of  the  Controversy  (A)."  See 
Seabury,  Samuel. 

Villemain,  Abel  Fra^ois,  on  French 
literature  of  eighteenth  century,  i. 
21. 

"Vindication  of  the  British  Colo- 
nies." See  Otis,  James. 

"  Vindication  of  the  Conduct  of  the 
House  of  Representatives."  See 
Otis,  James. 

"Virginia  Banishing  Tea,"  verses 
from,  imprecating  tea,  i.  254. 

"Virginia  Gazette,"  cited,  i.  229 
note. 

"  Virginia  Hearts  of  Oak,"  its  model, 
i.  227-228  ;  utters  American  politi- 
cal anxiety,  i.  227-229. 


INDEX. 


525 


Voltaire,  praises  the  "  Farmer's  Let- 
ters," i.  237. 

"  Volunteer  Boys  (The),"  Revolution- 
ary song,  ii.  171-172. 

Wade,  John,  on  English  newspapers 
of  the  eighteenth  century, -i.  18-19. 

Wainwright,  Jonathan  Mayhew,  Bis- 
hop of  New  York,  grandson  of 
Jonathan  Mayhew,  i.  135  note. 

Wallace,  Sir  James,  satirized  by  Fre- 
neau,  i.  425. 

Walpole,  Horace,  comment  on 
Churchill,  i.  25  ;  on  Franklin,  ii. 
360. 

Walter,  Rev.  William,  i.  436. 

Warburton,  William,  "  Works  of 
Pope,"  cited,  i.  162  note. 

Ware,  William,  his  sketch  of  Jonas 
Clark,  ii.  419  note. 

Warren,  James,  ii.  193,  420 ;  John 
Adams  to,  on  Dickinson,  ii.  33-34. 

W^arren,  Joseph,  in  Mercy  Warren's 
"Adulateur,"  ii.  193  ;  in  "  The  Bat- 
tle of  Bunker's  Hill,"  ii.  211,  214, 
215-217,  218. 

Warren,  Mercy,  wife  of  James  War- 
ren, i.  27,  185  ;  satirizes  Leonard,  i. 
358  ;  "  The  Adulateur,  a  Tragedy," 
ii.  193-194  ;  exhibits  historical  sit- 
uations in  New  England,  ii.  194  ; 
also  prevailing  fear  and  hatred  of 
Governor  Hutchinson,  ii.  194;  "  The 
Group, "  a  metrical  play,  ii.  194-198; 
satirizes  British  and  Loyalist  lead- 
ers, ii.  195-198  ;  other  tragedies,  ii. 
198;  "  The  Blockheads,"  attributed 
to,  ii.  207  note  ;  suggested  as  author 
of  "  The  Motley  Assembly,"  ii. 
227  note  ;  as  an  historian  of  the 
Revolution,  ii.  419  ;  opportunities 
for  knowing  men  and  events,  ii. 
419-420  ;  "  History  of  the  Revolu- 
tion," ii.  420-423  ;  its  partisanship, 
ii.  420-421  ;  its  literary  qualities, 
ii.  421  ;  its  historical  portraits,  ii. 
421-423. 

Warton,  Thomas,  English  poet,  i.  415 

Washington,  (George,  i.  297,  320,  355, 
413,  461,  ii.  40,  275,  297,  314  ;  as  a 
letter  writer,  i.  13-14  ;  relations 
with  Boucher,  i.  328  note  ;  military 
strategy  anticipated  by  Hamilton, 
i.  388-389  ;  Charles  Lee's  malice 
toward,  i.  400  note  ;  appointment 
as  commander-in-chief,  i.  402,  460  ; 
on  Independence  (1775),  i.  460; 
Charles  Lee  to,  on  "  Common 


Sense,"  i.  471-472 ;  on  power  of 
"Common  Sense,"  i.  472,  473; 
preeminence,  ii.  8,  24  ;  Living- 
ston allows  him  Rivington's  head, 
ii.  20  ;  defeat  at  Long  Island  and 
disasters  following  thereafter,  ii. 
37,  141  ;  on  the  crisis  of  affairs,  ii, 
38  ;  Tory  humorists  on,  ii.  65,  68  ; 
lacks  proper  support,  ii.  67  ;  Stans- 
bury  on,  ii.  89  ;  satirized  by  Odell, 
ii.  112,  114,  124-125  ;  Hopkinson 
on,  ii.  142,  143,  150  ;  defeat  at 
Brandywine  and  Germantown,  ii. 
146;  Wharton's  "Poetical  Epistle 
to,"  ii.  165-169  ;  appeal  to  Hale, 
ii.  183  ;  in  "  The  Fall  of  British 
Tyranny,"  ii.  200,  207  ;  in  "  The 
Battle  of  Brooklyn,"  ii.  208,  209  ; 
in  "  The  Motley  Assembly,"  ii. 
225,  226  ;  relations  with  Laurens, 
ii.  244  ;  with  Mercy  Warren,  ii. 
420  ;  Freneau's  poem  to,  ii.  263  ; 
sermon  dedicated  to,  ii.  290  ;  Duche 
to,  on  stopping  the  war,  ii.  292  ;  de- 
parture for  Cambridge,  ii.  318  ;  his 
presence,  ii.  322  ;  Stiles  on,  ii.  334- 
335  »  Gordon  derives  information 
from,  ii.  424  note. 

Washington,  H.  A.,  "Writings  of 
Jefferson,"  cited  in  notes,  i.  230, 
504,  508,  ii.  12,  33. 

Waterhouse,  Samuel,  Tory  political 
satirist,  ii.  80. 

Watts,  Isaac,  i.  189,  192,  210,  331. 

Wayne,  Anthony,  {.461  ;  pre-Revolu- 
tionary  occupation,  ii.  58  ;  satirized 
by  Odell,  ii.  124. 

Webster,  Pelatiah,  quoted,  ii.  62  ;  as 
a  financier,  ii.  396. 

Webster,  Richard ,  ' '  Presbyterian 
Church  in  America,"  cited,  ii.  314 
note. 

Wedderburn,  Alexander,  i.  260,  ii. 
196;  as  Brazen  in  "The  Fall  of 
British  Tyranny,"  ii.  200,  203. 

Wells,  Kate  Gannett,  her  account  of 
Stiles,  ii.  338  note. 

Wells,  Richard,  "  A  Few  Political  Re- 
flections "  attributed  to,  i.  274  note. 

Wells,  William,  "Plain  Truth"  er- 
roneously attributed  to,  i.  note, 
470-480. 

Wells,  William  Vincent,  on  Samuel 
Adams's  diligence,  ii.  9 ;  on  his 
method  in  work,  ii.  n  ;  "  Life  of 
Samuel  Adams,"  criticised,  i.  36 
note  ;  cited  in  notes,  i.  38,  270, 
ii.  3-7,  10,  13-17. 


526 


INDEX. 


Wesley,  John,  on  Provost  Smith's  ser- 
mon, ii.  318. 

West  Benjamin,  Hopkinson  dines 
with,  i.  166;  frontispiece  in  Duche's 
"  Discourses"  from  his  painting,  ii. 
293 

Westby-Gibson,  J.,  on  Carver,  i.  note, 
148-149. 

"  Westchester  Farmer,"  pseudonym. 
See  Seabury,  Samuel. 

Weston,  David,  revises  Backus's ' '  His- 
tory of  New  England,"  ii.  392 
note. 

Whalley,  Edward,  regicide,  ii.  334. 

Wharton,  Charles  Henry,  personal 
history,  ii.  166 ;  "  Poetical  Epistle 
to  Washington,"  ii.  165-169;  its 
publication,  167  and  note  ;  tribute 
to  Washington,  ii.  167-168  ;  on 
English  political  corruption,  ii.  166, 
1 68  ;  ideal  of  an  American  com- 
monwealth, ii.  168-169. 

Whately,  Thomas,  on  taxing  America, 
i.  46 ;  Hutchinson's  letters  to,  ii. 
411  note. 

Wheatly,  Phillis,  poems,  i.  186-187  ; 
prose  efforts,  i.  187  note. 

Whigs,  crystallization  of  their  views, 
i.  295  ;  number,  i.  298-300  ;  deny 
right  of  parliament  to  tax  the  col- 
onies, i.  305,  310,  311  ;  line  of  cleav- 
age between  Loyalists  and,  i.  314, 
373-374;  the  patriotic  party,  i.  314- 
315  ;  as  defined  by  Boucher,  i.  326 ; 
Leonard  on  argument  and  tyranny 
of,  i.  363-366  ;  violations  of  liberty 
bX.  i-  341,  374-375  ',  replies  to 
Loyalist  attacks,  i.  384-390,  391- 
392i  395-400;  M'Fingal  denounces, 
i.  436-438  ;  predicts  defeat  of,  i. 
440  ;  disavow  desire  for  indepen- 
dence prior  to  1776,  i.  458-462  ; 
declare  for  Independence,  i.  462  ; 
doctrine  of,  means  nullification  and 
secession,  i.  477  ;  cannot  forget 
denials  of  Independence,  i.  477- 
478  ;  many  opposed  to  Indepen- 
dence, i.  478  ;  two  groups  of  these, 
i.  483  ;  their  argument  against  In- 
dependence, i.  481-483,  485-487  ; 
accused  of  tyranny,  ii.  53-56  ; 
Tories  on  character  of  their  leaders 
ii.  56-59-  65-67  ;  charged  with  in- 
consistency, ii.  88  ;  their  hatred  of 
the  enemies  of  Independence,  ii. 
140-141  ;  partisan  intolerance  of 
11,  159-160;  chiefs  satirized  by 
Odell,  ii.  117-120. 


Whipple,    Edwin  P.       See    Fields, 

James  T. 
Whipple,  William,  on  effect  of  Dec- 

laration of   Independence,   i.    515- 

5i6. 
Whitaker,  Nathaniel,  sermons  impre- 

cating Tories,  ii.  308-310. 
White,  Bishop,  ii.  287  note. 
Whitefield,  George,  i.  185,  204  note  ; 

Mayhew  on  sermon  of,  i.  128  ;  as  a 

reader,  ii.  287  note  ;    influence  on 

Green,  ii.  294. 
Whitehead,    Paul,    on    Franklin's 

"  Edict,"  ii.  379-380. 
Whitehead,  William,  English  poet,  i. 

37,  ii.  168,  273. 
Whittelsey,  Chauncey,  ii.  333. 
Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  Channing 

to,    on   Woolman's   "Journal,"  ii. 

340  and  note  ;  praise  of  Woolman 

ii.  346,  347. 
Wibird,  Mr.,  ii.  279. 
Wilkes,   John,   i.    24,    256,   430  ;    as 

Lord    Patriot    in    "  The    Fall   of 

British  Tyranny,"  ii.  200-203. 
Wilkins,  Isaac,  i.   392  ;    the   "  West- 

Chester   Farmer  "    pamphlets    erro- 

neously attributed  to,  i.   350  note, 

350-351  ;  satirized  by  Trumbull,  i. 


436,  439- 

lliam  I.,      ng  o       ngan 
William  III.,  king  of  England,  i.  43. 


William  I.,  king  of  England,  ii.  196. 


Williams,     Otho,      Gordon     obtains 

materials  from,  ii.  424  note. 
Wills,  Robert,  "  A  Familiar  Epistle  " 

addressed  to,  ii.  55-56. 
Wilson,    Bird,   "  Memoir,"   cited,    ii. 

287  note. 
Wilson,  James,  personal    history,    i. 

273  ;  rank  and  fame,  i.   273   note  ; 

"  Considerations  on  the  Nature  and 

Extent  of  the  Legislative  Authority 

of  the  British   Parliament,"  i.  273  ; 

position  on  Independence,  i  483. 
Wines,  Fred.  H.,  grandson  of  Joseph 

Stansbury,  ii.  80  note. 
Winsor,  Justin,  "  Bibliographical  Con- 

tributions," i.  245  note. 
Winthrop,  John,  ii.  395. 
Winthrop,  Robert  C.,  on  authorship 

of  preface  in  Wood's  "New   Eng- 

land Prospect,"  i.  52  note. 
Wit,    Trumbull's    exposition  of    true 

and  false,  i.  195. 
Witherspoon,  John,  president  of  the 

College  of  New  Jersey,  ii.  99  note  ; 

answer  to    "  Plain    Truth,"  i.  479 

note  ;   satirized   by  Odell,  ii.  121- 


INDEX. 


527 


Witherspoon,  John  {Continued). 
122;  to  Brackenridge  on  his  en- 
trance to  Princeton,  ii.  298  ;  arrival 
in  America  and  identification  with 
the  American  spirit,  ii.  319-320  ; 
previous  career,  ii.  320  ;  editions  of 
his  "  Works,"  ii.  320  note  ;  sketches 
of,  ii.  note  320-321  ;  eclat  attend- 
ing his  advent  to  the  college,  ii.  321; 
fitness  for  the  services  before  him, 
ii.  321-322;  eminence  as  a  preacher, 
ii.  322  ;  stimulus  given  by,  to  the 
development  of  the  college,  ii.  323; 
career  as  political  writer  and  states- 
man, ii.  323—324  ;  enters  Congress, 
ii.  324  ;  reason  for  his  influence 
there,  ii.  324-325  ;  sermons  on  pub- 
lic questions,  ii.  325-326  ;  miscel- 
laneous political  writings,  ii.  326— 
327  ;  treatment  of  the  leading 
questions  in  dispute,  ii.  327-328  ; 
writings  on  public  finance,  ii.  328- 
329  ;  foresees  perils  following  Inde- 
pendence, ii.  329-330. 

Wolfe,  General  James,  Paine's  ode 
on  death  of,  i.  455  note  ;  in  "  The 
Death  of  General  Montgomery,"  ii. 

220,   221,  222. 

Wood,  Edward,  i.  427. 

Wood,  William,  authorship  of  preface 

in   his  "New  England  Prospect" 

discussed,  i.  52  note. 
Woodbridge,  Dudley  Bradstreet, 

grandson  of  John  Trumbull,  i.  188 

note. 
Woodbridge,  Mrs.  William,  daughter 

of  John  Trumbull,  i.  188  note. 
Woodhull,  Nathaniel,  death,  ii.  236. 
Woodward,  Charles  L.,  ii.  411  note. 
Woolman,   John,  i.  10  ;    "Journal" 
'    compared  with  Franklin's  "  Auto- 


•Or' 

\ 


biography,"  ii.  339-340  ;  spirit  of 
his  life,  ii.  340-341  ;  weaned  from 
the  desire  for  outward  greatness,  ii. 
341  ;  first  journey  to  visit  Friends, 


ii.  341-342 ;  apostleship,  ii.  342  ; 
burden  thereof  as  set  forth  in  his 
"  Journal,"  ii.  342-345;  death,  ii. 
345  ethical  and  religious  essays,  ii. 
345-346  ;  an  unlettered  writer  with 
purity  of  style  borne  with  purity  of 
heart,  ii.  346  ;  the  love  and  praise 
of,  ii.  346-347. 

Worcester,  Bishop  of,  visited  by  Hop- 
kinson,  i.  166. 

"  Word  of  Congress  (The)."  See 
Odell,  Jonathan. 

Wordsworth,  William,  traits  antici- 
pated by  Freneau,  i.  180,  182  ;  par- 
ticipates in  reformation  of  English 
verse,  ii.  274. 

Wright,  Sir  James,  governor  of  Geor- 
gia, on  the  "  Farmer,"  i.  238. 

Wright,  Rev.  Mr.,  of  Bristol,  Eng., 
Stiles  letter  to,  ii.  336. 

Writs  of  assistance,  argument  on,  i. 
31-36  ;  Otis's  speech  against,  i.  32- 
36. 

"Wyoming  Massacre  (The)."  See 
Terry,  Uriah. 

Xenophon,  ii.  364,  371, 

Yale  College,  a  literary  center,  i.  n  ; 
beginning  of  new  literary  life  at,  i. 
187,  193-221,  ii.  285  note  ;  require- 
ments for  admission  (1759),  i-  '91  '» 
Trumbull  satirizes  education  at,  i. 
215-219. 

Young,  Dr.,  Tory  political  satirist,  ii. 
80. 

Young,  Edward,  English  poet,  i.  210. 

Zubly,  John  Joachim,  career  and 
writings,  i.  483  ;  "  The  Law  of 
Liberty,"  i.  483-485  ;  champions 
armed  resistance,  but  opposes  In- 
dependence, i.  484—485  ;  the  offence 
for  which  he  was  reproached,  i. 
486. 


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